Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
I pop the trunk and grab my duffel, the old leather one from Budapest that’s been to every continent. I don’t bother with the front steps—already some kid is passed out on them, face buried in his own arms. Instead, I hit the side entrance, use the code Thomas texted, and let myself in through the mudroom. I don’t slam the door, but it echoes anyway.
The first thing that hits me is the smell—vodka, Red Bull, cheap weed, and underneath, something cloying and sweet: a top note of female perfume and, beneath that, the unmistakable tang of sex. This is what happens when you leave a saucy blonde home alone with no guardrails.
The hallway is trashed. Red Solo cups line the floor like breadcrumbs. A discarded tube of lip gloss is crushed under one heel of Andie’s favorite silk slipper chair, which is currently hosting two girls—one in a rhinestone bikini, the other in a puffer vest, both texting in total silence. I move past them, barely sparing a glance. When you run a billion-dollar construction company, you get very good at assessing chaos and parsing what matters. Right now, none of this does.
In the formal dining room, the antique table is littered with empty bottles and a forest of shot glasses. Two frat guys are playing beer pong with Thomas’s Waterford crystal. They don’t even notice me, which is a first. I pause, just long enough for one of them to realize there’s a six-foot-three man in a Brioni topcoat standing behind him. He looks up, meets my eyes, and the confidence seeps out of him like water from a cracked pipe. I don’t say anything. I don’t have to.
The kitchen is worse. The fridge is open, lights blinking, its contents ransacked. Something sticky has congealed across the quartz island. I watch as a couple makes out against the double ovens, the girl’s hands tangled in the boy’s hair, her short skirt hiked nearly to her waist. For a moment, she makes eye contact with me. She breaks away, startled, and I nod. The boy turns, sees me, and immediately scuttles out. I don’t follow.
I move down the main hall, up the split staircase, and into the second level, where the air is quieter but the sense of illicitness is even thicker. There’s a thrum of energy—panic, maybe, or just the sharp edge of anticipation. I don’t miss a beat. I navigate the hallway like it’s my own, shoes silent on the runner, scanning for the only thing in this house I’m actually here for.
I hear her before I see her: that laugh. It’s lighter than I expect, almost breathless, the sound of someone not yet sober but trying to play it cool. There’s a burst of giggling, then a hush, and then a muffled moan. The door is closed, but it doesn’t matter. I could pick this lock in the dark.
I knock once—hard enough that the sound cuts through whatever is happening on the other side. There’s a scuffle. A shush. Something knocks over and rolls across the floor.
I open the door.
And that’s where the scene ends, with everything I expect, and everything I don’t, on full display.
The lamp is the only thing that saves me from total darkness—one of those ugly designer ones, shade the color of bone, casting enough glow to make everything look expensive and exhausted. At first, I see only a tangle of limbs on the bed: pale thighs, bare feet arched in white stilettos, and a spill of hair so bright it’s almost silver in the artificial light.
Then she sits up, and it’s Stella.
She’s nude except for the heels, her dress crumpled on the rug like a surrendered flag, the straps still warm from her skin. Her breasts are even bigger than I remember—gravity-defiant, rose-tipped, and trembling as she tries to breathe. She has that look, the one she inherited from her father: shocked, then embarrassed, then defiant in the way only a Moreland can be. Her eyes, huge and blue, flick to mine and then away, like she’s weighing whether I’ll hit her with a lawsuit or just a moral lecture.
But I don’t see her. Not really. Not at first.
Because crouched over her, both knees braced on the comforter, is a boy sweaty from embarrassment. Athlete. Face like a cement truck, but shoulders that could carry a rowing shell. His jeans are around his thighs, and he’s got his hand between her legs, which is wet and pink and glistening in a way that nearly distracts me from the disaster perched above it because the boy’s cock is hard—sort of—but it’s comical, a pale earthworm, about the length of my thumb. I can see the moment he realizes that I’m there, too: his jaw bunches, his face goes a shade paler, and he looks to me for mercy, as if I’m the parent coming home to find the neighbor’s kid spray-painting the garage.