7. Max
Max
I didn’t run into Draven around town for days on end, but I felt his presence.
Every.
Fucking.
Moment.
After the video call, I pretended I could hang up and go on with my life as normal.
That didn’t exactly work out.
Each morning I’d woken up to a message from him.
Twice it was a photo of the outline of his cock as he gripped it through his tight boxer briefs.
Once it was a photo of him out on his new land, on the saddle of Ember, who had a dark brown coat and a black mane.
Sometimes it was a text message, telling me to open the front door, for little gifts he left.
One morning he’d ordered me an iced coffee, and another morning he’d returned my Glenfiddich whiskey with two replacement bottles. Once, it was a red rose, stripped of its thorns, which probably came from the rose bushes outside Mr. Marsden’s old property. His property, now.
This morning?
It was just a text, with a question.
Draven
So, you can’t stand me. But would you ever watch me come?
Max
What kind of question is that?
It’s me asking if you like to watch.
Something tingled inside me.
I did like to watch.
Even before I’d ever met Draven and he’d started driving me crazy, I sometimes watched videos online of guys coming, especially if they were in public. It always felt more like curiosity to me than anything intensely sexual, but…
The idea of watching Draven come felt like more than just curiosity.
Max
If you want to show off that badly, then sure. Attention whore.
Draven
Love when you talk to me like that. How romantic.
He didn’t message back for around half an hour, but there was a video message I found when I next opened his texts.
I pushed play.
It was a short clip of him holding out a Hard Spot t-shirt—the same one I wore a lot, a pink tank top. At first I was confused, watching a video of nothing other than a shirt.
But then a ribbon of white came down onto the fabric.
My chest tightened as I watched him come onto the shirt, streaking it in white, then run his fingertips quickly through it right at the end.
I replayed the video, looking for a glimpse of his cock, but he’d kept it out of frame on purpose, I was pretty sure.
But he’d sent me this. Like he was proud to show off his load, knowing that he was filming it for me.
Why do I like that so goddamn much?
I barely registered what I was doing as I pulled my cock out, gripping around it as it ached.
I came to the video, fast and rushed, before I could stop myself.
After sitting in my living room feeling like I was losing my mind for a solid half an hour, I knew I had to do something more normal.
I’d called Andrew up and grabbed lunch with him, talking about anything and everything we usually did.
TNU football, TNU hockey. Frat stuff. The fucking weather. I loved talking about it all, because none of it had to do with Draven.
But then, on my way home, I felt like I was being watched.
Very watched.
Even as my truck lurched along on my own driveway, it didn’t feel like mine anymore. The afternoon sun was full and bright. Like there was nowhere to hide.
Well, I don’t have a fuckin’ thing to hide, anyway .
I stood taller. All of Bestens seemed to be permeated by Draven, but that didn’t mean I was going to shrink away. I tried to shake the feeling that my town was starting to feel like his town, and my pride took center stage.
And I swore when I walked across my front porch I caught a whiff of his scent.
It can’t be his scent.
Of course it wasn’t. It was just imprinted on my mind, associated with the porch so much now that I couldn’t help but think of it.
It was time to film a video for the Cocktail Bro channel.
I put everything else out of my mind and set up my phone on its little bendy tripod in my kitchen, propping it up on one side of the sink as usual. I gathered my ingredients, focusing on what I knew how to do best.
“This right here is what I like to call the Bestens Beach Day,” I said into the camera.
“Do we have beaches in Bestens? No. But we have coconut rum, mango syrup, and a hint of my secret ingredient: pulverized sweetened ginger. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it. Step one is to make your fresh mango syrup.”
I went through the first steps of the recipe.
I was shirtless again, because those videos had been performing about thirty times better than any video I’d posted before. I’d tossed on a pair of aqua blue shorts to go with the beachy theme, popped on a crisp white backwards hat, and had my Hard Spot Saloon armband around one bicep.
But as I was filming, I kept fucking shit up.
First I burnt the sugar for the mango syrup.
Then I added too much salt to the ginger, which only needed a tiny pinch.
And then, when I caught a glimpse of a tiny sheet of paper folded up on my kitchen windowsill.
I focused in on what was written on one side of it:
Baby Blue.
As I reached for it, I knocked over the shot glass full of coconut rum that I’d just poured. It spilled out onto my kitchen floor. I sucked in a lungful of air, turning to my phone and shutting off the recording video.
I snatched up the little piece of paper and unfolded it, reading the inside.
This kitchen window still isn’t secure.
If you don’t fix this, I will.
Or one of your stalkers will have free entry into your home.
Your choice.
-DL
PS: You are so fucking beautiful when you come. It’s all I can picture, each time I get off. I see your face. I want to feel your breath against my skin.
Remember when you told me a tongue was just a tongue, no matter whose it is?
You’re wrong.
Mine is better.
My knees felt weak as I dropped the note to the kitchen counter, my body going hot.
So he had been here.
In my home—or around it, slipping notes in through my fucking kitchen window.
My cock was rapidly hardening, and my hands shook a little as I slid the note back over, rereading it again.
I was pissed at the idea of Draven finding my posts online and watching me, but the idea of him around here, without my knowledge, made me want to break his skull. Or have him break me. Whatever fucking way he wants ? —
Goddamnit, I was losing it.
I was still pissed off at the thought of Draven traipsing around over there at Mr. Marsden’s old house, though, too.
He could just throw down a fat wad of cash and suddenly have whatever house he wanted?
Unfortunately, that’s exactly how it works.
I had wanted that house.
I couldn’t fucking stand it.
I grabbed my phone and tapped out a message to him.
Max
Did you break into my fucking house?
Draven
I told you. It’s not breaking in if I have a key. Or, this time, if your kitchen window is wide open.
I don’t trust you.
I didn’t come inside, Max, I just slipped the letter in. For your own good. If you’d like me to come inside sometime, just say the words.
I know you didn’t come to Bestens just because of Lily. And I’m still going to find out what you’re hiding from us.
Why did he always have to act like he was the one in control?
I tossed on a shirt and was in the driver’s seat of my pickup before I could second-guess myself. I wasn’t going to back down to a guy who thought he could come into town and intimidate me, when for my whole life I had made it my top priority to be friendly to every person in Bestens.
No.
This town was still mine.
Mr. Marsden’s house was only a few minutes away. My tires crunched on the dirt driveway as I arrived, and then I came to a stop and cut the engine.
All I had planned to do was drive past the house and take a look at it.
The rage inside me had other ideas.
I got out, fueled only by spite.
Draven’s truck was parked further up on the dirt drive.
A big black pickup, because apparently he needed his truck to be the same dark color as his hat and his hair and his heart, as far as I could tell.
The last of the summer cicadas rattled through the humid air, and I squinted as the sun glinted off of its paint in the afternoon light.
I rounded the corner of the house.
When I was a kid, my friends and I sometimes ended up here during bike rides, on summer days just like this one. When Mr. Marsden still lived here, he used to tell us to be careful with the rose bushes he had in the front and back of his ranch house.
“ They’ve got thorns, ” he’d warn us.
Then he’d clip off a few stems with his cutters, carefully strip away the thorns, and send each of us kids home with one red rose.
The rose bushes were the only things that were still the same about this place.
The little horse stables on one edge of the land had been empty for years, but now I could see that one of them was in use again for Ember, with hay and fresh water at one end.
Not just the son of a wealthy dynasty who likes to play dress-up in black hats.
A real cowboy.
This property used to seem so vast when I was a kid, but now it seemed small. I had a sense for its limits. The back end butted up against the football field at the high school, and the other end was fenced off just before a tiny river that only flowed after a big storm.
The best-looking feature of Mr. Marsden’s old property had always been the backyard.
It had a sizeable patio made with inlaid red brick that probably needed to be redone, but at least still looked good.
Like a little Italian villa, the patio was situated in between lots of green grass and clusters of trees, shrouded from the rest of the land.
The perfect place to have a get-together.
If the house still belonged to a normal person, at least.
A set of windowed double doors opened up toward the back patio from the master bedroom, opening up toward the tree-lined yard.
The cicadas seemed to get louder as I slowly walked around to the backyard. I had the distinct sense that I shouldn’t be here, but then again, Draven shouldn’t have been at my house, either.
As I rounded the back and crossed over to the patio, I saw that the doors were open right now.