Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Dom let Trey leave the tent first, then unzipped two of the window flaps a little bit to air the place out.
Lauren and Rose seemed open-minded enough, but leaving the tent smelling like a brothel wasn’t the most polite thing to do.
He also shoved their trash deep into a pocket of his cargo shorts.
When he finally emerged into the late afternoon sunshine, he took a quick moment to stretch.
“Hooking up with the competition?”
The strange voice sent Dom’s heart into his throat. He spun, one hand coming up defensively, his pulse racing in his temples. A guy roughly his age, maybe a little older, with ink on his neck and a leering smile on his face stood a few feet away, leaning casually against the girls’ station wagon.
Dom bit back the instant urge to tell the guy to fuck off. “My business is none of yours, pal.”
“No?”
“No.” He glared and squared his shoulders, hoping to make the smaller guy back down.
“How about I ask the kid from Fading Daze? That was him, right?”
Ice water skated down Dom’s spine. “Whoever it was or wasn’t, like I said, none of your business.”
“So you don’t mind if the video I shot of you guys fucking makes it onto Instagram?”
Dom took a step forward, outwardly calm while his insides started shaking. “You don’t have a video. If you had anything, we wouldn’t be talking. Leave me alone.”
“Your call, dude. Just thought I’d give you the chance to convince me to delete this and my backup before it hit social media.”
The guy was too fucking calm for Dom not to take him seriously. He closed the distance between them in two long strides, pleased when the shorter stranger shrank back a little. “Fine, you say you recorded me having sex? Show me.”
He hesitated before pulling out his phone and swiping at it.
He held it out, and Dom took it as a video started to play.
It was dark, obviously shot through a tiny hole in the tent flap.
The angle was mostly of Dom’s naked ass and back, his arms, and a bad slice of his face.
If Dom didn’t recognize himself, he wouldn’t have known it was him.
And no one could make out who he was fucking, or distinguish the harsh panting.
The clip lasted about fifteen seconds.
Dom laughed as he shoved the phone back at the guy. “That’s all you’ve got? Go away.”
“Watch the next one.”
He took the phone again, warier this time, and played the next clip. Same angle, still no real proof of Dom or Trey in it. Except Trey orgasmed, and Dom raged at this nameless stranger for recording something so intimate. No one but him got to see Trey like that.
“Keep going.” Trey’s voice was high and harsh, but unmistakable to anyone who knew him well.
“You sure?”
Dom’s stomach twisted.
“Yes. Fuck me, Dom.”
“Fuck.”
The words on the video were muffled and hard to make out, but Dom remembered them with crystal clarity.
Struggling to remain calm under a blaze of so much fury, Dom waved the phone in the air with a sneer. “Okay, you got me. I had sex with someone. Big deal.”
“Maybe not to you,” the guy said, “but the kid from Fading Daze is supposedly straight.”
“You’re assuming a lot, guy.”
“And you’re doing a nice song and dance to avoid denying it. But it doesn’t take much for me to hit Delete. Or to erase my backup copy.”
A creeper vibe was rolling off the guy now, and Dom hated thinking that he’d watched him and Trey have sex. What if he’d eavesdropped on their conversations, too?
Didn’t seem likely, since the guy wasn’t bringing up any of the promises he and Trey had made to each other. But it was still skeevy as all hell that he’d perved on them. And recorded it.
“I don’t know what you think I can do for you, man,” Dom said. He shoved the phone back at him. “I don’t have connections, and we’re not looking at taking on any new band members.”
Pervy Guy smiled. “All I want is an hour of your time.”
“For what? Need me to kick your ass on Fortnite?”
“You wish. No, all I want is you.”
Dom’s skin crawled. “I don’t do private performances.”
“My video says otherwise. Come on, don’t tell me you’ve never fucked a fan.”
He had, and by his own choice. No fucking way was he giving in to blackmail. “Leave me alone, guy.”
“That your final answer?”
Dom crossed his arms. “Actually no. Go fuck yourself and leave me alone.”
He turned neatly, proud of himself for not stumbling, and strode away.
Calm and collected on the outside, while his insides were shaking all over the place.
There was absolutely no way to prove that Trey was in that video.
And except for Trey saying his name once—and he couldn’t possibly be the only Dominic around—it didn’t really prove Dom was in it, either. The light and angles were terrible.
Dom shot off a quick text to Trey. Call me as soon as you can. Urgent.
He got back to his group’s tent without a reply from Trey. No one was at the tent, so he cracked a bottle of water and guzzled it down. It sloshed around in his unhappy stomach. He paced between the tent and the van, giving serious thought to hunting Trey down so Pervy Guy couldn’t blindside him.
His phone rang.
“What’s wrong?” Trey asked. No muffled music sounds, so he was probably inside the camper.
“Some jizz bucket recorded us having sex.”
“What?”
“It was dark, and you can’t see either of our faces but in one of the recordings he caught us talking. You saying my name.”
“One of the recordings? Fuck.” Trey’s voice got higher-pitched, but also lower in volume.
“He has no proof it was either of us, much less you.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That whoever I was or wasn’t sleeping with was none of his fucking business. And it’s not.”
“Christ, what is it with people? What did he want?”
Dom’s gut soured. “He wanted me to have sex with him.”
“What?” The possessive snarl in those four letters surprised Dom. “I’ll kill him.”
“I told him to go to hell.”
“Good. Fuck, Dom.” A pause. “What’s he going to do with the videos?”
“I don’t know. He threatened to post them to Instagram, but he could be all talk. I just needed you to know so he couldn’t find you and trick you into thinking he had evidence that he doesn’t. The videos don’t show shit.”
“Except you and me having sex.” The defeated way Trey said that made Dom’s heart hurt.
“No, of two people, maybe of two guys, having sex. It could have been anybody.”
“But I said your name.”
Dom grunted and leaned against the hot side of the van. “Yeah. Look, this was probably just some crazy asshole trying to get with me, and nothing will come of it. But I wanted you to know. In case.”
“Right. In case.”
He hated the wobbly sound of Trey’s voice, as if his worst fear had come to life, and Dom had no idea how to reassure him. “Trey?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll be fine. It’s a few more hours, and then this over, and we’re out of here. Jizz Bucket is out of our lives.”
“Sure.”
God, he wanted to be in the same room as Trey.
To see his face and understand what he was thinking.
Tone of voice was one thing, but Trey didn’t have that great of a poker face.
Trey was already turning this into a worst-case scenario, Dom was certain of it.
And Dom had no idea how it was going to play out.
The ball was in Jizz Bucket’s court.
“Look, I have to go,” Trey said. “See you later, okay?”
“Okay. Bye.”
Dom glared at his phone before shoving it into his pocket.
“Trey?”
He startled away from the van at the sound of Lincoln’s voice. His friend stood a few feet away, arms crossed, face impossible to read. Dom’s stomach rolled. Playing dumb never worked with Lincoln. “How much did you hear?”
“Everything after you saying someone tried to blackmail you into having sex with him.” Lincoln’s face went instantly furious. “Who is he? You need me to feed him his balls?”
And Lincoln would, too. He was that kind of friend. “No, don’t worry about it.”
“Okay, fine. Then tell me this Trey person you got caught having sex with isn’t Trey Cooper.”
Dom wilted. “Can’t.”
“Really, Dom? You’re fucking the competition?”
“The competition’s over.” Irritation prickled over his skin. The way Lincoln said that made his relationship with Trey sound dirty, and it wasn’t.
“I thought he was with that Danielle chick. He isn’t using you because he’s bi-curious, is he?”
Dom usually loved Lincoln’s protectiveness, but right now it was pissing him off. “No, he’s not bi-curious, he’s totally gay and not out, okay? That whole thing with Danielle is public perception. They’ve never been together.”
Lincoln uncrossed his arms and planted both hands on his hips. He furrowed his eyebrows. “You guys discuss all that during your afternoon fuck?”
“Not exactly.”
The steady stare from Lincoln made him squirm.
“Fine,” Dom said. He glanced around, but no one was nearby. “Trey and I have been seeing each other for a while now. Danielle’s the only person who knew.”
Lincoln’s surprise shifted into annoyance. “She knew but you didn’t tell me?”
“She found out by accident. No one was supposed to know.”
“Not even me?”
“You hated Fading Daze the second you met them at Off Beat. And Trey isn’t out, so he wanted us to keep it all private.”
“He shoved you back in the closet, you mean?”
Dom flinched, the words as harsh as a physical slap. “That’s not what this is.”
“Then why were you reassuring him so hard on the phone that no one would find out about you two.”
“Because it’s no one’s business.” Dom’s voice went too high at the end, but he was nearing the limits of his calm.
“I really like Trey, okay? And he’s really worried about how his own friends are going to react to us being together.
Like you said, people think he’s with Danielle, plus with us stealing Tyson from them. It could be a huge mess.”
“How did you even meet?”
Memories of their impromptu session at Off Beat made Dom smile. “You remember back at the shore, about a month ago, when I told you I played my violin in public during an open mike at Off Beat?”
“Yeah.”