Chapter 22
Tyler
My phone chimed with a notification.
“Just tell me who it is, and I’ll stop bugging you,” Josh said from beside me on the couch.
It was a Sunday, and he’d guilted me into coming over to his place to play video games because he “never saw me” now that we didn’t live together anymore.
Which I’d pointed out was his fault, since he was the one who’d gone and gotten engaged.
To Aly. A woman I used to fuck.
Not awkward at all.
I glanced sideways to see him looking at my phone instead of the TV.
His skin was tanned to a deep olive from the summer sun, and he’d grown his dark hair out just enough that you could see the slight curl in it.
It was warm today, and he was wearing a pair of loose shorts and a muscle tank that left his tattoos on display.
Unlike Stella’s random assortment, his blended seamlessly together, Gothic monstrosities crawling up his arms like demons escaping hell.
As much as his personality skewed toward goofball, he could really be a morose motherfucker when he put his mind to it.
“Behind you,” I warned.
Too late. Blood splatters filled his side of the split screen as an enemy soldier lit him up. He yelled and ducked sideways, both onscreen and beside me, bumping his shoulder into mine and almost knocking the controller out of my hands.
Maud, their kitten, who’d been asleep on the back of the couch, leapt up and raced toward a nearby cat tree for safety, where her older, grouchier brother, Fred, sat watching me with half-slitted eyes. That little asshole and I had never gotten along.
Josh threw his controller onto the coffee table. “Welp. I’m dead.”
He glanced toward my phone again.
Then lunged.
I shot forward to intercept him, but he swiped it off the table and ran away like the goddamn man-child he was.
I raced after him because I’d done too much fucking work covering my tracks for him to find out that I’d essentially been lying to him for two years.
If he saw some shady message on my phone, he would never let it go, and since he was a world-class hacker, there would be no way to stop him once he started digging.
I knew how obsessive he could be; it would only take a day or two for him to uncover my entire illegal operation, and then our friendship would really be on the line.
“Give it back!” I yelled.
Josh skirted an armchair and raced toward the rear of the house, and fuck, he was fast. Had he been doing more cardio lately?
I ran after him, onto their screened-in catio. He vaulted over Aly, who’d been sprawled on a lounge chair, reading. She was nearly as tall as Stella, but muscular, with pale olive skin, long brown hair, and an Italian nose.
“Defend my honor!” Josh said, hiding behind her.
“He stole my phone,” I explained when she shot me a confused look.
She swiveled to Josh, who was doing nothing to hide the fact that he was trying to break into the device. “Babe. Boundaries.” She snatched it out of his hand and tossed it back to me, and my shoulders slumped in relief. Jesus Christ, that was close.
“Who’s Stella?” Josh asked in a singsong tone.
Shit.
Aly’s head turned my way, eyes wide, as nosy as her fiancé.
“No one,” I bit out.
“Ooh,” they chorused in the same obnoxious tone.
I glanced down to see that Stella had texted, telling me what time to pick her up for tonight’s party.
Two weeks had passed since our night with AJ.
We’d gone to four more events since, our war of words escalating, our flirtations gaining a dangerous edge, the tension building to a breaking point because the knowledge, the memories of what we’d done were driving us both crazy.
I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt it. I saw the way she stared at me when she thought I wasn’t looking, felt the way she trembled whenever one of us backed each other against a wall—something that happened with increasing frequency.
Part of the problem was that we hadn’t spoken about that night, hadn’t even acknowledged it. I’d tried to bring it up once (in a shitty way, if I was being honest with myself) and Stella had said Don’t with so much rancor that for once, I’d backed down.
What a mistake that threesome had been, not just because it had made things even more awkward and tense, but because every time I closed my goddamn eyes, I saw AJ pounding into Stella from behind, his hands on her hips, his focus fixed on where I fucked into her pretty little mouth.
That night had altered my brain chemistry, imprinted upon my skin like an invisible tattoo. How the hell did you come back from that? How could you act normal around someone after having the most incredible sex of your life with them?
“Tyler’s got a girlfriend,” Josh sang.
“She is not my girlfriend,” I said, striding into the house.
I went straight to the fridge, pulling it open to look for a beer.
Cold air rushed over me, and I closed my eyes and begged my dick to behave.
It was hard again, had been practically nonstop since the night of the threesome, and jerking off only provided temporary relief.
I needed something more to slake this thirst. Stella, bent over a bed as I fucked into her, AJ watching us from a nearby chair.
Or better yet, my face shoved between her thighs while my tongue worked her cunt and my fingers plied those pretty little nipples.
Stop, I begged myself, resting my head against the closed freezer. Thoughts like that weren’t helping me right now.
You hate her, I told myself, but the words felt hollow.
What reason did I have left to hate her?
She was draining her inheritance to pay for a crime she didn’t even commit.
She was actively helping me hunt down people who deserved to be punished.
And it wasn’t like I could claim she was some elitist snob.
Reserved, standoffish, downright rude at times?
Sure, but then I’d probably earned that type of treatment.
So what did that leave? Me hating her just for the circumstances of her birth? Because she’d grown up with everything while I had nothing? That didn’t feel right. Not anymore.
“Fine. She hates you,” I said, because that much was still certain.
Ongoing blackmail was pretty hard to forgive, and it wasn’t like I’d done myself any favors with my “winning” personality.
Fuck, most of the time I was around Stella, I turned into the worst version of myself, punishing her for my father’s sins because I couldn’t take it out on him.
Yet.
Well, that would all change tomorrow night. If everything went to plan, it was the last party we would ever have to attend together.
“Hey,” Josh said from behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder to see him leaning against the doorjamb, looking contrite.
“Sorry for taking your phone.”
“And what else?” Aly called from the catio.
Josh winced. “And for trying to hack into it.” He snuck a look behind him and then hurried forward, dropping his voice like he didn’t want his fiancée to overhear what he was about to say next.
“I just worry about you. I feel like as soon as I moved out, you got distant. Are you sure you’re really okay with me and Aly? ”
I sighed. “Dude. Aly and I were never serious. Don’t worry; I’m not holding some torch for her.”
He eyed me like he wasn’t quite convinced.
“You really think I didn’t recognize your tattoos?” I asked.
Josh stiffened, knowing exactly what I was talking about without me needing to say more.
Seven months ago, Aly had sent me a screenshot of a thirst trap, the man shirtless, covered in fake blood and wearing a mask, and asked me if I’d consider wearing one for her the next time we hooked up.
Which was wild since she’d been ghosting me for two months (I only later found out that she hadn’t meant to, just that her job as an ER nurse had consumed her life).
That screenshot was from Josh’s “super-secret” MaskTok account that he didn’t think I knew about.
Since the two of them reminded me of each other—both chronically online, unserious, a little antisocial and fucking morbid—I’d decided to show Josh the text, hoping he’d reach out to her.
Instead, he’d stalked her, because he couldn’t help himself, but it turned out she was into it, and now they were insufferably in love.
I patted Josh’s shoulder. “Bro, I set you two up.”
“I knew it!” Aly said, popping her head around the doorjamb from where she’d clearly been eavesdropping. “That night in your apartment when you thanked me for taking him off your hands. You looked so goddamn smug—”
“That’s just his face,” Josh said.
I punched his shoulder.
Aly joined us in the kitchen. “And I knew you must have recognized his tattoos.” She wheeled on Josh. “I told you.”
He grinned, looking sheepish. “Can you blame me for hoping he hadn’t? The optics of my account aren’t great.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “The son of a notorious serial killer dresses up like something out of a slasher movie and dry-humps the air to the dulcet tones of Sleep Token? I don’t see anything troubling about that at all.” My tone was bone-dry.
Josh opened his mouth.
Aly got there first. “He’s trying to distract you away from Stella.”
Goddamn it.
“Seriously, dude,” Josh said. “Who is she?”
“No one.”
“She’s got to be someone for you to be deflecting this hard.”
I shrugged. “Fine. She’s someone.”
“Do you . . . like her, like her?” he pressed.
I grimaced. “What are you, in middle school?”
“Well, excuse me,” Josh said. “You just seem awfully touchy about her, and I’m trying to be respectful of your delicate sensibilities.”
“You are the most annoying person I know. Why are we even friends?”