7. Chapter 4
Chapter 4
M organ’s car was exactly what he’d thought it’d be—sleek interior, black leather seats, pristine without a single smudge. It even had that new car smell. But the entire cabin felt cold, clinical. Just like Morgan, it looked perfect. And, just like Morgan , there was probably something wrong with it .
Lex adjusted the seatbelt, his eyes locked outside the window. They’d been sitting in silence for so long that the ride had lulled him into a kind of stupor. There was something hypnotic about the power lines zipping across his view.
This was nice. Not the situation, obviously, that was a fucking disaster. But the lack of driving. He hadn’t been a passenger for a couple years, not since his friends had dubbed him their designated driver.
It was a welcome change of pace.
The sound of Morgan’s voice dragged him out of his trance. “You’re not very good at running, are you?”
Lex’s body reacted before his brain did, his neck stiffening on instinct—and god , it hurt. The pain in his throat radiated out to his shoulders and jaw.
“You haven’t seen me run since I was a kid,” Lex muttered. He wasn’t sure if he missed the first part, or if Morgan had decided to bring up the woods now. Either way, he didn’t like the way he said it.
Morgan glanced at him, one hand loosely wrapped around the wheel. “You just tried to run away. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had to take it out on your poor car. Doesn’t matter, though. You’re here now.”
If Lex was learning one thing— one goddamn thing —it was that maybe shutting up was easier than bulldozing his way through. It wasn’t that he disliked the conversations. But half of them were Morgan trying to get a rise out of him. He’d backed himself into a verbal corner more times than he could count in the past few hours.
“I’ll give you this: you’re nothing if not obedient. ”
So much for that strategy.
“Obedient?” Lex snapped, too loud. “You tried to kill me, Morgan. I didn’t have much of a choice. Do you even hear yourself?”
The car slowed to a stop at a red light, and Morgan leaned over. His shoulder lodged against Lex’s, warm and intimate. There wasn’t enough space between them, and Morgan’s breath smelled like cotton candy— his gum. From his car .
It felt too much like earlier.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it,” Morgan said, quieter, in that velvet voice that made Lex’s skin tingle. “You’re still trembling.”
“You scared the hell out of me. I’m a little shaken up.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
When the light turned green, Lex was finally able to exhale. He turned back to the window, his jaw clenched so tightly it ached.
This was going to be the longest six months of his life.
Lex hadn’t even had a chance to drop his bag or figure out which room he was, unfortunately, supposed to occupy before Morgan started in.
“Are you having any of your things sent here?”
“No,” Lex said, dragging the word out. He focused all of his attention on the chandelier dangling in the entryway. Keeping his composure was getting harder and harder. “That didn’t cross my mind. ”
“I will ask you, again: how do you plan to help me run a multi-million dollar business when you can’t even pay attention to the smaller things? The will, your belongings…” Morgan’s voice dipped, “your car.”
The sheer audacity made Lex’s teeth grind. “You’re fucking delusional , aren’t you? You’re the one who—”
“Careful,” Morgan interrupted. He tilted his head toward the banister, and Lex’s eyes followed.
Kate.
She stood at the top of the staircase, so damn quiet Lex hadn’t noticed her until now, still wearing that same wide-eyed expression he saw before he left.
Morgan’s lips curved into a faint smile. “Our game. No one else. It’d be a shame if you lost due to someone speaking to the wrong people. What if my sweet fiancée called the cops? Purely an accident, but…”
And Lex had done it again. He’d walked right into another corner. It had all catapulted from his mouth, beyond his control.
Morgan pissed him off. On purpose. Every little thing Morgan did was on purpose.
It was all a game.
Redirecting was easier than being upset with himself.
“What about you? Do you have any idea of how to run this? It’s not like you had any prior training with you being a—what—doctor?”
“Orthopedist.” Morgan corrected flatly. Lex’s face must have given away the what the hell is that thought because after a second Morgan added, “I break bones for a living. ”
Lovely. Just lovely .
One more terrifying discovery to add to the list.
Plastering a smile on his face, Lex kept going. “I don’t know if my skills are gonna translate either, I’m—”
“Do you really think I care about what you do for work? We’re not friends. We’re barely even family.”
Lex swallowed the string of curses that sat on the tip of his tongue. All of them. It wasn’t worth getting into it. Never was. His face was too hot to risk further embarrassment.
Morgan turned back to the door, palming his keys, when Kate finally spoke up.
“Should I have dinner ready when you get back?”
“Get back from where?” Lex blurted out before he could stop himself. “Where are you going on a Tuesday? I thought you just got back into town too.”
Morgan’s gaze skated by Lex without even the barest acknowledgment, his attention on the stairs. “No. I’ll get something while I’m out. Would you do me a favor?”
“Yes!” Kate perked up immediately. “Yes, of course.”
She sounded… desperate. A whole lot like Lex did back then—always scrambling to keep up, trying to prove something to the one person who never gave a shit. It made his stomach twist.
“Make sure what we talked about goes smoothly. No more slip-ups, Kate.”
He was out the door before Lex could get an entire, clear thought through his head.
Didn’t matter. Only one kept popping up, no matter what he tried focusing on .
Morgan had never addressed him by name, had he? Not once. Not even a casual, offhanded Lex . But Kate’s name came out perfectly fine.
Inside Morgan’s old room was quiet. The kind that vibrated, trying to force itself under Lex’s nails and down his throat. He could hear himself breathing , for fuck’s sake. Sinking onto the edge of the bed, he ran a hand through his hair, willing the tension in his chest to loosen a little.
Of all the bedrooms he could’ve picked, he’d chosen this one. Deliberately.
And that? That was fucked up, even for him.
He let his eyes wander around, searching for something—anything—that might make this feel less… him . But there was nothing. No posters. No polaroids. No scuffs on the desk. Even the clothes in the dresser—which he hated to admit he’d checked—were folded too perfectly.
It was just so Morgan.
Being here made everything harder to ignore. He couldn’t shove it to the back burner like he’d been doing for years. He couldn’t keep lying to himself. Not about this. Not now. He hadn’t bypassed his teenage obsession. He hadn’t outgrown it. Being around Morgan made everything come bubbling back up to the surface, stronger now since he’d been so damn frustrated for so damn long.
At least with a bedroom that locked, he could deal with it in private. It wouldn’t have to come up during business meetings or around fragile-looking Kate. Hell, even around Morgan himself. That wouldn’t have gone very well. Lex knew that. He wasn’t stupid.
Hating the same person you couldn’t stop thinking about was a special kind of hell, reserved for people just like him. Honestly, he was probably the only occupant.
But, god the comforter smelled like Morgan. This would do. As long as he kept it to himself.
Falling asleep hadn’t been the plan. It had just… happened. One second he was lying there, his face buried so deep in the pillow he couldn’t breathe, and the next, his stomach was growling like some possessed demon. It was the sound that woke him up.
He hadn’t eaten all day—too much shit had gone down—and now it was the only thing on his mind. Not the videos, not Morgan, not his car . Food.
Rubbing crusted sleep from his eyes, he shuffled into the hallway. It was late. Ridiculously late. The entire house was dark except for the sliver of light coming out of the main suite. He listened for the rhythmic creak of a bed, quiet conversation… all he got was the faint noise of the pipes banging around the walls.
Someone was in the shower.
He forced himself to move— listening is creepy, Lex— and headed downstairs.
Pulling open the fridge, he finally found something that didn’t smell like onions or canned soup. The sandwiches Morgan had cut earlier looked fine, but they were massive. He unwrapped one with a sigh, slapping it on the counter.
Now for a knife.
One drawer. Nothing. Another. Still nothing. The third drawer caught halfway, jerking to a stop. He yanked it again, harder this time. No luck.
“Seriously?”
Leave it to Mr. Delacroix or Mom to rearrange all the shit as soon as he left.
He frowned, sliding his fingers along the inside of the drawer, looking for whatever was making it stick. There it was—a latch or something like it.
A child-lock? For a fucking utensil drawer?
With a nudge, it opened.
Just a junk drawer. Pens, old-ass batteries, crumpled receipts, and a roll of tape stared back. He shoved things around, careful of the loose nails and paperclips.
Then he landed on something hard and smooth—a small, plastic folder. Tiny . He’d seen wallets bigger than this thing.
Curiosity got the better of him.
He wasn’t sure what he expected, but his hands moved before his brain caught up.
And oh, it caught up very quickly.
There were photos inside. High-resolution shots. Some clear, some blurry, but all unmistakable. Faces twisted in pain. Limbs in awkward positions. Smears of blood on grass and tree bark. Lex wasn’t sure what made it worse: Morgan’s perfect, precise cursive on the back, or the little trinkets attached to the top of each photograph.
March 12th: Cried for seven minutes before succumbing to shock, with an earring taped in the corner.
April 18th: Fought back initially, but refused after a fractured clavicle, with something that resembled a tie stapled to it.
The walls were closing in on him, pressing against his skin, his ribs, his throat.
Morgan did it too. He did the exact same thing.
Except these weren’t shaky, badly filmed videos, shot on a phone. This was calculated. This was proof .
The souvenirs. The notes. These were things serial killers—
Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
Morgan hadn’t killed anyone. Had he? He hadn’t… right? Everyone that went into the woods with him came back. Didn’t they?
Right?
The fridge beeped, loud and sharp in the silence, and Lex flinched. He reached out on instinct to shut it but met only air.
“Looking for something?”
All the blood in Lex’s body turned to ice. He clung to the folder, every thought short-circuiting as he tried to figure out how to let go .
Morgan’s hand came into view and with a single, sharp motion, he yanked it from Lex and shoved it back into the drawer. “If things in this house are locked,” he said slowly, enunciating each word, “they are locked for a reason. Doors. Windows… drawers. ”
“I—I wasn’t—” Lex swallowed hard. He took a second to steady his breathing before he hyperventilated and passed out. “I just needed a knife.”
Looking over to see Morgan without a shirt? That was new. Even at the pool, Morgan was always covered, like showing too much was against his code. Drops of water slid down his skin, tracing the raised, puckered lines of scars on his stomach.
Lex had seen them before. Once. The two of them had gone running when he first moved in. It never happened again.
Had those scars given him this annoying little thrill then? Had he noticed how they disappeared under the rolled waistband of Morgan’s sweatpants then?
No.
Maybe Lex needed someone to remove his brain entirely. A lobotomy wouldn’t help him. He was a fucking disaster.
But when he raised his eyes back up?
Oh, god .
Morgan’s usual expression—perpetual boredom, like nothing in the world bothered or amused him—was gone. Now? There wasn’t anything. It was all blank, his eyes devoid of anything remotely human. No anger. No irritation. Just… empty.
Morgan stared at him, silent and unblinking, for what felt like forever. Lex wanted to take a step back, to put distance between them, but everything inside was yelling not to move . Moving would have been… bad. Very bad. Some ancient, reptilian part of his brain knew that much.
Finally, Morgan grabbed the butcher knife in the block and set it on the counter in front of Lex .
“Touch something else that doesn’t belong to you, and the next folder I make will be a dedication. And I guarantee there’ll be more pictures than the ones you saw.”