28. Chapter 25
Chapter 25
T he things inside Morgan’s house were not in the same place he’d left them.
He jerked open the desk drawer, sliding his hand to the back. Papers. Paperclips. Pens. The small box of staples that had been sitting in there for years and years.
No wallet .
Peculiar.
Yanking open the bottom drawer, he tore out work papers and folders, letting them scatter across the wooden floor.
Again. Nothing.
The entire car ride home, Morgan had kept his mind busy. Going over the pieces of what he’d missed in the woods was simpler than going through the things he could have done differently with Lex. Easier than convincing himself that, no, he didn’t need to see Lex. He merely wanted to. There was a difference.
And keeping Jacob’s wallet? Why not? The dead had no use for money or identification.
But it was a liability. If Morgan coupled that with the items he’d forgotten to collect before leaving the woods…
He couldn’t take that chance.
Now, it wasn’t there.
Both drawers shut with a force that rattled the entire desk. The corners of his vision swam—electric and bright—too saturated as he inspected every dark corner of the office. His skin prickled at the thought of uninvited hands touching items he held sacred.
It wasn’t only the wallet.
Licenses. Passports. Jewelry. The prizes he allowed himself to keep. Small tokens left by his beautifully broken playthings. He’d safely tucked them away weeks ago. Now they were all gone.
Someone had been here.
That knowledge had his heartbeat pounding in his ears, drowning out reason. Someone had touched his things without permission.
There were only two other people in the house and one of them had to answer for their crime .
The floorboards creaked—once, twice—and Morgan’s head snapped over.
Lex stood in the doorway, baggy T-shirt hanging off one shoulder, collar stretched wide enough to reveal the delicate dip of his throat and the line of black stitches.
It was the first time Morgan had seen him out of that old bedroom when it wasn’t food-related. Or work-related. The parts of their life that were beginning to feel more transactional than personal. After this morning? Morgan hadn’t expected to see him at all.
“Why do you look so frantic?” Lex asked, that annoying, gloating tone back. “And guilty.”
“Guilt is tied to regret. I have nothing to regret.” Morgan paused, shuffling through the possible half-truths and blatant lies. “I’m…” he sighed, “looking for something.”
Lex tilted his head to the side, crossing one leg in front of the other. He hadn’t taken two steps into the upstairs office. Hadn’t moved at all from the door frame.
Morgan should have let him stay there, let him suffer in silence. But, despite Lex’s insistence that this wasn’t their problem to share? Knowing Lex would turn on him if the need arose?
It was, most definitely, their problem.
“Come inside.”
Clicking his tongue, Lex dragged his feet inside like it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. The door shut behind him, the noise of the lock engaging too loud in the quiet.
“I was keeping Jacob’s wallet in here,” Morgan finished after another second.
“You what? ”
“Keep your voice down. Kate’s upstairs.”
Lex crossed the room in three long steps, slamming his palms on the desk.
“Morgan. Come the fuck on. That was dumb .”
“Thank you for your lovely insight.”
“That’s a—”
“Say liability and I may retract my statement about not killing you. Did you touch it?”
Yanking his head back as if he’d been slapped, Lex’s mouth dropped open. “No! Hell, how was I supposed to know it was in here? I don’t use the desk. You keep me on the goddamn couch like a lap dog!”
Morgan slid his fingers along the desk, following the grooves of the wood grain as he tried to soothe the chaos in his head. His control was slipping. He forced in one breath after another—a deep inhale from his nose, an exhale from his mouth. He needed to center himself, to stay grounded in the here and now. But his heart wouldn’t calm down, louder and louder by the second, rushing blood through his ears.
“This is really bothering you,” Lex said, quieter. The shift in his voice was a welcome change, even if it was the most ignorant observation Morgan had heard in a while.
Snapping back would be easy—enjoyable—but it wouldn’t help.
“Yes,” Morgan gritted out, “it is. Because now? I have to figure out what to do with Kate. This isn’t like her.”
“Define ‘do with,’ Morgan.”
“Handle the situation. ”
“Yeah,” Lex scoffed, sarcasm dripping down. “ Alright . Super helpful. How do you even know it was her?”
Common sense was a thing Lex normally had in spades. Though, most of the time it was misplaced, overshadowed by that spiteful tongue that said whatever it pleased.
This?
This wasn’t normal.
Unless, of course, he was lying through his teeth.
Morgan let his voice drop, smoothing it over with a new wave of calm. “When did you find it, little brother?” He stretched out his fingers until the joints cracked, keeping his eyes locked on the blue ones staring back at him.
Lex’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I didn’t—”
“ Liar ,” Morgan cut in, sharp enough that he could see all of Lex’s muscles bunch when he jumped. “Try again.”
“I’m not lying . Jesus Christ. I never touched Jake’s shit.”
“But you knew it was in the desk.” Morgan drummed his fingers along the edge, tongue pressed against his teeth. “You knew where I kept my things. My things, Lex. Mine. ”
“You didn’t ask about anything else,” Lex mumbled, that sing-song tone slithering under Morgan’s skin and cracking open his composure, bit by bit.
Maybe Lex was nervous. Maybe he was failing to understand simple instructions. Or maybe—just maybe—he hadn’t learned that testing the length of Morgan’s patience was a death wish.
“I never saw Jake’s wallet though,” Lex continued. “It wasn’t in here. I swear to god. And I didn’t… I didn’t mean to move the rest. ”
“Move?” Morgan asked, pushing down the urge to snap Lex’s pretty neck. It wouldn’t take much. He circled the desk, keeping his hand on the wood as long as he could.
“Middle drawer. Under the hole punch. I thought,” Lex licked his lips, the words growing smaller. Every step Morgan took forward sent him retreating. “I thought that’s where they were when I found them. When I realized I was wrong, I came back to fix it and saw you.”
“And why were you looking for them at all?”
“I wasn’t. Finn emailed me about a correction for the Sorbett account. I thought I had the paperwork, but I’d already given it to you. I saw it in your hand when you left work and I just… I thought it’d be easier to find.”
“It’s downstairs. On the kitchen table. The only place in this ancient house you’ll speak to me.”
Lex stopped moving. Abruptly. Morgan had half expected his little brother to back himself against the door just like before. Just like he always did. Because he liked it. Because Morgan liked it.
But Lex didn’t.
Instead, he stopped halfway in the space between the door and the desk, his shoulders pulled back. The determination on his face didn’t quite match the nervous energy radiating off of him in technicolor waves.
His breath caught when Morgan closed the final gap between them, and Morgan took his time. He savored every bit of unease. Every shift in Lex’s stance, the way his chest rose and fell.
“You really don’t regret anything?” Lex murmured, quieter than before .
“No.”
“Not even me? This thing between us is fucked up. You’ve gotta realize that.”
“Why? Because we’re men?”
“No,” Lex shook his head. “Because we’re related.”
“Barely.”
“Not barely , Morgan—”
“Paper isn’t as binding as blood. And the only blood we’re bound together by is Jacob’s.” Morgan leaned back on his heel and all the tension relaxed from Lex’s body. Immediately. “I don’t regret a single thing with you. If you want my honesty? My truth? You need to do the same.”
The silence stretched, longer and thinner by the minute. Lex’s gaze slipped away from his, eyes jittering around in their sockets. They floated from something over Morgan’s left shoulder to another thing over his right, avoiding Morgan’s face the entire time.
This was useless.
Lex played the part of scared prey so perfectly. But Morgan wasn’t looking for that right now. Right now? He needed answers. Flat and simple.
Touching Morgan’s things. Skating around what had happened between them because he was terrified. It was all unforgivable.
Different crimes. Different punishments.
And Morgan was tired of waiting. Tired of wrestling through the bitterness alone.
Placing one hand on Lex’s shoulder, thumb bumping against the row of stitches, Morgan took one step forward until Lex didn’t have a choice but to move. The muted thud of his body backing into the door would never fail to satisfy.
“Truth or dare little brother,” he whispered into Lex’s ear, palm sliding over to that delicious column of a throat. Lex’s pulse kicked up under his fingertips, faster and harder.
“Neither.”
Morgan tightened his grip just a little—enough to hear Lex suck air through his teeth, to feel his knee shift between Morgan’s legs. “Pick. One.”
“Dare.”
“Tell me exactly what you felt when I fucked you. Don’t leave anything out.”
There was that silence again. That avoidance of answering. Morgan could see it, feel it—the war waging inside of Lex. The urge to lash out battling the need to hand over every explicit piece of himself.
And when Morgan ran his tongue up Lex’s ear? He could taste the hesitation. Even as Lex leaned his head closer, even as the quiet moan escaped his lips.
“What was the truth?” Lex asked, that erratic pulse fragile under Morgan’s hand. It skipped so many beats that he wondered, just briefly, if Lex was actually going to pass out.
Morgan couldn’t help the smirk. “Same question. Phrased differently.”
“Sto-op,” Lex’s word broke somewhere in the middle when Morgan’s teeth sank into his earlobe and he heard Lex’s breathy chuckle. “Stop rigging the fucking games, Morgan. ”
“You do the same thing, don’t you? Get under my skin. Make sure I never have the chance to stop thinking about you. Demand every ounce of attention so I can’t focus on anyone but you.”
Lex’s laugh was more real the second time, more solid, and it sank into Morgan like a hook. “Yeah. Not how I would’ve said it, but.”
“So tell me. Truth or dare, it’s all the same. Think of it whatever way you want.”
“It was like…” Lex exhaled, and Morgan had to move his hand or he’d keep squeezing every time Lex stopped speaking. Every time he let fear get in the way. “Like I was stuck between pain and bliss. The entire time. I can’t phrase it any better. I’ve never felt like that before.”
“Did you hate it? Did it disgust you?”
Lex shook his head instead of answering.
“Then why are you making this more difficult than it needs to be? I want you. You want me. Stop avoiding me.”
“And how long until I become one of the others, Morgan? When you dub me barely fit? How long before I stop being one of your addictions?”
Lex draped one arm over Morgan’s shoulder and this time? He didn’t look away when he spoke. “That’s what scares me. That’s the part of you that scares me. I don’t think you feel things the way I do.”
There it was.
That was the truth, laid out in all of its ugly, barren glory.
The thin, flimsy t-shirt did little to hide how tight Lex's stomach was clenched, how hard his heart was pounding beneath it. It was intoxicating .
Charming.
“You’ve drawn me back even when I tried not to let it happen,” Morgan said, his fingers sliding down the fabric before they moved to rest on the wall. “You’ll find ways to keep my attention for as long as you want. That’s all I can assure you of.”
His phone buzzed, painfully loud in the loaded silence, and Lex flattened himself further against the door, arms snapping down to his sides.
“ Jesus,” he breathed out, “I think part of my fucking soul left my body.”
Retrieving the phone from his inside jacket pocket, Morgan opened his mouth to say something. There was some sly comment laying dormant on his tongue but it dissolved as his eyes locked on the screen. The words flickering there failed to process.
Jacob Hampton: you forgot part of me
This mistake— this horrible, terrible slip-up— had crawled its way out of the fire and ash to laugh in his face.
Never kill people connected to him, that was Morgan’s number one rule. It was common sense. If you ate too close to where you slept, the crumbs would follow you into bed.
Vagrants and runaways were his favorite meals. Delicious and transient. Some more erotic than others. Some more accepting of their fates than others.
What most failed to grasp about the service he provided was that it wasn’t solely about satisfying his own needs. No. It was almost more for them. A bond, as unlikely as it was, an understanding that he could give them all of himself in return for all of them .
The chapped, quivering lips begging him to end their lives was a sound he’d never forget. The prayers, the requests to hold them, cradle their body while they took their last breath.
Some wanted more. Begging him to kiss them, taste their lifeblood, to make them feel less alone . For that one moment of their entire lives.
They were truly sacred. Truly broken. Truly bound to be his.
To think this one wasn’t satisfied… that they were reaching out, beyond the grave… no.
No. That wasn’t right.
Morgan knew that. He understood that. This wasn’t a soul or spirit, a body that hadn’t moved on, rotting and festering in the woods. Abandoned in their moment of need.
It wasn’t until Lex carefully plucked the phone from his grasp that he managed to form words.
“Our ghost has hands.”
“And bomb-ass cell service,” Lex muttered. “How much do you think they know?”
“I’m not sure now. Nor am I keen on finding out.”
Morgan took a step back, the light pouring off the screen wavering in front of him as Lex handed it over. He couldn’t keep looking at it.
Instead, he watched Lex’s finger slide back and forth, repeatedly—agonizingly slow—against his lower lip. How his little brother could make the most boring of actions look like works of art was an utter mystery to him.
But Lex wasn’t focused on him, or what tantalizing thing he was doing with his finger .
Lex’s eyes were glued somewhere beyond his shoulder, the wheels turning so loudly in his head that Morgan could hear them squeaking.
“Text them back,” he said, after what felt like forever.
“I don’t—”
“ Morgan .” Lex’s gaze shifted back to him. “Text them back. Give me the phone. I’ll do it if you won’t.”
“Why do you keep saying them ?”
“Kyran was the only one who mentioned a phone when Jake’s family was here. Based on his social media? He doesn’t do shit without Benji. It’s both of them. Hand it over.”
Lex’s fingers flew over the touch screen, the grating tap-tap-tap setting Morgan’s teeth on edge. After a moment, he turned it toward him.
2 pm tmrw. talk first cops second. txt address later.
“The holiday party’s tomorrow,” Lex said when Morgan looked back at him with raised eyebrows. “Everyone’s inviting their family and friends. No one will notice two more people. It’s safe. It’s neutral. They’re not going to cause a scene in front of hundreds of people.”
“And I have no intentions of going to the police, Lex. I would rather take my own life.”
“It won’t get that far.” Lex’s smirk—that all-knowing, infuriating thing that cut across his face—was starting to grow on Morgan. “We’re not the only ones with secrets.”
“What if they’ve already gone to the police? What if this is a set-up? Then what? Have you already formulated a plan for that scenario also? ”
“No. But if they have his phone? And us on the cameras? The cops would already be knocking on our door. Trust me, Morgan. For once.”
Morgan’s eyes stayed locked on Lex, probing for a crack in the armor. Some uncertainty left lingering behind. There was nothing. He was too sure to be anything else.
“Tell me everything.”