Chapter 27 #2
When he’d turned around to confirm the rustling sound we’d just heard was indeed a bird and not anyone spying on us, I’d slipped the tracker into his hoodie pocket.
We said our goodnights, and I made it all of five feet before his smug “aren’t you forgetting something” comment, followed by him tossing me the tracker.
So the next night, at our meet-up behind the stables, after I’d taken his cock into the back of my throat and swallowed his cum, I gave him a hickey while I was riding his hand to orgasm.
Not just any hickey. I gave him the fuck-you final boss of hickeys, using my lips, tongue, and teeth on the side of his neck, marking him.
And guess what. The next day in our Social Psychology of Deception class, Lochlan walked in wearing concealer on his goddamn neck.
Busted.
I mean, come on.
My phone dings with an incoming text, ripping me out of my thoughts. When I glance down, my face heats when I see his name on my screen.
Lochlan
We ran out of time in class earlier. I’ll need to meet with you this weekend for the continuation of our Q&A session.
Lochlan
As a reminder, final Shadow vs Persona reports are due in class on Monday.
Lochlan
Meet me in the classroom tomorrow at 8 am promptly.
A small grin pulls at the corners of my lips.
It's comical, honestly. The concealer, the formal texts, the way he's careful to keep "Lochlan" and "Ghost" in two separate boxes.
Like I don’t know.
Like he doesn’t know I know.
I could easily end this. I could tell him to his face, or even right now over text, that I know he’s the one I’ve been losing myself in.
I could stop pretending I don't recognize the hands that make me whimper in the dark, or the voice that he hardly bothers to alter anymore.
I could tell him I'm ready for the mask to come off.
…So why don’t I?
I already know: because I'm terrified of what happens the second I do, and that mask does come off.
We see each other almost every night now, and not just for sex.
We talk and laugh. We bring new music for the other one to listen to while sharing headphones. We look at the stars. He tells me about the constellations.
It’s the kind of thing I’ve read about in books but never felt in the real world.
And that's precisely the problem.
The mask isn't just hiding his face. It's the only thing standing between this glorious fictional MaskTok “reality” and actual reality.
Rita Hayworth famously said, “Men go to bed with Gilda, but wake up with me,” regarding her hyper-sexualized Gilda Mundson character in Gilda versus the stark brightness of reality.
What if Ghost only wants me as Velvet Villainess—a sexy, masked femme fatale to match his sexy, masked bad boy?
What if that’s what draws him to me, and waking up with Galina the mafia princess with two wildly overprotective fathers and a fuckton of normal-person issues, hangups, and habits shatters it all?
What if I just want the masked stranger who stalks me and pushes me to explore all my darkest fantasies, and the jock underneath is just not as exciting?
“You okay?”
“Hmm?” I look up, realizing I’ve been staring at the phone in my hand like a psycho the whole time Bella’s been talking to me.
She grins. “I asked if you wanted to go watch the next fight.”
I blink, clearing my mind. “Uh, yeah. Sorry.”
Bella's gaze drops to my phone screen, still open to Lochlan’s texts, and she rolls her eyes. “He wants you to come to class at eight a.m. tomorrow?”
I smile. “Yeah… We haven’t finished our final interviews with each other for the Persona vs Shadow thing. It's due Monday.”
She rolls her eyes again. “Saturday morning at eight. I'm sorry, what a dickhead.” She groans. “Also, sorry you’re not done with that stupid project yet.”
“Yours is all finished?”
She snorts. “Oh, my shocking exposé on Trevor Cohen?” She holds up her fingers to her temple like a gun and makes an explosive sound as she jerks her head to the side.
“Oh, it’s a real thrill ride of plot twists.
Turns out, underneath the exterior Persona of an overly horny creep with boundary issues and an addiction to Japanese hentai porn, Trevor’s Shadow self is…
wait for it…an overly horny creep with boundary issues and an addiction to Japanese hentai porn. ”
I laugh so loudly that I choke on the last of my hard seltzer.
Bella grins, then furrows her brow as I keep wheezing.
“You gonna live?” she asks.
I nod, still catching my breath. “Yeah,” I sputter, glancing at the beer in her hand and nodding at it with my chin. “But…do you mind…?”
“Oh…” Her face scrunches up. “Sorry! I would, but I just put drugs in this one.”
I finally manage to clear my throat as I arch a sharp brow.
Bella winces. “Fuck, that came out wrong,” she snickers. “I meant my prescription medicine. It has to dissolve in a liquid, and beer works, so…”
I laugh and shake my head. “No prob. I think I’m fine now.”
Bella tells me more horror stories of having to “open up” to creepy Trevor in their interview project as we head over to the makeshift boxing ring. The crowd has gotten really thick, and when I see who’s fighting next, I understand why.
“Adrik Volkov versus Damiano Barone?” I murmur, whistling. Yeah, it would make sense that almost the entire party is over here watching the muscular, brooding and tattooed heads of The Reckless and The Order fight each other.
I glance across the ring and wave with a smile when I see Arianna standing with Lucia, Aaron, and Chris.
Lucia is obviously here to root for Damiano, since they're cousins. I’m still amazed Ari is watching at all, but she also seems to be on team Damiano, and is looking at Adrik with this weird frown on her face.
Damiano stands at his side of the ring, rolling his muscled shoulders and flexing his taped-up hands. He runs one of them over his buzzed hair, his dark eyes glinting as he sizes up his opponent.
One of the organizers—a sophomore in The Reckless I recognize from my biology class—announces a five-minute countdown to the start of the fight.
The crowd shifts as people rush off to get drinks from the bar or make some final bets on the outcome.
Bella and I end up making our way around the ring until we’re right behind where Damiano is warming up.
He takes a big slug of his beer before he turns and slams it down on the top of the plywood wall around the ring.
“So…” I grin as I swivel my gaze to Bella. “Who are you rooting for?”
To the average person, the easy answer is that Bella is on team Adrik, since he’s the president of The Reckless, which she’s in. But the average person doesn’t know about my locker room mission the other day, where she had me placing a wrapped present into Damiano’s psychotically neat locker.
Bella gives nothing away. She just puts her beer bottle down on the wooden wall right next to Damiano’s before glancing at me and raising her shoulders. “Question. Has there ever been a boxing match where the two fighters knocked each other out at the exact same time?”
I grin. “I haven’t the slightest idea?”
“Well…” She winks at me. “Maybe there’s a first time for everything!”
She picks up her beer and takes a sip, her lips pulled into a grin.
I wince.
“Ooo, Bella, I think you grabbed the wrong one.”
She looks at me curiously. “What?”
“The beer…” I nod at the bottle in her hand, which is the same brand as the one Damiano was just drinking. “I think you grabbed Dame’s by mistake.”
Her brow furrows. “Uh…no?”
“I…” I shake my head. “I really think you did, sorry.”
She chuckles lightly. “Galina, I swear, I didn’t.” She takes another sip and then nods decisively. “Yup, that’s mine! The meds make it a little sweet.”
I laugh as I roll my eyes at myself. “My bad. Ignore me,” I laugh.
“No worries!” She winks at me and takes another sip.
In the ring, Damiano is talking closely with his younger brother, Vincenzo. He nods his head, pats his brother on the shoulder, then turns to grab his beer off the wall. His gaze drifts to Bella and lingers for a second, but she’s looking away.
Damiano’s brow furrows as he watches her and drains his beer. Then the organizer blows an airhorn, yanking everyone’s attention back to the ring.
“It’s time, people!” the guy yells over the crowd. “Fighters! Are you ready?!”
On the far side of the ring, Adrik grins viciously as he pulls off his t-shirt, revealing a chiseled, hard body covered in Bratva tattoos.
Ari is still looking at him with that weird frown on her face.
On our side of the ring, Damiano pulls off his own t-shirt, revealing a physique equally as impressive and as tattooed as Adrik’s. They both nod at the organizer, who jumps out of the ring.
A loud airhorn blasts through the air, and the first round begins.
Holy shit. The fight that unfolds in front of us is sheer brutality.
Their hands are taped up. But it’s not like they’re wearing boxing gloves, or any other sort of protection. I tense, wincing when Damiano’s fist crashes across Adrik’s mouth, sending a mist of blood, spit, and sweat through the air.
“This is really hardcore!” I yell to Bella over the roar of the cheering crowd and the wet sounds of fists hitting sweating muscles.
Bella just nods, her eyes locked on the fight.
I don’t know a thing about boxing, but after the bell rings to end the first round, it’s pretty clear Damiano is in total control of the fight.
Adrik doesn’t look like he’s planning on tapping out anytime soon, but there’s a wariness in his eyes as he dances back to his corner and takes a big slug from the bottle of vodka Kirill hands him.
Damiano’s face, meanwhile, is utterly neutral, even though he obviously dominated that first round.
The bell rings again, starting the second round. This time, Adrik comes out swinging, and it’s almost like Damiano is slowing down.
In the third round, it looks like he’s forgotten how to avoid getting punched.
By the fourth, I’m starting to worry that something is seriously wrong.