Ash always made everything better.
I wish she was here to make things better now.
The screen on the tablet in my hands flickers softly, showing the feed from the camera inside Cason’s apartment. He found them all but kept this one, like he wants me to watch. And I have been. I’ve barely been able to set the tablet down and walk away from it for more than five minutes.
The call he had with his uncle made it even more clear to me how horribly wrong I was, just how misdirected my anger had been. I knew that already, but…well, I can’t remember the last time I felt the urge to apologize to someone.
But then he scrambled the audio during that last phone call, and maybe he won’t get an apology after all. I’m determined to figure out what the fuck that was about.
However, right now, my attention is entirely devoted to the sight of the green-haired man on the screen. He’s on the couch, half-undressed, sprawled out like he doesn’t have a care in the world, like he wasn’t just in my basement yesterday swallowing my cum. Like he didn’t look at me like I was something he both wanted and hated in the same breath.
My shadows glide across the wall behind me, waiting. Watching with me.
He moves, touching himself, breathing heavier. He takes his cock out and strokes it, and heat immediately pools low in my gut as my own dick hardens in my jeans. But I leave it, too busy watching.
I’ve never been with another man like the way I’ve been with Cason. It’s not that the curiosity hasn’t lingered. It has, but no one’s ever tempted me the way he does. The few one-night stands I’ve had over the years have been with women, and fuck if I remember their faces, let alone their names. If that makes me a piece of shit, fine. I own it. There’s something different about Cason though, something that makes mewantto remember, that makes me want to havemore.
My jeans grow tight as the blood rushes to my cock. Cason continues jerking himself while his other hand roams his body, rubbing his chest, pinching his nipples.
Just as I’m about to give into my own desires, he speaks. One word falls from his mouth, soft and breathless.
A name. One that isn’t fuckingmine.
“Harrison.”
My shadows react before I do. Everything in me goes still while they snap along the walls, stretching and pulling tight like they’re straining toward something that isn’t here. Towardsomeonewho isn’t me.
If they could travel farther away, whoever Harrison is would surely be choking on them right now.
That memory comes back to me.
“Because I’m going to kill him one day.”
That was the plan. Stillisthe plan.
But I just might have to add another name to that list now. Becauseno fucking waydoes Cason Bellrose belong to someone who isn’t me.
Cason ismine, and it’s about time I make sure he fucking knows it.
Fluorescent lights buzz overhead,too bright and too clean, casting everything in that sterile, blinding white that I’m all too familiar with from a different laboratory. Bellrose Institute and CopeHart Labs have that in common.
Harrison Copeland and Lane Hart, apparently now a joint brand.
Cute fucks.
The air down here in the lower level smells like antiseptic. The room we’re in has all state-of-the-art equipment and polished surfaces, provided by the kind of funding that sayswe can afford to do impossible things and not ask permission first.
If you’re going to die on purpose for character development, you might as well do it in a secret basement lab with two morally flexible scientists and a medical setup that looks like it could either save your life or end it more efficiently.
Honestly, fifty-fifty.
I’m perched on the edge of one of the exam tables, swingingmy feet because sitting still is apparently not something my body remembers how to do anymore.
Harrison moves quietly in the background, finishing up whatever last-minute checks he needs to run, the soft tap of keys and low hum of machines filling the space between us.
Lane leans against the counter across from me, arms crossed, watching me like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve. “You sure do seem calm in the face of your own impending death.”
I shrug. “I’ve got two highly qualified professional neuroscientists here to resurrect me, a secret basement lab, and very little to lose. If I’m going to die, this feels like a pretty solid setup. What could possibly go wrong?”
