Page 59 of Loverboy

I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, drawing in a deep breath and searching for solid ground in my increasingly unreasonable mind. I might as well have been trying to find it in outer space, because why the fuck was he framing photos of them together and not us?

I was here first.

The urge to destroy the photo by ripping it up, burning it, or throwing it off the damn balcony was overwhelming. Jasper looked so much softer and at ease with Blane. Why didn’t he look like that with me? He was always harder on me, always more judgmental with me. I was painfully aware of what an inconvenience I’d been lately, drowning in my deteriorating mental health. He was getting sick of me, I could feel it. I was making his life harder just by being alive.

I wanted to make him happy.

I positioned the photo on the bookshelf, stepping back and digging my fingernails into my palms in that habitual, steady rhythm, clenching and releasing my fists to ground myself. Tethering myself to physical pain usually helped, but the longer I looked at the photo, the angrier I became. In my eyes, it was damning evidence that Jasper preferred Blane over me.

There was no fucking way. He moved in with me. He did the blood bond with me.

I’d lied about not having the vial of his blood still after he’d said he didn’t keep mine. I was too embarrassed, too ashamed to be the only one who’d kept it. Why was he so nonchalant about losing it, or about not keeping it at all? It just illustrated how much he didn’t care about me. Pair that with the way he saw no issue with fucking my best friend, and he might as well fucking hate me.

I was trying to move past it, but somehow, my jealousy was getting even worse.

Dropping to my knees, I began to open every single box in the living room, searching for the vial. He didn’t remember what he did with it, which meant there was a chance he still had it. I needed him to have it, needed that tangible evidence beyond the scars on our palms. The search grew frantic, my hands beginning to tremble as my brain worked overtime trying to convince me that every self-deprecating thought that ever crossed my mind was the truth.

After a few minutes of working myself up to the point where I was starting to sweat, I abandoned my task altogether and got up from the floor, heading toward my room. I paused by Jasper’s bedroom door, the tension in my limbs high with the memory of him fucking Oliver returning to haunt me.

Before I could think better of it, my hand was already on the knob, yanking the door wide open. I stood there for a moment, shifting back and forth on my feet anxiously. Just a peek, and then I could put it to rest.

I turned the light on, glancing around the small space. The bareness of the room alone had my shoulders slumping prematurely in defeat. The twin-sized bed, tiny nightstand, and pile of clothes next to the wall didn’t seem very promising.

There was a singular cardboard box in the corner, and it felt like my only hope. When I peeled back the flaps, I tilted my head to the side slowly, blinking a few times. Definitely not my vial of blood.

The empty sockets of a skull stared back at me, nestled atop a bed of bones.

“The fuck?” I muttered, lifting the skull up and down in my palm. It had a bit of weight to it, more than you’d expect from some cheap Halloween store prop.

Peering into the eye socket, I could see a label that I couldn’t quite read, the font too small. At the very least, that ruled out my brother being a murderer and confirmed he was an even bigger fucking nerd than I’d originally thought.

I tossed the model skull back into the box and folded the flaps back down with a heavy sigh, throwing myself onto the bed. I rolled onto my side and pulled the nightstand drawer open, only to find a couple of weed grinders, the pungent smell filling my nose and evoking a fresh wave of nostalgia.

Frustrated, I slammed the drawer shut, my eye catching on something small and black sliding to the front as it closed. Curiosity piqued, I sat upright and opened the drawer again to find a suede jewelry box that had been initially too far back to see.

My phone vibrated in the pocket of my sweats, pulling me away from my investigation. I glanced at the notification, pulling it down with a swipe of my thumb to view the message without opening it, so he wouldn’t get the notification that I’d read it.

Jasper: What, no picture of the shelves?

My brother’s fancy way of asking if I was still alive, given I went from spamming him with texts to not texting him at all. It made me smile. I knew it was cruel, but the longer I went without responding, the more he worried about me, and I liked how that felt a little bit too much.

I abandoned my phone on the bed and reached for the small box inside the nightstand drawer. If it wasn’t in there, I was well and truly going to lose my fucking mind. My hands were so sweaty and shaky that I could hardly get a grip on the lid, struggling for a moment to shake it off the top of the box.

My heart soared.

The little glass vial I’d been searching for was stored neatly inside on a bedding of silk fabric. I carefully plucked it out of the box, rolling it around in my palm as I inspected it. It was old, the blood dark and climbing up the sides, having been improperly sealed and left without any anticoagulant. It was just like the one under my bed.

I rolled onto my back, the mattress creaking as I held the vial up under the ceiling light. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, and I squinted to keep them from falling. The relief was dizzying. The familiar sensation of nausea tugged at my insides and crawled up my throat, and I pressed the keepsake to my lips with a shuddering breath.

Something about being in such a vulnerable state of mind always set my nerve endings on fire. That heat spread through my body, shivers rushing in its wake. Goosebumps erupted on my arms, and I didn’t think twice about reaching down to my sweatpants and palming myself through the material.

“Fuck,” I whimpered, looking up at the ceiling with heavy lids.

I knew that Jasper helping me find release last night was just his way of trying to keep me safe, protect me from myself. Still, feelings I had no business having sank their teeth into me.

I wanted more.

The fabric started to cling as I rubbed my steadily growing erection, wetness bleeding through. My mind wandered to the way Jasper’s mouth had felt on me that night. Even though he’d never touched me like this before, I had a feeling he’d know just how to do it. He’d know how to give me exactly what I needed, and it was all too easy to imagine his hand in place of my own.