AllFreeNovel
Share Us
No answer. Something about the uncomfortable, heavy warmth in the room has me holding my breath as I cross to the window and crane my neck, looking right down the side of the building to the street forty floors below. My already weak knees almost give way in a lurch of vertigo and I step back, grabbing the edge of the piano.
“You shouldn’t let me see what scares you.” Victor is sitting on the railing of the lofted bedroom above my head, looking down at me with a crooked half-smile. “I’m compiling quite a list.”
I feel like I’ve gone back in time six years, from his flawless black suit to the gelled hair to the sharp, clean-shaven jaw. When he swings his long leg over the railing, I spot the chain he always wore glinting at his throat. I could almost convince myself that I imagined the barefoot, tangle-headed wreck I met the other day, with his long shirts and short shorts and chaos in his eyes.
When I don’t say anything, he jerks his head for me to follow and disappears. I climb the stairs, stepping around a few more empty bottles. He’s lying on his back on the bed, arms stretched across the comforter. There’s shit all over this room too, including a massive bottle of lube on the bedside table. Even before his career died, there were rumors about him, that he would let anyone do anything to him and like it. I used to tell myself they weren’t true.
“Are we going or what?” I shift my weight uneasily, eager to get back downstairs, where I’m not alone with him. My phone vibrates, and I grab it without thinking, scared to see Ana’s name on the screen. It’s just Roy, bothering me about extra shifts.
“Cute girlfriend,” Victor says next to my shoulder, like he teleported there.
I frown at my phone wallpaper. It’s a picture Mom took of Peyton and I when we went to Pike Place Market. I’m holding an eggplant in front of my crotch while Peyton hoists two melons against her chest. We’re blurry from laughing so hard—when you’re permanently sleep-deprived, everything is funny. Peyton set it as my wallpaper and I never got around to changing it.
“She’s not my girlfriend.” I bite my lip, reminding myself not to give him ammunition.
“There’s no need to be ashamed.” He wanders into the bathroom and props his hands on the counter, meeting my eyes in the mirror. “You wouldn’t be the first straight guy to be turned on by my ass. I was in a Buzzfeed quiz and everything.”
“I’m not—” I seal my mouth and stare back in silence.
“You’re learning.”
When I follow him into the bathroom, he wraps lean fingers around the bony part of my wrist and stands on his toes, pressing his nose against the skin under my ear. It’s cold. “You smell like dollar store hand soap.”
“Do I look like I own cologne?”
In a boyish gesture that doesn’t match his appearance, he pulls himself up to sit on the counter and prods lazily through a selection of bottles next to the sink with one finger. “Use this.” He tosses it, forcing me to scramble to catch the cut-crystal vial. As much as I hate to admit it, it smells good—spicy and sweet.
When he seems satisfied with my application, he pats the counter between his thighs. “Here.”
I freeze, alarm bells going off in my head, but he just waits. Tonight, his eyes should be picking up the warm tones of the hotel lighting, but they look hard and icy, almost iridescent, like the inside of a mollusk shell. His eyebrows scrunch together as I stand between his knees, ignoring the stir of discomfort in my core. “Do you style your hair with a vacuum cleaner?”
He slicks his hand with gel and grabs the back of my head, pulling it down so he can reach. I squirm as his impatient fingers snag in my hair. “Stop,” he complains, wrapping one of his legs around the back of mine to keep me still. When he’s done, I glance at the mirror over his shoulder and burst out laughing. “I look like a high school freshman on picture day.”
He leans back on his hands, resting against the mirror. “At least now you won’t embarrass me. You know what to say tonight?”
“Gray gave me the—”
“Nothing.” His voice is cold and flat. “You say nothing. I don’t want to hear a word out of your mouth.”
“That’s not what they told me.”
One of his eyebrows twitches. “They’re not here. You’re my prop. I’ll put my arm around you, maybe I’ll hold your hand, whatever I feel like.” He leans in, his thighs still bracketing mine. “I’ll kiss you if I think it would look good.” His eyes study me, bright now, his tongue working in his cheek as he tries not to grin. This close, I can see a hint of red, inflamed skin around his eyes, protected by his pale lashes.
Holding his stare, I force a smile. I won’t play games with him. “Ok.”
But I twitch when he dives for my mouth. He stops just short, his breath stirring against my lips, then leans back to drink in my expression. “Do you need to practice tasting fag mouth so you don’t puke on the red carpet?”
“They’ll just have to clean it up.” I push him away from me, then turn around and walk through the bedroom, to the top of the stairs. When I glance over my shoulder, he’s doing one last check in the mirror. He still has more of an athlete’s body than most people ever will, but his bulk and presence are gone, like he was never a god at all. And as he studies himself, he keeps struggling to stand taller, to cast a longer shadow.
It feels good to see him like that. He makes me cruel, like a toxic cloud rotting away the good and leaving only the worst. “Are you happy you ruined your life for a body you couldn’t even keep?”
He turns around. This isn’t the old Victor or the new Victor. It’s just a blank, nothing. But a second later, he flashes a smirk. “Are you happy you ruined your life for a mother who barely even knows who you are?”
He strolls past me, hopping down the stairs two at a time as I stand frozen, staring after him. “Never touch me again. I told you the rules.”
I don’t know what’s worse, hearing my mom’s name in his disgusting mouth or realizing that he knows about her at all, that his people are digging into the corners of my life and feeding him information that will force me to do whatever he wants.
