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My mother comes in from the greenhouse, stopping in the mudroom to wash her hands, and my train of thought derails as I wait for her to call for me. I get to the bottom of my milkshake, the slurping sound drowning out the initial vibrations coming from my father’s phone across the island counter.
“Could you bring that to me, Fi?” he says absentmindedly, and I reach over, scooping it into my palm, stealing a glance at the screen as it lights up.
An unknown number flashes—not totally unusual, given the secretive nature of his profession. As I walk over and place the phone in his hand, though, numerous text messages from the same number appear below the missed call. The actual message previews are hidden, and while it shouldn’t immediately give me pause, something about the urgency makes me uneasy, though I can’t quite pinpoint why.
As the CEO of the company, my father doesn’t usually deal with daily operations or trivial matters. He’s typically consulted on emergencies and big accounts, and if someone is trying to get a hold of him now, that must mean something is wrong.
At least, that’s what my gut is screaming. It sends ripples of anxiety through me, a foreboding sensation settling over me the way it did when my brother Murphy dove off the deep end and wound up dead.
‘Trust your gut,’ my mother always says. But as I watch my father check the screen and slip the phone into his shirt pocket, I realize trusting your gut is one thing, but learning what to do with the information is another entirely.
Knots twist in my stomach, vomit teasing the base of my throat as my body begins to reject all my food from today, and I swallow over the panic, trying to ignore it.
Tossing my milkshake in the garbage beneath the kitchen sink, I stop by the mudroom to make sure my mother doesn’t need any assistance. The questions now are almost part of my daily routine, as is her constant refusal for anything around the house outside of showering and occasionally getting her ready for bed.
She waves me off, wiping the inside of a ceramic pot clean. The vein in her forearm pulses visibly as she works slowly, struggling to maintain her energy. Unease threads into the very fiber of my being, and I grip the doorframe with one hand, tapping the pad of my finger against the paint.
Turning off the water and leaving the pot in the plastic sink, she dries her hands on a nearby dish towel and sighs. “Did you need something, darling?”
I chew on the corner of my lip, wishing I had a piece of gum right now that would distract from the unease bubbling up inside me. Or a cigarette.
Part of me wants to mention the weird feeling I have about my father, but the other part knows she’ll only launch into a lecture about fine tuning the understanding of my body or she’ll share in my concerns and worry herself to death.
A tremor rolls through the left side of her body, causing her arms to lock at the elbows and her hands to shake slightly, and I can’t bring myself to add to the load.
“You need any help?”
Smiling, she leans against the hutch at her side for support. “If I do, your father is home. I’ll just ring for him.” When I hesitate, she raises an eyebrow. “Unless... you’d rather help me?”
I scratch at my arm absently, the itch beneath my skin a welcome distraction from the volcanic eruption threatening inside me. “Just let me know if you need me.”
She nods, a curious expression on her delicate, aged face, and I turn on my heel, using the back staircase hidden behind a sliding door in the hall to head up to my bedroom.
Once inside, I slam my back against the closed door and exhale slowly, some of the tension fleeing my body with the familiarity of the room. I curl my toes against the pink braided rug on the floor and walk over to the four-poster king-size bed, smoothing my palm over the plush pink comforter. One corner is slightly askew, telling me that Giselle, the housekeeper we have who keeps weird hours, must’ve been sweeping the rooms for laundry.
My gaze homes in on the corner, the urge to adjust it accordingly blaring like a car horn in my mind. Collapsing onto the mattress, I stare up at the vaulted ceiling and pull my phone from my pocket, responding to a text from Heidi and Bea about drama club tomorrow afternoon, saying I’ll try to be there.
Making circles with my eyes on the wall, I unlock my phone and pull up the Ivers International website, clicking on the employee database and scrolling through the lower level employees until I hit the executives. Boyd isn’t technically a higher-up, but I know my father wants to hand the company over to him one day, and I know he has the salary and responsibility to match.
But given that everyone in town already believes Boyd stole his spot and didn’t earn it, I think he keeps the lower-ranking title to avoid further speculation from the gossip rags.
I click on the hyperlink with his name, and a small, circular picture of him heading a meeting in a maroon button-down and black dress pants appears. Someone in HR must’ve snapped it when they realized Boyd would never willingly give them a photo of himself.
God, it’s ridiculous how good he looks.
White-hot frissons of electricity coil in my stomach, my heart beating between my thighs, and I scoot back on the bed, studying the picture more closely as one hand slides down my stomach. My fingers slip beneath the waistband of my shorts as my eyes travel the delicious contours of his face, the smooth outline of his neck and shoulders, down to his tapered waist, the ink on his knuckles, and the slightest hint of a bulge behind his slacks.
My chest tightens as the pad of my index finger reaches my center, a gentle exploration I rarely allow. There’s something so vulnerable in the act, something that almost takes me out of it when I try with other online paraphernalia.
It’s almost too intimate for my brain to fully relax into, but now, lying here staring at the god I’ve been drooling over for years, I can’t help wondering why I haven’t tried using him as a muse before.
Drawing my hand lower, I use some of the moisture pooling at my entrance and circle my clit, shuddering as I stroke the sensitive flesh. The heat from Boyd’s gaze yesterday flares in my vision, the memory of his deep, husky voice and the way he’d raked his eyes over my form, like a man who’d never tasted dessert, has pressure winding in my stomach, constricting my breaths as they try to escape my lungs.
I swirl my finger faster, applying more pressure to the right until liquid fire zaps through me, shooting down to my toes and up my spine. My pulse beats harder, faster, in time with the direction of my finger, and when I come, it’s Boyd’s name that causes stars to burst behind my eyelids.
I’m panting when I take my hand out of my shorts, my breathing labored and skin slicked with sweat. Smiling to myself, it doesn’t even occur to me to feel ashamed or guilty over what I’ve just done, even though I know no one would approve.
Even though I know Boyd would never do something like this. Would never lose control this way.
The blood rushing through my veins makes me feel alive, though. It feels real.
I slide off the bed, getting up to wash my hands before dinner, when I notice there’s a short bio section beneath his picture.
Boyd Kelly: Master’s in Cybersecurity Engineering, Camden native, King’s Trace High Alumni.
Three facts, displayed exactly how I imagine he gave them. Bullet points, the only things he’s willing to divulge to strangers.
But it’s the last line that gets me. That feels too personal, too poignant not to have been a recent update, probably from himself.
Allergic to chocolate.
