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I’m scanning his face, looking for any tell that he’s lying, when I hear approaching footsteps before Kai and Hawk enter the room.
“Uhh, what’s going on?” Hawk asks, moving toward us, while Kai walks over to peer at the box on the kitchen table. Still not looking away from Wilder, I notice out of the corner of my eye that they are both wearing loose basketball shorts and tanks, having apparently come from the gym downstairs.
Finally releasing me from his incensed gaze, Wilder lets his hand drop away as he spins to face Hawk with his indignation. “You tell me, brother,” he snarls.
My eyes dart back and forth between the two. Animosity is palpable in the air, practically crackling between them as Hawk steps up on my other side, so they’re both boxing me in. I barely get to appreciate the musky scent wafting from him or the sheen of sweat still coating his skin as though he stopped mid-workout to come up here, before Wilder’s angry snark interrupts my thoughts.
“Is this why you’ve been spending all your nights here instead of at the frat?”
Hawk rolls his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. It’s only been a couple of nights.”
Wilder scoffs in response. “Try every night for the last week.”
That information piques my interest. I obviously knew Hawk was around more these last few days than he had been since I’d gotten here. But I hadn’t realized he’d been here every night.
Hawk opens his mouth to respond, but Kai’s snapped, “Hey!” cuts across whatever he was going to say, as all three of us turn to face him. “Where did this come from?” He tilts his head to indicate the small, plain cardboard box on the table.
“I dunno.” Wilder shrugs. “It was sitting by the door when I got here.”
“There’s no address label on it or any indication of who it’s for.”
“So?” Wilder gives another unbothered shrug, clearly finding Kai’s questioning pointless, but as I stare at the bland, brown box on the table, goosebumps form along my skin and I shiver as though a sixth sense is warning me away from it. “Which one of you ordered something?”
“I didn’t,” Hawk immediately pipes up.
Both of them focus on Kai, who shakes his head. “Not me. I haven’t ordered anything to the house, just in case.”
All three of them turn to look at me; by now, my hands are trembling uncontrollably. “Why are you all looking at me?” I squeak.
“Em, did you order anything?” Kai asks, but I can see he already knows the answer. He’s no longer looking at me, instead bending to carefully inspect the box.
“N-no. I don’t even have access to the internet to buy anything, and Kai’s already told me not to use my cards in case they can be tracked.”
Before the words are even out of my mouth, Hawk has moved over to stand next to Kai, the two of them frowning at the box as though that’s enough for it to spill its secrets.
A tense moment of silence fills the room, and I’m certain the only sound is my erratic heartbeat, but Wilder scoffs. “Jeez, the three of you. It’s probably something meant for one of the neighbors.”
“Then why is there no address label? No postage stamp? Nothing.”
“I don’t fucking know, but what else could it be?”
My hand whips up to cover my mouth, even though my shocked gasp still breaks free. “Please don’t let it be any more body parts.”
Hawk immediately takes a significant step back, as if he thinks it’s about to explode and cover him in blood and bits of flesh.
The three of us continue to stare at the box while Kai walks in a circle around it, inspecting it from every angle.
“We should check the security cameras,” Hawk states. Kai nods and grabs his laptop, moving to stand beside me. Hawk and Wilder crowd around us as he pulls up the relevant program, and the screen fills with numerous small boxes, each one showing an image of a different room in the house.
“Wait, do you have cameras in every single room?” I question, not quite able to believe my eyes as I gape at the screen.
“What the fuck, dude?” Wilder growls, outraged. He points at an image on the bottom left of the screen. “That’s my bedroom!”
My face heats as all the dirty things he and Hawk have done to me in various rooms of this house bubble to the forefront of my mind.Oh my god, did Kai see any of that? Kill me now! Please, God, just open up the ground and swallow me whole before I die of embarrassment.
“That’s an invasion of my privacy!” Wilder argues.
Uncaring, Kai just stares at him. “So? Maybe if you were here, we could have talked about it. But since you were MIA, I had to make executive decisions for Emilia’s safety.”
