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“Quyen.”
“This is vital information I need to know!”
O’Neal smirked and grabbed her shoes. “I’ll tell you everything.”
But of course, she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Because if Quyen knew the real truth, O’Neal would never be able to look her in the eye again.
She wasn’t the confident woman Quyen was imagining. She was the girl with the desperate crush who’d been willing to do anything for that boy’s attention.
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
Auden glanced over at the clock on his bedside table—not even five a.m. yet—and sighed at the awake state of his mind and the stiff state of his dick. He lowered his head back down to the pillow in defeat. Since the night with O’Neal and Len, he’d been having painfully vivid erotic dreams interspersed with straight-up nightmares about not getting out of the fire in time. It was like his brain couldn’t decide which punishment he deserved more—to be constantly hard up or to be terrified.
O’Neal had told him that she loved him and then had walked away. Well, shethoughtshe loved him. He suspected it was just feelings arising from him being her first. But even so, he’d barely been able to focus over the last few weeks. His swim coach had pulled him aside and asked him why his times were slipping. He could just imagine what Coach Collins would say if Auden admitted it was a girl.
But how was he supposed to focus? First, he’d had a fantasy delivered straight to his doorstep. The night with O’Neal and Len had been…perfect, the experience more intense than any he’d ever had before. He’d even enjoyed sharing the bed with the two of them afterward, something he and Len hadn’t done with anyone else.
The whole thing should’ve been a win. All three of them having fun, all three on the same page. Sexy. Casual. Comfortable with each other in a way that went beyond basic chemistry.
But he’d been delusional. He should’ve known better. O’Neal hadn’t been ready for that. She’d said she was. She’d consented. But he should’ve known better and protected her. That was his job. He was the older, more experienced one.
Instead, he’d thrown her into the deep end, selfishly chasing his own desires and ignoring the warning bells. Ruining their friendship. And pissing off Len too. Because Len had wanted him to put up a fight, to not let her walk away like that. But Auden had no weapons. O’Neal had been right to call it off.
Now, he didn’t have O’Neal, and Lennox was barely talking to him, always conveniently out of the apartment when Auden was home. He’d fucked everything up.
Auden closed his eyes, trying to fall back asleep, but his brain was now in overdrive. With a groan, he flipped the covers to the side and climbed out of bed. He opened his door quietly, trying not to wake Len, and headed toward the kitchen to get some water. But when he stepped into the living room, he saw that his stealth mode hadn’t been necessary. Len was hunched over his drawing table, the muscles in his back bunched, his desk lamp burning bright on the paper in front of him. The soft sound of Len’s drawing pencil scratching against the paper was a soothing, familiar sound.
Lennox was so lost in what he was doing that he hadn’t heard Auden come in. Auden crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb for a minute, just watching. Len drove him crazy sometimes, but after the days of near silent treatment, Auden realized just how much he missed being in his orbit. The guy was a brilliant artist and the best friend that Auden had ever had. People usually wrote off Len as the never-serious, good-time guy, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of shallow. Lennox cultivated that image—maybe even believed it sometimes himself. But Auden knew better.
Len could glitter like the surface of the ocean, but if you got past that, you could drown in the depths below. He’d seen Len vulnerable, stripped down, all artifices torn away. He’d seen how deeply wounded Len had been by the loss of his mom, how scarred he was from the rest of his family abandoning him afterward because he’d been the child of an affair, not a real member of their family anymore. Auden was one of the only people Len had trusted to see that side, to know those things, but right now, he felt completely shut out. Alone in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. He wanted to fix it. He wanted to say he was sorry.
He wanted…
“Couldn’t sleep either?”
Len’s voice broke the silence like a thunderclap, startling Auden from his thoughts. Apparently, he hadn’t been as stealthy as he’d thought, but he was just happy that Len was talking to him at all.
“Had a dream.”
Len glanced over. “Good kind or bad kind?”
Auden shrugged. “Both? I guess. My brain is a sadist.”
“All of you is a sadist.” Lennox spun the chair to face him, expression flat, his blond hair sticking up like he’d been scrubbing his fingers through it. “It’s because you made a bad call. Brains like to haunt us when we do something stupid.”
Auden sighed. So they were going to do this now. Hash it out. Fine. At least they were talking.
“You can be pissed all you want, but I made the right call.” He rubbed his jaw, tension making his teeth hurt. “Actually, I didn’t make a call at all. O’Neal did. I’m respecting her wishes. I wish you could do that too.”
He grimaced. “Is that what you’re telling yourself? That you’re doing the right thing?” He twirled his drawing pencil between his knuckles, staring at him with disdain. “What a fucking joke. I hope you’re holding on tight to the reins of that high horse you’re riding.”
As much as he wanted to mend this fence with Len, irritation broke through Auden’s calm façade. “What the hell is your problem, man? Remember that whole consent thing we live by?Shewalked away fromus.”
“This isn’t about consent, and you know it, so don’t throw that in my face. Myproblem,” he said in a hard tone, “is that when a smart, beautiful, kinky woman tells you that shelovesyou and you actually feelthe same fucking way about her,you’re supposed to grow a spine and tell her you love her back and then show her why you’re worthy of her love. You don’t say,Okay, cool story, bro. Have a nice life.”
Auden’s ears were ringing, his anger swelling to full song. “There is so much wrong with that statement, I don’t even know where to start.”
“Try,” he demanded. “Because I need something, Aud. Something that explains why you acted like that.”
