LOGINI was sitting on my bed staring at the camera when I should have been sleeping.His t-shirt was on the floor where I'd dropped it changing into sleep clothes. The rest of the room was dark except for the bedside lamp, which I'd also turned down to just the lowest setting, and then there's the red light in the corner which was visible, but barely. The question I hadn't let myself answer was why I hadn't pulled it out yet. I looked at the red light and tried to answer that honestly.He'd installed it to watch me. That was a violation. A complete, unjustifiable invasion of the one space in this whole complicated house that was supposed to be mine alone. I was furious about it when I found it. I was genuinely furious, and some of that fury was still there, banked and real.But he'd said I needed to see you were okay.Not: I wanted to watch you. Not: I wanted something to hold over you, but I needed to see you were okay.That was still wrong. I wasn't letting him off the hook. It just was
Two days.It's been two days since I'd stood in the dark of my room looking at that red light and decided to perform. Two days since I'd screamed his name into the empty air and then cleaned up and changed his sheets and gone to sleep like it hadn't happened. Two days of mornings and meals and careful proximity and both of us not saying the thing we were both very clearly not saying.Wednesday morning I woke up thinking about the camera before I thought about anything else.I didn't think about him, the camera, or the fact that it's a violation. But I kept coming back to, what I'd been letting myself focus on, because focusing on the camera was cleaner than focusing on everything else.I got up and dressed up. When I got downstairs, he was already in the kitchen. Of course he was.Is he some kind of chef now?He's already made coffee, and my cup is already out with the right amount of cream, and I was mesmerized by the fact that he'd apparently memorized at some point without either o
The next thing I heard was his footsteps on the stairs, then he walked up and his door opened, then closed.That was it. That was our entire interaction.I sat with my fictional book and tried to process the fact that we'd progressed from last night, the fact that I saw a camera in my room, the performance, his name screamed into my empty room, to "I'll make dinner later" like nothing existed between those two points.Fine. That was fine. I could do this.I read the same page four times and retained nothing, before I finally got myself back to my senses and continued reading like I should.At six-thirty, sounds came from his room. Then he walked past me in the sitting room, and went to the kitchen. I stayed on the couch until garlic hit the air and my stomach made the decision for me.He'd actually pulled out real ingredients. A proper pan. And pasta water is already going. He moved around the kitchen with the kind of focus and e
The house was too quiet.I hadn't noticed before, how much noise two people made just by existing. Mom's slippers on the hardwood. That way she always hums songs while waiting for her tea to steep. Dad's work calls bleeding through walls at odd hours, his footsteps which are always heavier than anyone else's, the television in their room every night at exactly ten like clockwork.All of it was completely gone, and replaced by nothing.I set up at the kitchen table with my laptop and coffee number two and pulled up the email chain with Nina. There was actual work to do. It was the final confirmation on the Madison boutique order, a packaging decision that needed a yes or no, three influencer emails sitting unanswered since Friday. Real, concrete things with deadlines.I stared at the screen for a few minutes before I was able to answer one email.Every time I got traction my brain slid sideways. The camera. His face this morning, careful and blank across the kitchen. The way he'd stopp
I was awake before I even wanted to be, and the whole of my body felt like I hadn't slept as much as I should, even though the time was 7:23 AM according to my phone.The first thing I remembered was every single thing that happened yesterday, how it was so crazy that calling it a very crazy day was a big understatement. It was not like a memory that I just remembered, more like everything was there and waking up made me conscious of everything again.I opened my eyes slowly, and stared at the ceiling.The way his name had come out of my throat like I had absolutely no control over my own body.My body felt thoroughly used, and I could feel that ache everywhere, the kind that was uncomfortable and satisfying at the same time and kept reminding you of exactly what caused it every time you shifted position.The camera was still in the corner. I didn't even look at it.Fuck.I moved my body and sat up slowly. The fresh sheets from last night were slightly rumpled but clean. The shirt was
The bathroom mirror showed me someone I barely recognized.My hair was wild and tangled, sticking to the sides of my neck. My face was flushed deep pink, and the color went all the way down my chest. My lips were swollen where I'd bitten them without noticing, and my eyes were glazed and heavy and still somehow, slightly unfocused, like my brain hadn't fully returned from wherever it went when I came that hard.I stood there, and all I could was grip the edge of the sink and i just looked at myself for a long moment.That happened. That actually happened.I'd found a camera in my room that Jax obviously put there. I'd gotten furious. I'd performed for it for the better part of an hour, edged myself three times, and then cum so hard that I screamed his name loud enough that if he'd been anywhere in this house instead of behind a screen he definitely would have heard it.And now I was standing in my bathroom at whatever time it was, prolly past ten, maybe close to eleven, looking like s
The gates opened automatically as I pulled up to them and the long driveway stretched ahead lit with landscape lights.The house was glowing warm in the evening dark and his car was there in the driveway, and my heart had already jumped at seeing it. I parked my car next to his
"Morning," he said finally, with his voice very casual and normal like we were step-siblings, which is pretty much normal."Morning," I replied, and my voice came out steadier than I expected, almost normal except for the slight breathlessness that I hoped he couldn't hear.He t
"Now get out."The words hit me cold like ice water, very dismissive.I blinked up at him from his bed, still trying to process what he'd just said."What?""You heard me."He stepped back, putting distance between us, between his body and mine, and pe
More than two hours passed very quickly and I didn't even noticed until Vera checked her phone."Oh my god, it's almost eleven."Alex looked surprised. "Already?""Time flies when you're enjoying an event," Lexi said, and everyone laughed.The ballroom was still alive but different now, the energy







