SCARLETThis wasn’t a vacation. It was a week of torture. It had only been three freaking days, and I’d gone crazy.Just like yesterday, I didn’t do anything at all. I had no energy to go out. Mom and Thomas didn’t seem to care that I was in the room all day, and it was already afternoon! To entertain myself, I checked my inbox to see if there were any new messages, but Jax seemed busy. There were only three people in the world I could talk to, my roommate Katherine, her boyfriend Nate, and Jax. But they would be busy with their own lives.Jax would be having a meeting today, and I hadn’t heard his voice lately. Katherine had gone home with Nate, so they were surely busy.Almost after dinner, I found Mom and Thomas in the living room, watching some TV.“Hi. Can we talk?”“Darling, of course.” Thomas tensed up. He picked up the remote control and shut the TV off.I sat on the seat across from them. “First, I want to apologize for being rude yesterday.”“It’s okay, sweetheart. We unders

LUKE I received a message from Ericka saying she would meet with Nate. Nate? Who the fuck was Nate? I clearly told her not to meet with any man before we met. I wanted her to taste me without interruption. It would be too much of a chore to fuck a woman who was committed. Then she replied, telling me it was a friend who proposed to her roommate. Katherine was one of the only names she mentioned in three months of our charade. If only she had told me her full name, I could track this Katherine, then I would know which apartment in Cambridge she was living in. She was good at hiding her tracks. I couldn’t find any potential female I could fuck for the last three weeks because I was always fucking dealing with something. The first week, I found a potential date to fuck from another dating app, but she lied about her profile picture. It was her friend’s. It means she was another fucking liar. The second week was supposed to be last Saturday. A witch showed up, and she was supposed to

SCARLETA few weeks agoI saved all the information Jax sent me and used all the programming codes as a reference. I’d had a problem solving the bug with the RPG I’d been developing for almost nine weeks, and I hadn’t figured it out, but with Jax’s help, I’d finally found a way to remove it.I called him to let him know.“Good evening, Ericka,” he answered.Ugh, his voice. I loved the sound of him. It was only a greeting, and I was already turned on.“Umm…”“You called me so I could hear you breathe? Tell me about the code.”“Oh.” I cleared my throat. “It worked. You’re a genius.” I closed my laptop and then lay down on my back.He laughed softly. “Are you sure you finished your major?”I chuckled nervously as I felt the guilt pinch my chest. “Of course, I wouldn’t be able to register in the app if I hadn’t, right? But thank you, Jax. You’ve been very helpful to me.”“Know your expertise. If this kind of program doesn’t suit you, then you should stick with building a website.”“It’s n

SCARLETNo, no. If I said yes, he would do anything he wanted with me. I was dependent on his father. He paid for my college tuition, gave me allowances, clothed me, and provided everything I needed. He took care of Mom. I couldn’t betray Thomas. I finally had the chance to taste the life of having a father. I would never ruin it over meaningless sexual tension… intense sexual tension.I stood up; I couldn’t stay near Luke anymore. I should’ve avoided him. I had to accept that Jax was gone and would never come back. He was gone when he became Luke. I would not risk a simple and quiet life in exchange for two months of pleasure. It may sound good—no, perfect, but if I accepted his offer, it also meant betraying Mom.“No.” I shook my head. “I may already have made some bad choices, but I’ll never add this one to all of it.” I had been in a scandalous, abusive relationship. I didn’t want all of it to happen again just because I wanted the man so much.“I’m not done. Sit down,” he ordered

SCARLET It was after lunch when Nate arrived. I introduced him again to Mom, but she needed to go since Thomas was waiting for her outside. I heard they were going to attend a wedding, and they were going to be home late. Undoubtedly, they were the busiest couple in the world. We started setting up our computer on the balcony. Nate brought his laptop with him. We were going to test the new MMORPG game we started developing last year. The project was also included in our thesis. I was thrilled Nate came; he was going to save me from another day of misery. “Are we going to start at the beginning of the game?” “Yes. We should. I need to add more skills. I wanted to find out what’s missing.” His eyes focused on the screen. It was what I liked about Nate. When it came to programming, he always wanted perfection and wouldn’t stop. “Sure.” Honestly, building a new character was the most exciting part. “I’m going to choose Mage.” “Boo! That choice is for babies.” “You created this baby.