Page 87 of Fallen Rook

This was the worst form of torture.

I couldn’t control the shaking in my body. Fury blazed a path in my chest, and I had the distinct feeling I was about to do something very stupid, like finding out where this idiot HotStuff28 lived, paying him a visit, and teaching him not to hit on other people’s boyfriends.

Only Enzo wasn’t my boyfriend.

We weren’t even exclusive.

Currently, we were nothing.

I chose to be nothing to him.

I hurled my phone against the wall with a savage growl. It didn’t even sound human. I watched as it broke in two, the pieces scattered on the floor.

Fuck. Now what?

Control, my ass.

I was disintegrating.

No wonder Grams looked entertained the entire week. I wasn’t healing or getting over anything. I was turning inside out, hanging by a thread thinner than floss. What did it mean, and how was I fixing this impossible situation? I didn’t know.

But I did know I was calling his reckless ass.

He wasn’t going to meet the slimy asshole who didn’t even know him, who had no idea how he liked his cock sucked and how to hit his prostate and how he was self-conscious about his wrists and didn’t like it when people touched or even looked at them. He didn’t know his favorite snack—dark chocolate acai balls—and his A/B plan, and that he had the cutest nervous tic, where he chewed on his inner cheek whenever he was overthinking.

It was two in the morning, and I’d just destroyed my phone in a fit of anger I swore to never feel again. Luckily, my grandmother had a landline. I quickly punched in his number on her cordless phone. Yes, I had it memorized.

He answered on the second ring.

“No one’s hot enough to call me this late at night.”

A relieved laugh clogged the back of my throat. Only Enzo could answer this way. God, I liked him.

I liked him a lot.

I’d been liking him for a long time, I realized. Probably from our first interaction at the Forbidden Fruit club about two months ago, when I looked into his eyes and saw surprising softness, untouched by the horrors he inflicted every day.

“Hellooooo?” Enzo yawned into my ear, reminding me he was still there. “Is this Chris?”

Chris? HotStuff28 was named Chris? Chris’s time on this planet had just been significantly reduced.

“It’s me,” I ground out irritably.

“Tom?” Enzo yawned again, sounding infuriatingly unsurprised. “Why are you calling me from this number?”

Why am I calling you at all?

“Broke my phone,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?”

“I BROKE MY GODDAMN PHONE, ENZO.”

This was my penance. The excruciating humiliation of admitting to him, and to myself, that there was something in my life that no routine, no rituals, and no logic could subdue.

And that this something was him.

Silence stretched on the other end before he spoke again.