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Heather leaves me to it and walks into the playroom. Jamie follows so close he nearly steps on the back of her shoe. Oliver takes longer, but he goes too.
I put the second bottle of hot sauce beside the first and follow them.
Heather stands in front of the dollhouse. “Where are you?” she asks Jamie.
Jamie touches the key at his throat. “In your bed.”
Heather looks down the back hallway. Jamie tries not to smile and fails before she even leaves the room.
She goes into her bedroom alone. Nobody speaks while she’s gone. Heather returns without the blue doll. “He can stay,” she says.
Jamie’s whole face lights up. She could have told him he had won the fucking house.
Heather catches the key and draws him close by it. “Did Oliver ask for this?”
“Yes.” Jamie looks at Oliver before turning back to her. “I told him he couldn’t have it.”
“What else did you do?”
“Nothing ugly.” Jamie’s answer comes quickly. “I kept him downstairs, and I didn’t open the closet.”
Heather takes his chin in her other hand. “Good boy.”
Jamie closes his eyes when she kisses him. The key pulls his choker tight, and he leans into both until Heather lets go.
The rest of the day goes by without another word about the store.
She turns to Oliver. “Green room.”
Oliver glances at me before he moves. The flyer sits behind my eyes, his face above Nathaniel Price and Juney’s number printed beneath it. He waits at the top of the stairs as if I might tell him why I’ve been outside and returned with nothing but groceries.
Heather locks Oliver away, then takes Jamie to the blue room. He stops inside the doorway when he realizes I’m still standing in the hall.
“I was good too,” he says.
“Your doll is already in my bed.” Heather presses one finger against the center of his chest and makes him step backward. “Don’t become greedy. That’s ugly.”
Jamie looks past her at me. I smile because I’m an asshole and because his real body is about to sleep alone while a three-inch version of him steals Heather’s pillow.
“Good night, rat.”
“Fuck you,” he says.
Heather shuts the door. The lock turns. She looks at me without reaching for my wrist or the back of my neck.
“Red room, Simon.”
I walk there myself.
She closes the door behind us and takes the ruler from her pocket. The wooden edge knocks once against her palm.
My cock reacts before the rest of me has decided what the fuck is happening.
“Clothes off,” she says. She sits on the edge of the bed while I strip.
I leave everything in a pile.
“Hands open.”
