Page 47 of Loverboy

Finally, the door opened, and I flung myself into the hallway. My lungs screamed like I’d run a marathon, my tightly wound muscles suddenly loose and uncooperative. I wanted to lie on the floor, but my lingering fear urged me forward on unsteady legs. I needed to see Jasper’s face to know I was safe.

My imagination ran rampant as I moved around the apartment, looping through the kitchen to check the windows and balcony door. Even after seeing that they were closed and locked, I still tried to pull on them. Visuals weren’t enough; I needed the physical proof.

I circled into the living room, where Oliver would have been sleeping on the couch. It was dark and dead silent, and nobody was there. He should have been there. It didn’t make sense to leave in the middle of the night without saying goodbye.

“Jasper? Oliver?” I called out hoarsely, my heart rate climbing all over again.

Jasper’s door was closed. He never shut it the whole way, and something about it made me feel uninvited. Locked out. Like suddenly, I was no longer welcome in his orbit. I was terrified that he’d drawn his line in the sand—that he needed space. Or worse… that I’d done something wrong.

I wanted to rip the door off its hinges.

But I didn’t. I wasn’t supposed to be crazy on the outside. I had to keep it on the inside to make sure nobody would leave me. The whole scenario I was cooking up wasn’t even real. It was just a fucking closed door.

I pressed my ear hard against the wood, holding my breath until I got light-headed. I needed to hear something to know he wasn’t avoiding me on purpose, to know that he was in there, and that just because I couldn’t see him, it didn’t mean he’d disappeared.

Sound slipped through the wood: quick, breathy gasps.

Maybe he was getting himself off. The idea made my cheeks burn with a heady combination of guilt and shame. I crawled into bed with him nearly every night since he moved in, clinging to him like a lifeline. He had no privacy, and it would be wrong to interrupt. I didn’t want to push him away.

But there was more.

“Fuck, Jasper—”

Not my brother.

The air was stolen from my lungs so violently that black spots bled into the edges of my vision.

“Shut up, Oli.” Jasper’s voice was unmistakable, his tone rough.

My blood felt like ice in my veins, understanding hitting me in horrible, jagged pieces. Oliver’s absence from the living room suddenly made sense, and the door being closed over meant something else entirely.

It was obvious. The gasping and moaning, the obscene sound of skin slapping against skin. Something sick and foreign twisted in my gut, and my earlier trembling paled compared to how every inch of me vibrated now.

No, no, no.

My hand hovered over the doorknob, my vision so blurry I barely recognized it as mine. I touched my forehead to the door to steady myself, but it was no use. The floor swayed beneath me, like I was on a ship, only this one was capsizing.

Jasper moved here to be with me.

To keep me safe.

To take care of me.

My lungs shrank with every passing second, and I couldn’t get enough air.

Oli. He was calling him a pet name, and he didn’t even fucking like the guy.

It should have been me in his room. He should have been rubbing my back, running his fingers through my hair and telling me that my nightmares weren’t real. Telling me I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t take it.

I gripped the doorknob with both hands and ripped it open.

My eyes snapped to Jasper immediately—the creasing of his brows, the parted lips, the rise and fall of his chest. He was plastered to Oliver’s arched back, his jeans bunched around his knees, and his cock—fuck—I was going to puke. My world came to a grinding halt as their heads swivelled toward me, and all I saw was red.

My knees buckled, and I gripped the sides of the door frame to steady myself. For a beat, it felt like my heart had stopped working before going into overdrive and pumping so hard and fast that I thought I was going to pass out.

“Get off of him!” I spat, grabbing the back of Jasper’s shirt and yanking him as hard as I could. I could feel my lips moving and repeating the line over and over again, but I was teetering on the edge of delirium. Maybe I wasn’t saying anything at all. It was impossible to tell because the inside of my head sounded like someone had turned the volume on a white noise machine to maximum.

The next moments weren’t all that clear. Oliver was desperately trying to put his clothes back on, sputtering something to me that sounded like a whole lot of bullshit.