Page 23 of Noctis

It meant nothing. It couldn’t. They’d both had a few drinks, and dancing was just dancing. They’d probably gravitated toward each other because they were both missing me. Shared concern. Mutual comfort. Nothing more.

I swiped to the next photo, my heart skipping a beat.

The dancing had progressed to kissing.

Not a peck on the cheek. Not some drunken joke caught at an unfortunate angle. They were properly kissing, bodies pressed together and lips fused. Tyler’s hand rested with easy familiarity on the back of Remy’s neck, and something about that casual intimacy told me this wasn’t the first time this had happened.

Unsurprisingly, Remy had commented.

REMY_CK: Take this down!

BGBrown1286: Hey… If you don’t want photos of you kissing someone, maybe don’t do it.

REMY_CK: I’m serious. Do you think this is a joke?

BGBrown1286: I don’t. Do you?

Tyler had joined the exchange shortly afterward.

TBennet1994: You’ve made your point, Benny. Now take them down before he sees them.

BGBrown1286: Maybe I want him to see them. Maybe I think that would be kinder.

TBennet1994: I’m going to talk to him.

BGBrown1286: When? You said that last month.

Cold spread outward from the center of my chest.

Last month?

Even after seeing the photographs, some stubbornly optimistic part of me wanted to believe this was new. A drunken mistake, perhaps, or the beginning of something neither of them had planned.

Except Caligo had tried to warn me, hadn’t he?

That wasn’t the end of the conversation.

REMY_CK: PLEASE take them down. You know, Rowan has been having a difficult time lately. He doesn’t need this.

BGBrown1286: I know that. Do you? You two are fucking hilarious, pretending you care while screwing around behind his back.

Benny and I agreed on something, at least.

TBennet1994: TAKE. THEM. DOWN.

Tyler appeared to have skipped the part where he was supposed to insist that of course he cared about me.

BGBrown1286: Fine. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’ve got a meeting in five minutes. When I get out of it, I’ll delete the incriminating ones. Remember, I’ve got the photos, though. So you better tell him before I decide to act like a decent human being and do it for you.

The last comment had been posted forty-five minutes ago. Presumably, Benny was still in his meeting. If I’d found the phone much later, the evidence would have vanished, leaving everyone who’d attended the party—or seen the photographs—pitying me for being such an oblivious idiot.

“I tried to tell you.”

Just like the previous night, Caligo’s voice curled around me like smoke.

I spun around. Seeing him in daylight was far more jarring, even though he’d retained his humanoid form and dispensed with the glowing red eyes, horns, and tail.

“That phone call.” Anger surged through me like floodwater breaching a riverbank. “What exactly did Tyler say?”