Page 76 of Clean Finish

I shuffled through the games, seeing a few I recognised from the internet, then stopped on one that showed two big, hulking werewolves facing off in a boxing ring. “What’s this one?”

Seb leaned in to look, his shoulder brushing mine. He chuckled. “Maeve got me that as a joke, but it’s actually pretty good.”

“Okay, let’s play this one.” I stared blankly at the console. “How do I put it in?”

Chuckling, Seb took the cartridge out of the box and slotted it into the console, then pressed a button and turned on the TV. I winced when a heavily pixelated and over-saturated loading screen appeared, 8-bit music chirping through the speakers.

By the time we’d picked our characters—his a brown werewolf wearing red boxing shorts, mine a grey one in a blue wrestling singlet—I’d almost gotten used to the terrible, blurry picture quality. Crossing my legs to get comfortable, I prepared myself to try and beat Seb, despite not even knowing what these weird-ass buttons did.

Unsurprisingly, he kicked my ass, but I wasn’t really all that competitive so I didn’t actually care. I was having too much fun, even though the game was so freaking clunky and the picture quality was almost unwatchable. The sound was all fuzzy and muffled too, and my guy just kept making the exact same grunty noise over and over every time Seb’s werewolf punched him, which was making me laugh so much I started playing even worse.

Even though we’d both already had dinner, we eventually paused to order a pizza—half pepperoni for Seb and half mushroom and green peppers for me—then decided to try another game, which I let Seb pick this time.

“Uuuugh, a side-scroller?” I flopped back, then realised my controller’s wire wasn’t long enough and sat forward again. “These suuuck.”

“They do not.” Seb laughed.

“I get all startled when stuff suddenly pops up on screen,” I grumbled, then jumped as his little character ran forward—or sideways—and a monster thing lunged into frame. “See? And I can never jump fast enough. I don’t even know which button jump is.”

Chuckling, Seb passed me his controller then effortlessly lifted me onto his lap. “I’ll show you.”

My pulse leaped as his big arms came around me, his hands covering mine on the controller, but I grinned and wriggled back to get comfortable, which made him clear his throat.

Even with Seb helping me, I managed to accidentally kill my character about ten times. But that was mainly because I was struggling to concentrate with Seb’s chin propped on my shoulder, and his warm breath puffing over my neck whenever he laughed. His hands rested on my thighs when I took over, absently rubbing and making my skin prickle with awareness.

This was… really nice. Way better than playing actual good, new games with my buddies on the PC. I finally managed to complete the first level—god, I sucked at this—just as the pizza arrived, so I stayed on the couch, seeing as I wasn’t wearing any pants, while Seb got up to answer the door.

“You know green peppers are just unripe red peppers, right?” he said teasingly as he returned with the box.

I rolled my eyes. “Of course I know that, dude. I have a dad who makes me go out and inspect his growing peppers with him every summer. I have to pretend to be really impressed. I just like ’em green.”

“Fair enough.” He chuckled and sat back down on the couch, pushing the console out of the way to set down the pizza box and flip open the lid.

I eagerly leaned forward to grab a slice and gestured at the TV with it. “Got any streaming services? Or do you still watch everything on VHS?” I asked teasingly.

“Real funny.” He bumped my knee with his and grabbed the remote.

We settled on an over-the-top zombie horror-comedy that neither of us had seen yet and ate our pizza in comfortable silence as we watched. I usually talked through everything, snorting and yelling when characters did something stupid or trying to guess what would happen next, but I didn’t want to irritate Seb. He probably wouldn’t like that.

But then he started doing it first, so I eagerly joined in. We managed to guess the order in which the characters would die almost perfectly. This was way more fun than movie night with my family—my parents would never enjoy something like this, and Nolan always got so pissed at me for talking all the way through.

After we finished our pizza, I shuffled a little closer to him and folded my legs, bringing my knees up to my chest. A short while later, I shuffled closer again. I just… liked being near him. He was warm and solid and smelled really good, and I wasn’t wearing any pants, so… my legs were just getting a little cold.

At some point, I let my knees tip to the side so they were resting on his big thigh. Seb’s hand settled on one, his thumb stroking in absent circles as he watched the movie. I nibbled on my lip, staring at the screen but not really watching, then let my head fall onto his shoulder with a jolt of nerves. If he stiffened up, I’d move away and say I’d… fallen asleep or something.

But he didn’t. His chest rose with a deep breath, before he squeezed my knee and turned his head to kiss the top of mine. I smiled, wriggling to get comfortable and lean more heavily into him.

Yeah, this was really, really nice.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Confession

Larkin

“Psst.”

I was busy lugging boxes of merch into the storage room the next day at work when I heard the whispered hiss from above.