Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64366 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64366 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
“I’ve only got one year left, Kage. My parents have paid an awful lot of money, and I’ve invested a lot of time and effort just to give up now. I’m on the home stretch. When I’m done, I’ll be able to get a really good job and support myself.”
“Good answer.” I rested my lips on the top of his head and smiled, breathing in his scent. “That’s the responsible thing to do. We both know it, even if it’s tempting to just say fuck everything and take what we want in the short term. You’d regret it for the rest of your life, though. The what-ifs would eat you alive.”
“Gee, thanks for being my conscience. I am capable of making my own decisions.”
“I’m not being your conscience, Jamie. I’m being the other half of a two-man team. Decisions affect the whole team, not just one member.”
“A team? That’s how you see us?”
“Yeah. Don’t you?”
He scooted closer into my body. “I do want to go with you. I never told you this, but before I came back to school, I was almost ready to transfer to UNLV. I even looked into the transfer requirements and was in the process of doing research on it. But then Dr. Tanner told me not to.”
“What?” I had gotten used to shielding Jamie from the harsh realities of my life, schooling my reactions, acting like everything was cool when it so very much wasn’t. But I couldn’t hide the shock when he let that bit of information fly. “When the hell did you talk to Dr. Tanner, and why would she tell you not to transfer schools? And for that matter, why didn’t you talk to me about it?”
“I never got the chance to talk to you about the school thing because it was a last-minute development just before I left Vegas. You ditched me on that last day, remember? What was I supposed to do? From where I was standing, it didn’t seem much like you wanted to hear anything I had to say.”
That deflated me and checked my anger. “I couldn’t do it, okay? Couldn’t say goodbye to you. I was afraid I might cry or some shit. Fuck, why didn’t I stay? If I’d stayed maybe we wouldn’t have had to say goodbye at all.”
Jamie nodded. “I was all ready to tell you, but you skipped out on me. Then Dr. Tanner showed up. She told me I needed to leave, that you were better off without me. She was afraid if I stayed, you would…”
“I would what?” I prodded.
“You would try to commit suicide again.”
“What?” I repeated the word that seemed to have taken over my vocabulary. “Where the fuck did that come from? Commit suicide? Again? I’ve never in my life— Jamie, why didn’t you tell me this?”
He pushed away, true anger taking hold of him. “Because you wouldn’t answer my fucking phone calls, you fucking dick!”
“Don’t call me that,” I yelled right back at him, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him hard. “You don’t understand, and I can’t make you understand without dragging you into a lot of shit you don’t need to be in. Fuck.” I realized in that moment that Jamie was not going to let it go. I was going to have to tell him the truth about what was going on, whether I liked it or not. “Our phones are blocked, okay? And probably tapped. I’ll prove it to you. Why don’t you try to call me right now?”
He stared at me in disbelief.
“Do it!”
He cringed at the sharpness of my command, but he scrambled around for his pants and pulled his cell phone out of the pocket. I reached over and grabbed mine out of the inside pocket of my shorts. I held it up to him so that he could see the darkened screen that did not light up even as his end rang and rang. Then I returned the favor, calling his phone and getting no response.
“See? No calls, no texts. We’ve been cut off from each other.”
“Cameron said you had blocked my number.”
“I didn’t block shit, Jamie. This is my uncle’s game, not mine.”
His eyes stretched wide. “What about the video of us… you know… fucking? Did you send that?”
Well, wasn’t he just full of surprises.
“I don’t know anything about a video, Jamie. Someone sent you a sex tape of us?”
He nodded slowly, then scrolled around on his phone. When he turned the screen around and showed me the detailed loop of us getting it on, my first response was nausea. Under different circumstances, it would have been hot as hell to see a porn video of us, but the fact that I didn’t know who had taken it put a damper on any arousal I might have felt. It made me sick to realize that my apartment had been equipped with some obviously high-tech surveillance cameras. The picture was barely grainy, and the sound was clear as a bell. This wasn’t some cheap nanny cam you could find at the security shop in the mall; this was some CIA-level shit. Even worse, the fact that it was a video of the night I took Jamie’s ass for the first time indicated that we’d been watched for a long time.