Page 34 of A Little Discovery

“Toby, it’s fine,” I tell him, placing my hand on his arm to pull him back into his chair. “He’s just mad that Sabrina wasn’t exclusive to him.”

James explodes in front of me, throwing my laptop to the ground in anger. “What do you mean she wasn’t exclusive? She never fucked you! You are a pathetic little pushover. She never had to even touch you to get you to marry her. She loves me and only me! You were just the money she needed to bail out her father’s company.”

The room goes silent except for my former roommate’s panting. A few people have their phones out and I’m sure that before the hour is up, the video is going to be blasted all over social media. Spencer is going to have a field day with this!

My smile is apparently the wrong reaction for James. He reaches across the desk and grabs me out of my seat by my collar. He’s gathered it so tightly that it is a bit of a struggle to breathe, and I’m clawing at his hands to try and get them to release. I hear yelling from next to me, but my attention is all on the enraged man in front of me and the fact that I can’t get a decent breath…

The hands grasping me release suddenly and I would have fallen if not for Toby catching me. Looking up, I see Professor Barnes has James in an arm lock and is pushing him toward the door.

“Syllabus is on the desk and on the cloud,” he says from the doorway, pushing James into the frame. “I’m taking this one straight to the dean’s office. As for the rest of you, enjoy your free time. My class won’t allow for much of it for you. Welcome back to Wrenshaw.”

Toby and I are the only ones left in the room after about a minute. No one else stuck around once we were dismissed. I crouch down in front of where I was sitting and feel myemotions boil over at the sight in front of me. Falling back on my butt, I start to wipe at my eyes to try and stop the tears.

“Come on, don’t cry,” Toby hurries to pick up my things. “Eli said he’s getting you some money today, right? We will go get you a new laptop tonight. Scott can help get you the best deal. When it comes to computers, no one knows more about them in the house.”

The man in front of me is doing his best to cheer me up, but I just cry harder. I don’t know how long I am inconsolable, but eventually my sobs turn to hiccups. At some point, Spencer must have shown up because I am in his arms. I like listening to his heartbeat. It’s steady, just like he is.

“We’ll get you a new computer, little one,” he says, kissing the top of my head. I get the feeling he’s said it a few times, but I push that thought away.

“I know. I’m not worried about the laptop,” I manage to get out between the hiccups. “He smooshed my muffin!”

And for some reason, that sets me off again.

CHAPTER 23

SPENCER

The first two weeks of classes are done, and outside of the first day with James, there have been no problems for Lucky on campus. Thanks to that incident, the entire school knows that Sabrina tricked Lucky, and he has gone from being the villain to the victim. For the sake of the courts, this is great. For my boy, not so much.

“I don’t understand why people want to talk to me!” he yells from the passenger seat of my car as I turn onto the highway to take us home. “If all they want to say is that my ex-wife is a bitch, they don’t need to. I am well aware of that fact.”

I chuckle while he vents. Lucky is very much not a people person, so all of this attention is driving him crazy. I can’t blame him. It was going to be bad enough after the newscasts, but James made it worse with his outburst. Now, Lucky can’t go anywhere on campus without someone trying to commiserate with him.

When he takes a breath, I jump in before he gets going again. “What do you say we all take tonight to go to the Devil?”

He sputters and coughs before responding with a confused grunt, and I chuckle.

“Remember the club Eli mentioned that we go to?” I ask. He nods in response, still giving me the side eye. “It’s called the Devil’s Club. It is a kink club that we all are members of. It’s a perk of thehouse. The landlord has connections to it and hooks us up.”

The boy looks nervous, but I can’t help the smile that comes through on my face when he responds with a whispered, “I guess I can at least see what Eric keeps talking about.”

We all get a release and a chance to fully relax going to the Devil, but some of us get more out of it than the others. Our resident queen needs someone to punish the brat inside of him. He needs someone to force everything out periodically so that he doesn’t self-destruct his own life again. I don’t ever want to see my oldest friend in that kind of pain again.

“Why don’t you text Toby to meet us there after his last class?” I tell him. “We can run home and grab his pup gear and pick up Shiloh and anyone else at the house. If we need to, we can put a message in the group chat.”

At my suggestions, Lucky perks up and gets to work on his phone. I can only guess what is going on in the group chat to have him giggling like he is, but after a minute, he looks worried. I put my right hand on his knee and give it a squeeze.

“What’s up, little one? Where’d my favorite sunshine smile disappear to?”

He huffs out a frustrated noise before turning his head to me.

“I don’t know what to do at a kink club,” he says. “I know, or at least I’m pretty sure at this point, I am a little who likes cuddles and stuffies. But I can’t reconcile that with the whips and chains and stuff that I have seen online for examples of kink clubs. I mean, I look at a Saint Andrews cross and the only thing I can think of is climbing it like a jungle gym.”

LUCKY

Of course, I can’t tell Spencer the real reason I’m worried about going to the Devil’s Club today. I have been trying to build up the courage over the last two weeks to ask him to be my boyfriend and Daddy. I overheard him telling Uncle Eli at the end of that first movie night that he won’t be with me while I still don’t remember why I ran into the woods that day. Well, I remember now. And I feel really dumb knowing what I do now for having run away.

The bump on the head that I got when I crashed into Toby on the first day of classes must have knocked my memories loose because it all came back to me the following morning. The anger. The fear. The paranoia. The despair. The shame and embarrassment.

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