Page 96 of The Casting Couch

He gestured toward the hallway.“You know where it is.”

I stood and walked the familiar few steps down the hall, flipped on the light, and stepped inside.The bathroom was small but clean, like everything else in Nico’s apartment.I unzipped, started to piss, and let my brain blank out for a minute.

That’s when I noticed something on the floor.

A little plastic shape down by the base of the toilet, near the back.Black.Slim.At first, I figured it was a cap from a deodorant stick or maybe one of those plastic things razors come in.

But as I zipped up and leaned down for a better look, it caught the light.

I flushed, washed my hands, then crouched and picked it up with a towel.

A USB stick.

Seriously?

I turned it over.It didn’t have a brand name, just a small red dot sticker on one side.Cheap.Generic.The kind of thing that looked like it had something sketchy on it by default.

I headed back into the living room.

“Hey,” I said, holding it up.“I found this on the bathroom floor.”

Nico took it from me, squinting at it.He flipped it over in his fingers.“I think this is a USB stick,” he muttered.“Who the hell still uses these things anymore?”

Then I watched it hit him.

His entire face changed.Eyes narrowed.Mouth went still.Something cold and sharp slid into the room with us.

“Thom,” he drawled.“He was in the bathroom forever earlier.Said he had a sensitive stomach, but…”

I sat down beside him again.

“What if he dropped it?”I asked.

“Thom strikes me as someone who plants things deliberately,” Nico murmured.

We stared at the little black stick like it might explode.

And suddenly, I didn’t just want to be here for Nico.I wanted to protect him.Not just from sketchy USBs or weird fake stomach issues, but from the past that kept trying to crawl back into his life wearing a fake smile.

Nico stared at the stick like it might bite.

Then, without a word, he stood up and crossed the room to his desk.I followed, heart already pounding, even though I didn’t know why.His laptop sat closed beside a half-drunk iced coffee and a tangle of charging cables.He flipped it open with a snap and plugged the USB stick into the port like he was disarming a bomb.

The screen lit up.

A folder popped up right away.Titled in all caps:NICHOLAS - PERSONAL.

He clicked it open.

Inside were dozens of files.

The first few were screenshots.Grainy captures from the Boys On Film website.Then there were various pictures from different videos Nico had made.All of them explicit.

But it wasn’t the porn that made my stomach lurch.

It was thevideos.

Short, silent clips of Nico walking across a crosswalk.Nico outside of a bodega.Nico riding on the subway, wearing headphones, totally unaware he was being filmed.

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