Page 140 of Stop and Seek
Kyran
u told me to tell u if any1 saw stuff
dont shoot the messenger
pls
What the fuck does that mean?
Curiosity was akiller.
He clicked the link.
The video buffered. Loading. Slow. Noah turned up the volume.
A badly lit room with a camera stuck behind some kind of plant, huge plastic leaf obscuring the bottom edge. Amateur porn. The back of some guy came into view: dreads hanging off his shoulders, tribal tattoos covering both arms. He asked something, and Noah almost turned it off again.
Until he heard a voice he recognized.
A voice he heard in his fucking dreams every goddamn night.
“I’ve never—” Theo laughed, soft and awkward. Nervous as hell. “I’ve never done a threesome before. It always looked, uh… complicated.”
Noah slammed pause. His heartdetonated. He could feel it in his throat. In histeeth.
No.
Nononono.
Is it recent? Tell me it’s not fucking recent.
He squinted at the date. His vision blurred. Cleared. Blurred again.
Six years ago.
I don’t want to see this.
But—like someone punishing himself for a crime he didn’t commit—he hit play.
Noah couldn’t see either of the other guy’s faces, but Theo was smack dab in the middle of the screen.
Alarm bell number one.
Sitting on a rumpled bed, Theo had both knees drawn close. No shirt.
No scar on his chest.
Alarm bell two.
He wasn’t looking at the camera. Probably didn’t know it was there.
Alarm bell three.
One of the guys—colorful tattoos, not tribal—leaned down, the back of brown hair coming into view for a second, and Theo flinched. Not much. Like someone startled, not scared.
“I dunno, Jag,” Theo said. He took off his glasses, twisted them in his hands. “This feels really fucking weird.”
Noah hated how small his voice sounded. Hated that no one stopped to ask,Hey, are you okay?
