Page 37 of Bottoms
Still holding the bottle with one hand, my feet started aimlessly walking around the silent house. I found my way to the door of Fynn’s office, and I gave another light knock to see if he was in there. After several more moments of silence and another swig from the bottle, I decided to try the knob instead. It turned under my grasp, opening with a groan that sounded excessively loud. My body cringed, but a bubble of laughter slipped past my lips.
“Shhh.” I chastised the inanimate object, but that only made me giggle more.
I wandered into the room, looking around at the different computer monitors. The screens were black, but as soon as I got close enough, they turned on to show their voyeuristic scenes. Some monitors housed collages of small images, usually depicting many rooms in the same house. I did a circuit of the room, looking through the familiar places.
Fynn had been watching my every move before he brought me here. There were live video streams inside nearly every place I frequented, including the apartment that Hannah and I shared. It appeared bathrooms were excluded from the feeds. But Fynn had a video of every time I changed my clothes in my room.
My hand wrapped around the back of a chair, and I wondered how often Fynn had sat with his cock out. Stroking it to the sight of me naked and unaware. Maybe the thought of him jacking off without me knowing about it should have disgusted me. It only reminded me that Fynn had somehow decided I was worth obsessing over.
I sat down in the chair, feeling the buzz of the alcohol and hints of arousal. I put the bottle on the table, and a screen blared to life the moment I did. I looked at the monitor; it held four small squares depicting different rooms in Bottoms. The bottom right corner was a bedroom, but it wasn’t one I had seen before. Squinting my eyes, I leaned forward to figure out exactly what was in the room. There was a bed dressed in black, surrounded by white walls. I watched on the screen as a door to the room opened, and I jumped in my chair. Leaning back in quickly, eager to see what was going on, I lost my balance and slammed into the table. I sat up, my world centering back in on the video.
Tanner entered the room, shedding his suit jacket before tossing it into a heap on the floor. My heart galloped in my chest, helping to push away some of my alcohol-induced fog. I watched Tanner as he started to unbutton the sleeves of his shirt, and then he moved on to the rest of the buttons. He slowly revealed his muscular chest to the camera. Making it feel like an intimate strip tease despite being unaware that I was watching.
He tossed his shirt onto his suit jacket on the floor, then started taking off his pants in the same slow, methodical way. I felt my entire body heat when he was left in nothing more than boxers, and I mentally fought with the fact that it was wrong for me to watch him. It didn’t stop me, either.
He turned off the light, but it didn’t hurt the visibility. I watched as he moved towards the bed, pulling back the covers so he could slip beneath them. He tossed and turned for a few moments before deciding that his stomach was the most comfortable. I watched his movements stop, and I guessed that he had fallen asleep after a few minutes.
“Fuck. I wish it was that easy for me to go to fucking sleep,” I grumbled into the silent house.
My eyes wandered the screen, noting that there wasn’t any other movement inside Bottoms. I noticed a bar on the side of the screen with more options. I grabbed the mouse on the table and used it to maneuver the arrow onto the tabs to see what else I could do.
Clicking on the area brought up a whole slew of pull-down options. Fynn had managed to get access to not only the camera feeds, but he could also look at any sent or received calls on Tanner, Colten, and Nik’s phones. With a few easy clicks, I found my way into Tanner’s phone. A tinge of guilt ran through me, but it was easy to push to the side. Maneuvering my way through his messages, including the ones sent through the secure app, I looked at the texts sent between the men. The more I read, the soberer I felt as I looked at just how much finding me had become the only thing discussed.
Bittersweet laughter trickled out from me as tears threatened to well in my eyes when I saw a message from Tanner to Mike about needing Christmas lights for my tree. Mike had given him shit in return and even suggested that Tanner was in love with me.
It was all too much.
I didn’t know how to begin processing the new information, and I couldn’t even begin to consider how it affected my thoughts on them. In truth, it wasn’t any more confusing than how I felt after seeing them again today.
Fynn didn’t seem to have much of a plan for me other than never allowing me to leave him, but he also seemed to want me to be with them.
The door to Fynn’s office opened, creaking out yet again, making me jump. I turned to see Fynn standing in the doorway, breathing hard, with a bloody knife in his hand.
“I didn’t contact them. I only watched,” I said quickly as I scrambled to get out of his chair.
Fynn’s eyes on me were hard, and his mouth was pressed into a thin line, but my gaze continued to flit back to the knife. I didn’t know whose blood was on it, but I hoped mine wouldn’t coat the end next.
“Can’t get enough of them again, can you?” he said darkly, taking a few steps into the room.
“I didn’t,” I started, unsure how to answer his question. “I woke up and tried knocking on the door, but you didn’t answer.”
“So, you just decided to come in and snoop around,” he said. Not as a question, but as a statement.
“I came in and got,” I hunted around in my brain for the right word, “distracted.”
Fynn raised an eyebrow as he crept closer, my feet instinctually backing up until the back of my thighs hit the table the monitor sat on. Fynn looked over my shoulder at the monitor, still displaying screens of text messages from Tanner’s phone.
“Did you enjoy getting your fill?” he asked, as his eyes slid back to watch my reactions. He had probably seen every message Tanner ever sent. Watching my reactions would be far more entertaining.
“I don’t know how I feel,” I sighed, grabbing the bottle of bourbon once more to stave off some of the sobriety that came along with all these heavy emotions. The liquid sloshed in the container as I took a desperate swig, needing the buzzing sensation to wash over me again.
“I don’t think you’re going to find any of the answers at the bottom of that,” Fynn said. Smirking as he pointed to the bottle. He tossed the knife onto the table, and the sound made me jump. “I should know. I’ve tried.”
“Oh?” I asked, feeling better now that the knife was out of his hands. “Then what does help?”
“Help? I don’t know what helps, but answers I can find. Answers are just a collection of truths; the truth is easy if you’re willing to endure the painful process of extracting it. It’s generally hidden underneath everything else because no one really wants the truth.”
I considered his response for a moment. I wanted answers, and above all else, I wanted the truth.
