Page 50 of Fractured Loyalties
His door is closed when I reach it. I stand in front of it, my pulse climbing through my throat, my knuckles whitening on the brass handle.
Maybe he’s asleep.Maybe he’ll be furious if I wake him. Maybe this is a terrible idea.
I don’t care. I twist the handle, and the door opens without a sound.
Inside, the room is black except for a sliver of blue light from the window and a soft yellow glow that pulses from a desk lamp on the far side of the room. The walls are painted matte charcoal, and the furniture is all heavy, dark wood. There’s a king-size bed, unmade, and on it a tumble of high-thread count sheets.
But he’s not here. Not anywhere in here.
Still, I step inside and shut the door behind me, my heart jackhammering. The whole room is saturated in his smell, and that’s enough to send a wave of arousal coursing through my body.
I’m so fucked in the head.
But he came to pick me up, listened to me, and then made me feelaccepted.It’s as if maybe there’s something more to him.
And I want to know what it is.
I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with his space’s oxygen, and I look around again. The desk lamp is the only real source of light. I gravitate to it because I need something to keep my mind occupied. As I get closer, I see there’s a mess on the desk—papers, pens, a cracked phone, and…What the fuck?
Photographs.
Stacks of them, a hundred maybe, arranged in loose spirals that radiate out from the desk’s center.
I pick up the closest one, expecting… a party or something.
But it’sme.
A jolt of shock and something else thrums through my body suddenly as I flip through the pictures.
Holy fucking shit.
There’s me at school, me at the mall, and me existing in all the spaces Ineverthought Roman could be—even before Iknewhim, and back when he was just the estranged stepbrother who meant nothing.
He’s been stalking me for years.
I stare at the pile, at all the other versions of myself Roman has collected and obsessed over. I can’t tell if I’m sick with fear or something else… I feel something like…flattery.
I shuffle through more of them, unable to stop myself. There are photos of me from middle school, summer camp, and even from my last house with my dad. The quality is low, sometimes almost pixelated, as if they were shot from afar and then zoomed in on, sharpened, and reprinted until every pore is visible.
This is absolutely insane.
A dry sound ekes out of my throat. My fingers start to tingle. I should run. I should tell someone? But all I can do is gawk, transfixed by the evidence of my own importance.
It’s like… It’s like I’m the center of his universe.
“What are you doing?” A deep, gravelly voice startles me, and I bump into the desk before spinning around to see Roman.
“Um…” I swallow hard, taking in the sight of him and digging my nails into the wood.
Roman’s shirtless, his hair is a mess, and his sweatpants ride low on his hips. His chest and abs are defined enough to look violent in the slant of lamplight. His mouth is set in a line, but his eyes—those impossible fucking eyes—are hungry and sharp. Right now, they are locked on me, and it’s almost as if he expected me to be right here, right now.
He doesn’t say a word at first. He just leans against the doorframe, folding his arms.
“Find anything interesting?” he says at last, and his voice is nothing but a threat.
The air is suddenly electric between us. But I’m not scared… or disgusted. I just…wanthim.
And I think he knows it.
