Page 19 of The Trust We Broke
She turns to walk away as I remember the hidden stash I found in Dad’s office drawer. “Mom. Do youreallynot have any idea what Dad was involved in?”
She pauses and turns to face me before shaking her head. “He’d get calls…all times of the night. And more recently, he’s aged before my eyes. Stressed. Short of patience.”
“That doesn’t sound hugely different from when I was younger.”
Mom shrugs. “I don’t know what else to tell you, beyond this being different. I got the impression he was…I don’t know…losing his grip on something.”
I have more questions, but she heads for the staircase, and I let her go.
There’s a large claw-foot tub in my bathroom here, and my apartment in New York is so tiny that I only have a walk-in shower. So, I decide to treat myself and run the hot water. I raidthe family bathroom on the second floor and find some bubble bath. Lord knows when it was placed there.
While it’s running, I grab my old childhood laptop. Might as well watch something while I soak in the tub, and there’s no way I’m bringing my work laptop in here. I run the charging cable and set it up on the closed seat of the toilet, and, yes! It works. Although, it takes me a hot minute to update it.
I don’t even know why it’s still here. Why it never moved with me. Until I see the folder on the desktop.
Zachary.
“Don’t do it,” I say out loud. “There is absolutely no reason to open that.”
I go to the tub, swirl my hand in it under the pretense of checking the temperature. I’m even convinced that I’m not going to look at it.
But instead, I walk straight up to the damn laptop and open the folder where all the videos I ever made of the two of us are.
“Shit,” I say on a sigh, as I enter the password on the folder and open the first file.
It’s one of those silly close-ups where we are laughing too hard.
“Watch the nuts, Bug,” he says, gasping for breath. He grips my hips and moves the way I’m sitting on him. It was before he had the undercut. Just layer after layer of thick waves I was envious of.
“I said say hi. It’s our anniversary. Six months of dating.”
Zach looks to the camera, composes his face. “Hi.” Then, he bursts into laughter again. “Now, turn the camera off so I can get back to what I was doing.”
And given the way he grips my chin and turns my lips to his as the screen goes blank, I have a pretty solid guess of what that was.
I yank a chair from the bedroom and place it right next to the tub. “You’re gonna get electrocuted,” I mutter as I put the laptop on it. Once I’m certain it’s secure, I strip, place a towel to dry my hands next to the laptop, and climb into the tub.
The water is too hot, despite checking it.
But I embrace the burn.
Once I’m situated, I press play on the second video.
The camera is placed on a shelf, pointing toward Zach’s bed. He’s asleep on his front, with the cover just over his ass. I smile when I come into the shot. My hair was longer, and I’m in soft gray cotton underwear, a bra, and panties with a white waistband.
I put my finger to my lips at the camera, then go jump on him.
But I misjudged him being asleep. Instead, just as I near him, he rolls and grabs me in his arms. I get a peek at his already-hard, condom-covered cock as he playfully nuzzles my neck and growls.
I study his hands, almost the size of dinner plates. The way they’d grip me just an inch from painfully. He always held me so tight. His arms wrapping around me in a way that would make it hard to breathe, and yet calmed me as easily as it aroused.
No man has ever handled me that way since. Too concerned about bruising or hurting me, they were gentlemen playing by the Bloomsbury Rules or some shit.
But Zach…
God, he never held back.
I swear I can feel the scratch of his scruff against my cheek, now, as he kisses me hard on the video and moves above me.
