Page 70 of Vice

“If you want to be.”

“So that also makes you my real boyfriend now? Secret, of course.”

I scowl. “Boyfriend. Who came up with that? It’s such a juvenile label. I’m so much more than that.”

I know I’ve made a mistake as soon as the words leave my lips. Long before I see the Cheshire grin on her face to confirm it.

“That settles it then. You are now my boyfriend.”

“You’re not allowed to say that in public. Not even when none of this is secret anymore.”

“So I can use it in private?”

I glare at her.

“I do something nice for you and this is how you repay me.”

She pretends to ponder that and then says, “You’re right. That’s not very appreciative of me.”

She stand from her seat and goes to the kitchen to grab the plastic bowl with the now cooled leftover caramelized strawberry syrup. Then she makes her way back over to me. She sits the bowl on the table and takes off my shirt, leaving her naked before me.

Dele picks up the bowl again, considers it, then kneels down in front of where I’m sitting. She reaches into my trousers, pulls out my cock, aims the bowl over it. She looks me in the eye and—

Whatever she was about to do, she’s unable to follow through with it because the door to the old cabin opens and in walks Wyan.

I’ve walked in on Wyan in much more compromising positions than this before, so as far as I’m concerned, this is what he gets for not telling us he was on the way back this morning. Or that he was coming at all, now that I think of it.

But Wyan has nothing to say about the sight he walked in on. No sarcastic quip or chiding. Just looks at us with a grave expression. Totally uncharacteristic of him given what he walked in on.

Something’s wrong.

“What?” I ask, standing to my feet and putting my cock back into my pants while Dele sits the syrup aside and puts my shirt back on.

“You all need to get dressed and come with me to the base. Right now.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Dele asks.

“I…” Wyan trails of and shakes his head. “You should see for yourself.”

The tone he says that in combined with everything else is enough for Dele and I not to argue with him. To go into the back, get dressed in our gear, and go with Wyan.

Wyan doesn’t say a word as he drives us to the site of Pray’s former child soldier barracks. Doesn’t say anything as he takes us through the blast style doors now guarded by a former French mafia prince and his bodyguard turned boyfriend that Dele won’t admit she rescued and stole from the French mob.

He doesn’t say anything until he’s guiding us through the facility that he knows backward and forward even after only a few days.

“We found something. Someone,” Wyan corrects as he presses the button for the elevator to come and take us lower into the facility. “They call her mother. She’s apparently been here for the past seven years, but she’s as much a prisoner here as they are. Which is why we missed her in the initial roundup of caretakers and administrators. Because she’s not one of them.”

“What does that matter to us?” I ask. “Why bring us here? Why not handle it?”

“Patience, Adrian,” Wyan says as he guides us out the elevator.

We’re on the hospital floor.

Wyan silently guides us to a private, sterile room at the end of the hall.

He starts to guide us in, but then pauses to look at us.

“I’d… mentally prepare myself if I were you. For what you’re about to see.”

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