Lost King by Piper Lennox (moboreader txt) 📗

“Whoa, you okay?” He starts to right them, but abandons his mission when he sees me flee to the hallway. “Ruby, what—”

“I can’t be in there.” I push my hair from my face and breathe deep. It doesn’t help.

All I keep picturing are laughing skulls and popping flashes. All I hear is the thump of long-dead music and echoing laughter, trapped in the walls around us.

“I didn’t think.... I mean, the ones downstairs didn’t seem to bother you, so I just—”

I step away when he tries to touch me again. I can’t fucking stand it. I can’t stand him.

I despise the girl I still am, deep down, who inexplicably started to forget what he did to her that night. All it took was a date or two and some hormones in a pool, and I reverted back to the idiot I was before.

“I should go.” The shush of my feet on the staircase reminds me of the shelves rattling. All those skulls, rocking back and forth. I feel sick.

“Ruby, hold on.” He’s halfway down the flight when I reach the landing. I worry he’ll leap over the railing just to cut me off, but I realize that’s more of a Callum move: instill fear first, beg forgiveness later. Theo doesn’t seem into power plays like those.

And God knows he never begs forgiveness.

At the front door, I realize I’m shoeless, coatless, and keyless. The worst possible combination for a quick escape.

Panting, Theo appears beside me while I’m digging through the closet in search of my left shoe. I threw them in here without any thought, assuming this closet would be just like the others in his house: half-empty and well-lit, with automatic bulbs gracing the interior.

I was wrong. This closet is all too normal—a walk-in junk drawer, darker than a cave.

“Ruby,” he says, “I had no idea the skulls would be, like, a thing with you. Like I said, since the ones in the living room didn’t….”

I tune him out. It’s not the skulls, I mentally scream at him. It’s not the bedroom.

It’s not the perfect white canvas on which you splattered my entire fucking life.

It’s the fact that, given the chance…I think he could very well fool me twice.

My shoe is caught in the corner of an open box. I grab it and pull hard, ready to get the fuck out of this house. I want out of this entire plan. Theo deserves my revenge, but I’m not sure I deserve all the risks that come with delivering it.

The shoe catches, and the box topples.

A spray of paper lands at my bare feet. On top of the small avalanche is a card.

“Shit.” I swallow and apologize out of instinct, even though I’m not sorry, and start to gather the pile back into its box.

“I’ve got it.” Theo crouches beside me, shoulder bumping mine. “Just slow down, Ruby. Talk to me.”

He taps the edges of the stack into alignment. They’re blank music sheets.

And the card, now in my hands, is a birthday card.

Unthinking, I open it. It’s for Theo, from his dad.

“I’ve got it,” he says again, much softer now. He takes it from me quickly, piling it all into the box before shoving it back. As he stands, he holds his hand out for me. I ignore it.

“He wrote ‘Happy 23rd’ on it.” I pull the box back and reread the label in the faint light of the chandelier behind us. It was mailed overnight.

I look up. “Is today your birthday?”

Theo’s the one who gets silent, now. The one who looks like he’s going to run, because running is always the easier choice.

I do take his hand, no longer offered to me but now hanging by his side, and instead of letting him pull me up...I pull him down.

“No one’s celebrating with you?”

He shrugs, wetting his lips. “My cousins and I played video games when they got off work. They invited me to the city for some drinks, but I said no.”

“Why?” I look at my shoes in the whirlwind wreckage before me. “Not...because of me, I hope?”

“No, no. I mean, I was looking forward to seeing you again, obviously—but I would’ve just rescheduled if I wanted to go.” Cautiously, he smiles and scratches his head. “Or invited you to go with me, most likely. But I didn’t want you thinking I was rushing anything.”

“Think we’re past that point,” I mutter, shoving my feet into my shoes, “seeing as how you went down on me in your swimming pool.”

It might be the change of scenery—this messy, absurdly normal closet instead of the scene of the crime—but I feel my blood pressure level out. The flight response tearing up my veins has stagnated, leaving me in some weird in-between place where I keep gathering my stuff to leave, but never actually do.

He smiles again. “Good point.”

“So your dad mailed his gift, instead of showing up and bringing it in person. Is that why you didn’t go to the city? You were waiting on him, until this package showed up in his place?”

“Yeah. Basically.” Theo sits against one side of the doorjamb while I take the other, the tips of his bare feet touching my shoes. “Which feels pretty stupid now. I knew he wouldn’t.” He nods at the present. “And I’ll bet you anything he didn’t get me that, or mail it, or even choose the card.”

“Who did? Your mom?”

In the half-darkness, his eyes hesitate before meeting mine. “She’s not around anymore.”

“Oh…God. I’m sorry.” I really mean it. Granted, my father’s not dead, but I’m well-versed on the whole missing-parent thing. No matter how it