Lost King Piper Lennox (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📖

Gathering my wits, I take his wrist and push up his sleeve to check his watch. “Pretty sure all those diners we passed will be closed soon.”

“I was thinking of a hotel, actually.” He puts his hand back where it was, thumb dragging across my bottom lip.

My hormones double.

The god of thunder yells, Don’t be an idiot.

Of course that whole chivalrous gentleman thing was an act. Even the cutesy romantic parts—coin tosses, a spontaneous trip to the Falls—were just a ruse. Something to weaken my knees so my panties would drop.

Something he’s probably done to a hundred girls before me.

But damn…do I want to be Number 101.

I shake my head at myself. He takes it as being meant for him, stepping back from the railing with his hands up.

“Too forward?”

“A little.” A lot. “Maybe we could head back to the Hamptons now?”

Theo looks like a puppy getting whacked with a newspaper. Good.

With one last glance at the Falls, we turn and walk back in the direction of the Jeep. He puts his arm around my waist, then seems to think better of it and moves it to my shoulders. Guess he’s reverting to gentlemanly behavior until my guard is down.

Well, I’ve got news for him: I’m never letting it down again.

“I, uh....” Theo rakes his fingers through his hair after starting the engine. “I hope I didn’t offend you. I’m sorry.”

Real Ruby has a fuckton to say to this, but I channel the too-sweet one he met in the hardware store and reassure him it’s all right. “It’s a little flattering, in its own way. Knowing you find me attractive.”

“It’s more than that.” He catches his lip between his teeth. “I love being with you. Which I know sounds crazy, because we just met...but it feels like there’s something here. And it’s been a long time since I’ve felt that.”

I can’t hear the rumble of the Falls anymore, but I feel it. It swam up my feet when he kissed me, now sitting in the pit of my stomach when I turn and try to force the lie out: that I feel the same.

But suddenly, I can’t. A tiny, dangerous part of me wonders if it is a lie.

And a much larger part of me wants to hear more.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But I’m not really in a position to question why something makes me happy.”

Dumbfounded, I watch as he navigates back to the interstate.

“Not many things make you happy, then?” I ask, when we’ve driven with nothing but the radio for at least thirty miles.

“They do. Some things.” He weaves the Jeep through some out-of-town minivans. “It just...never lasts this long.”

Give it a few weeks, I think.

What I actually say is probably even worse.

“I totally get that.”

Theo smiles, while I mentally pummel myself over yet another Real Ruby slip.

I’m not trying to relate to Theo, here. I can’t.

The last time I made that mistake, it cost me so much more than I ever thought it could.

But now he’s glancing at me, waiting for more, and my filter decides to take the night off. “I just mean...for me, at least, I’m always thinking, ‘This or that will make me happy.’ Not just for a moment, but forever. I think it’ll be permanent, because I want it so much...how could it not, you know?” I take a breath. “But then it doesn’t last. New jobs, new apartments, new clothes—it feels like happiness is this big tank we’re always trying to fill, but it’s got a crack at the bottom.”

Finally, my words bleed themselves dry. I stare out my window at the blur of dormant trees. Skeleton hands, clawing into the sky.

“Exactly,” he says.

Hours melt together, the same way they did before. We chat, listen to music, and laugh. I keep telling myself it’s okay that I’m actually having fun. It makes the act believable.

Instead of following a normal route back to St. James, he takes every turn exactly as we did before. I wonder why my stomach gets butterflies when I realize he memorized them.

The sun is up when we get back to Braise. I’ve never talked to someone through an entire night. It leaves me with a weird, hazy kind of adrenaline.

He eases up beside my car and unbuckles, turning to put one arm behind my seat. I feel his breath on my ear and loathe the fact I will always associate caramel apples and banana cream pie with him, from this moment on.

“I’ve got two favors to ask you.”

Look at him. For once, the whole shy thing isn’t part of my character. I’m really doing it, because looking him in the eye keeps unraveling me. I don’t know how much is left before I’m down to nothing.

As soon as our eyes meet, he puts his hand back on my face.

“First,” he whispers, “tell me one more thing about you. Anything.” His fingers brush my pearl earring. I feel it swinging like a pendulum, seeming to sync with my heartbeat. “Something I can think about nonstop until the next time I see you.”

Again, all I can think to tell him is something true.

“I really want you to kiss me, right now.”

A smirk flashes across his face. “That,” he whispers, “was going to be my second favor.”

As I sink into his kiss, caught up in the grip of his hands on either side of my face, the strength in his hold so counter to the softness of his lips, I sigh. It’s the quietest, happiest sound. He drinks it up like an elixir. Something that can magically fix the crack in that tank.

My hands follow their own path, a series of lefts and rights I had no part