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

“Theo!” Paige yanked me through the bodies, although now her being my human steamroller wasn’t necessary: people parted for us like the Red Sea. It was jarring to see the actual floor.

“Where is it?” she shouted up at him. “I know you had one. Show us.”

He gaped at her, ready to scream something back, when a group of guys snuck up on the other side of the island and punched the back of his knee, laughing. His leg buckled and he fell backward, into their waiting hands.

“Get the fuck off me!”

A fight ensued, Theo’s slurred threats and staggered punches blurring as more boys joined in, girls screamed, and the music kept playing.

“Fuck it,” she breathed, taking my hand again. We plowed our way out to the back deck, then down a set of concrete steps on a hill. The smell of fresh grass and the bay breeze felt like peroxide to my soul: cleansing, but so painful.

“What’s going on?” At last, I had the ability to pull my hand from hers. I was grateful for her help and kindness, but I needed answers. Now. “What did he do?”

In the moonlight, Paige’s eyes shone again. She folded her arms and looked around. We were alone.

“He filmed you, Aria.” Her tears fell. “He hid a webcam in the skulls on his shelf. I know he did.”

My tongue felt thick and wrong, like an allergic reaction. “How?”

Briefly, she glanced away. Her face reddened.

“Because he’s done it before, to other girls.” I heard her swallow. “He’s done it to me.”

My head was swimming again. I hated this. I wanted to be sober, and showered, at home or eating pie with Callum and his brother at our favorite diner. Not outside some sprawling Hamptons mansion, hearing this.

“Maybe I’m wrong.” Paige hesitated, then reached out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I hope I am, for your sake. But...I don’t think I am. I know Theo.”

“Why did everyone come upstairs, then?”

“Why does anyone do shit like this?” she shrugged angrily. “They think it’s funny. I’m willing to bet some random guy stumbled in, saw you two, told his buddies…then it went from there. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Theo told a bunch of them himself, before the party started. It’s all a big joke to him.”

My stomach lurched, but I took solace in knowing I couldn’t possibly throw up anything else. I coughed until the taste of bile was gone, then sat underneath a window. She joined me.

For a long time, we were silent. The party pulsed behind us. The soft roar of the bay was drowned in the throbbing chaos of teenagers with too much money and time.

“What’s he going to do?”

“Post the video on every porn site he can,” she muttered, pulling her knees to her chest, “and spam the internet with links. That’s what happened with all the others, anyway.” She looked at me, tear tracks glistening in the white moonlight. “Like I said, my uncle can help you get most of them taken down, if you want. But it’ll always be out there somehow. Just warning you.”

Numbly, I thanked her and took the tattered business card she produced from her phone case’s wallet.

“You should go home. Get some rest, think things over—”

As she spoke, I was nodding, getting to my feet and trying to text Callum with trembling hands. Don’t think about tomorrow. Just focus on tonight.

Get home. Get sleep.

“No.” I shook my head. My phone screen blurred; I blinked the tears away and slid it back into my bra. “I need to talk to him.”

“Who? Theo?” She jumped up and followed me around to the front of the house.

“If I can just talk to him—”

“I’m telling you, Aria, he won’t listen!” She grabbed my arm and jerked me off the porch. “You can’t reason with a guy like that. You don’t think I tried, when he did it to me?”

Breathless, I turned and faced her again. She was probably right.

But all I could think of was the boy I’d spent the last few hours with, up above it all in his quiet corner of this modern palace. How could that not be real?

How could that boy have done this?

“It’s got to be a misunderstanding.” I stumbled back to the door, barging through before she could stop me.

“Theo?” I called, once again amazed at how the crowd now moved like I was royalty, all the way to the kitchen.

He was still screaming at people to leave. Most ignored him. A few guys kept shoving him, laughing when he’d stumble hard against the cabinets or appliances. He was too drunk to fight back.

“Theo.” I stood in front of him and waited until his dazed, bloodshot eyes met mine.

Ask him.

But before I could get the words out, I noticed something snaking from his pocket.

A long, black wire.

Paige was at my side again, begging me to leave with her. Just go. Fuck Theo, she said. Fuck these kids. Fuck everybody.

I drew away, my drunkenness intensifying as I leaned hard on the island and reached for the wire.

Theo, even more drunk, was too slow to stop me.

The kitchen went dead silent when I yanked the wire from his pocket, holding it up in front of my face.

The webcam spun back and forth in my shaking grip.

“Oooh!” someone heckled, and suddenly bodies were moving again, taunts and insults flooding the kitchen. Cell phones extended into the air.

Theo looked around. His face paled. I thought of his adorable, overblown reaction to his own blood, and how much I’d loved doctoring him: