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

the pool. If he’s looking for more underwater adventures, I’ve got news for him.

At least, I hope I do.

As he leads me around the pool’s perimeter, I find myself glancing wistfully at the water. I stare at that submerged chair and imagine sitting in it, all the way at the bottom of the pool, while Theo kneels in front and eats me out like oxygen no longer matters.

Get it together. I feel myself getting wet, which makes me panic because I’m in his shorts...which just gets me wetter.

“Hang on,” he says, stopping in front of a small outbuilding. It’s a poolhouse, but modern and elegant, a tiny copy of his home.

For fuck’s sake. Even his shed is better than my actual townhouse.

While he mumbles to himself and frowns at the keypad, trying to remember the combination, I slip my wrist from his grasp. I don’t like that his thumb pressed right into my vein, like his own personal button to highjack my heartbeat.

“There it is,” he sighs, throwing his head back in relief and exasperation when the keypad flips to green. The door pops and hums. He opens it with a flourish and nods at me to go inside.

I blink as the lights flicker to life.

It is a poolhouse, given the supplies and nets against one wall, but the rest is cozy and sleek. There’s a kitchenette and pull-out sofa on one side of the room, and a narrow door I figure must be a bathroom.

On the other side of the poolhouse is a baby grand piano, in flawless white.

“Piano.” I can’t help the look of disbelief I shoot him. “You?”

“Well, shit,” he snorts, grabbing a sweatshirt from the sofa and pulling it on, “you don’t have to sound so shocked. You knew I played something.”

“Yeah, but....” I shake my head at myself. I don’t know what I expected. Honestly, I kind of thought the whole Juilliard thing was bullshit, or that he played something so obscure and weird there was no doubt his dad’s money paved his way.

Something about the piano seems too sensitive and classic for a guy who turns his hookups into cam girls against their will.

Theo leads me to the sofa and positions himself at the piano. “Any requests?”

I shrug. “Beethoven, I guess.”

“Do you actually like Beethoven? I want to play something you like.”

“I don’t know much piano music.”

“Doesn’t have to be piano. What’s your favorite song?”

The poolhouse is heated, but I hug my arms to myself anyway. The way he glances at me over his shoulder, mouth pulled into a charming and patient smile, makes me feel unhinged.

Like roulette, every song I know spins through my head. Whether I want to give him a popular one so I can accurately judge his ability, or something obscure just to hear him admit he can’t do it, I can’t decide.

But the little bouncing marble lands, time and again, on one track in particular, until I can’t think of anything else.

“‘How to Save a Life.’” The couch feels like it’s swallowing me whole. “The Fray.”

Theo nods, all business, and hums it to himself as he studies the keys.

At last, he starts playing.

The notes melt through the air. Those initial ones dig into me, sewing needles across my nerves. I shouldn’t have picked this song. I know it too well.

And, apparently, so does he.

Theo’s shoulders and spine flow with his motions as effortlessly as his hands, his left taking over the background music, while his right plays the notes of the vocals. I try to focus on accuracy—whether or not he’s getting the notes and timing just right; how smoothly the music flows—but all I can do is admire the movement of his body. The emotions in those notes.

The way the song swells through this space, and unsettles something deep in my soul.

“So...yeah. I play piano.” Theo laughs to himself as he picks out those last lingering notes, then spins to straddle the bench and look at me.

I feel the tears on my skin way too late.

He gets up and kneels in front of the sofa, prying my folded arms apart to take my hand. “That bad, huh?”

“No.” I laugh and sniff, shaking my head when he offers me a tissue from the bathroom. After a second, I take it anyway. “It was really good.” Amazing, in fact.

Theo is bizarrely talented. I can’t deny it. Whether it was enough to get him into Juilliard on his own merits or not, I’m not sure; my musical abilities and knowledge are way too lacking to make the call. But there’s no question he at least earned his audition slot.

“I’m just crying because of the song,” I confess. It makes me blush. A real one.

Theo joins me on the couch and pulls me in. Dangerous as it is, I let him. His broad, warm chest relaxes me.

“Who’s it for?” he asks.

Part of me is amazed he figured it out, but I tell myself not to be so easily impressed. Lots of people associate that song with lost loved ones. Or ones they’re about to lose.

“Just a friend.” Callum’s hardened face appears before me like a hologram. “Someone I know I can’t keep in my life much longer.”

Much as I’ve thought it, this is the first time I’ve ever said it out loud: that Callum and I can’t stay friends. He’s got too many problems, one of which is our shared bad habit of always getting back together, just to dodge loneliness.

Add in the pills, alcohol, anger, manipulation…and I know our expiration date passed years ago.

“That’s never easy.” Theo wipes my tears away with the cuff of his sleeve, then pulls me closer. I spread my hand across his chest and breathe in time