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

and ignored their laughter, migrating to the other side of the burn barrel so my reddening face would look natural.

“This is Aria.” Paige looped her arm through mine and led me around the bonfire, introducing me to everyone. I already knew most of their names, even the ones my mom didn’t work for. I’d learned them steadily, summer after summer, in late conversations floating in pieces to me on the breeze.

A few nodded and said hey. Some even smiled.

“Theo!” Paige let go of my arm and bounced to the boy wearing...good God. Not much of anything.

Keep your eyes on his face, I told myself as he brought those tanned, carved muscles into my weakening orbit.

It didn’t help. His face was just as beautiful: a square jaw, already painted with light stubble; pink lips, windburned and parting with a smile; and wet hair that graced his forehead with one lucky bead of water at a time. They ran straight down his nose, sinking into his lips when he’d stop to press them together.

But his eyes were what did me in.

They were brilliant, deep green, my favorite color. His gaze held steady when he nodded hello as, through a cacophony of static and my own pulse, I heard Paige introduce us.

“Hi,” I managed, and was startled when he offered a handshake, after all.

I’d memorized every last detail of this group from afar, including Theo Durham. But evidently, I still had a lot to learn about him.

The idea absolutely thrilled me.

Paige stood on her tiptoes to whisper in Theo’s ear. I noticed he winced as she got close, quickly nudging her back to arm’s length, but I figured he just didn’t like invasions of his personal space. I made a mental note of it: if, God willing, I ever had a chance to get close to him, I should proceed slowly.

He didn’t take his eyes off me as he listened.

“Sure,” he told her, nodding goodbye to me before tightening his swimsuit strings—God, how could something so simple make my heart pound so much?—and rejoining some other boys in the water.

“Wh— I meant for you to invite her!” Paige called. “It’s your party.”

Theo merely waved his hand at me, as if to tell her, You’ve got this.

With a flustered laugh, she turned back to me. “Theo’s weird like that. Sorry.”

“That’s okay.” I liked weird. Adored it. Lived it.

“Anyway,” she exhaled, “we’re having a party tonight at his place, if you want to stop by.”

This isn’t the party? I thought, glancing at the roaring fire and flowing liquor.

Then I thought, Of course it’s not. Just an appetizer. Kids like these would never bestow that title on such a small get-together.

Not when Theo Durham, the prince of parties, opened his palace doors.

1

Present Day

“Gilmour Durham, Durham Real Estate.”

Ah, the client greeting. Dad’s got his headset on, no time to check caller IDs.

“Did you know there’s a nail sticking out of the cellar steps?” I dab at the blood oozing from my calf onto his bathroom floor and measure my breathing. If I faint, I doubt he’ll register the thunk as me cracking my skull open. Just bad reception, he’d think.

“Theo?” Papers shuffle; he mutters something to Kimberly, his secretary. “Which cellar?”

“Hamptons.”

“You’re still out there? It’s November. Everyone’s left.” Clacking keys fill the room, along with slurping—probably a smoothie, instead of a real lunch. The soundtrack of a chronic multi-tasker.

“It cut my leg open.” I finish dressing the wound and get myself some water until the dizziness passes. “Where’s the hammer? I’ll fix it.”

“Hammer....” He hums, but he’s not really thinking about my question: just working through his current task, until his brain frees up enough cells to remember what a hammer actually is. “Oh! Hammer. Yeah, you know...I don’t think we have one. Call Jack.”

“I’m not calling a contractor over one nail, Dad.” I scrub my face and look at my reflection. The paleness is fading, but the circles under my eyes still look like bruises. I should be catching up on sleep.

Instead, here I am looking up the nearest hardware store to buy a hammer, to fix a single rogue nail, on stairs I never use unless guests are here.

And, as my father so astutely pointed out: everyone’s left.

We hang up when his secretary reminds him he’s got a meeting in two minutes. He tells me he’ll call later tonight. I pretend I believe it.

Downstairs, I wipe up the blood I left at the top of the wine cellar steps. The smell gets to me the most: like digging through a jar of patina-riddled pennies.

Next on the agenda is the wine I dropped when I fell, on the way to put it back. After all, there’s no one to drink it with. My last guests of the summer are long gone, having stayed until Halloween out of some combination of pity and having nowhere else to be.

I limp through the house, shutting off lights and electronics. There’s an app on my phone that can do it all in one digital swoop, but I like taking stock of the place: beer bottles and Solo cups I’ve ignored, clothes people left behind, and general disarray ranging from the crooked skulls on my father’s shelves, to a whole-ass chair at the bottom of the infinity pool. How I’ll clean this entire 4,000-square-foot monster myself by Thanksgiving, I have no idea.

Hammer first, I tell myself, as I lock the last door and head to the garage. My new Jeep, driven only four times all summer and three this fall, actually has dust on the hood. Somebody drew tits into it. I’d bet all my money on my cousin Van, if it was my money to