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

I want clarity while I commit the feeling of being wrapped around him to memory.

“And some,” I add, a moment later, “need a clean place to bring their mistresses.”

Theo’s laugh barks out in a blast of fog overhead, but quiets when I give him a wide-eyed “I’m serious” look.

“Wait, for real?”

“Yep. They try to play it off, like, ‘Oh, I’m here to complete some work, here’s my secretary’ or whatever, but then only one bed needs the linens changed. Worst part is, they honestly think they’re being slick. But we can’t call them out on it.”

“I’d want to.”

“Trust me, my tongue has a scar from where I keep biting it.”

Speaking of: here it is again, that urge to tell Theo a truth about myself. Any truth. Even if it’s got nothing to do with all my lies.

At least it’s a start.

“My dad cheated on my mom, so I just can’t look at anyone who does that with respect.” I walk my fingers between the bolts in the chaise’s armrests. “It’s one of the worst things you can do to a person. If you don’t love them anymore, get the fuck out of their lives. Or sack up and commit to some counseling. But don’t choose someone else before you’ve let the first person go.”

Theo tightens his arms around me, and it’s only then I notice how fast I was breathing. How angry I suddenly am.

“My mom cheated, too.” His voice is quiet but heavy, decorating my ear like funeral lace. He shifts underneath me. “Did your dad leave?”

I hesitate. I already told him this story once...as someone else.

We sat close, just like this, and bared it all. The thick, ugly scars shared by kids whose parents abandoned them before they even knew what the word meant. All we knew was the space they left.

It felt incredible to meet someone who understood, and I want that connection back.

But I want it to be between Theo and me. Not Theo and Aria.

“Yeah,” I answer. “He left.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We were better off without him.” My voice cracks, but I really do mean that. Yeah, it fucking hurts when people you love can’t love you back—but it hurts a lot less than having them stick around, pretending.

“When did he leave?”

“I was four, almost five. A week before my birthday, actually.” I snort, even though it’s not funny. “He’d been in and out constantly, up to that point, so I didn’t care anymore. I figured it was better for him to go for good, than for my mom to keep believing him when he said he’d do better.”

“I wish my mom had left sooner.” Theo yawns, stretching the arm I’m not lying on over his head. “It’s exhausting when they drag that shit out. Like trying to fix a sweater, but every few days they keep pulling the thread to screw it all up again.”

Craning my neck, I find a new thing I want to commit to memory: the stunning angles of his face from below, painted in faint moon-glow and shimmering pool lights. They combine into a dreamy, faint green color I want tattooed on my skin somehow, somewhere, even though I know no one could ever get it right.

“How old were you?” I ask softly. “When she left.”

Theo shakes his head and brings his arm back down, picking at the edge of the bandage on his finger.

I keep staring. I know it’s not exactly a fun topic—I’d rather be screwing him senseless in the poolhouse, right about now—but I’ve made up my mind to tell him about my mother, and I need him to do the same.

If I’m going to unravel my past for him, I want his lying in strands at my feet, too.

“Thirteen,” he says, cracking the silence with his answer.

“Shit.” I pull the blanket higher, up to both our chins. “Guess I was lucky, being too young to get that attached. I barely remember my dad. But being a teenager when your mom left—”

“No luck involved, Ruby. It always hurts. They’re our parents. We’re always attached.”

The solitude, nothing but our breathing and the sound of the bay churning up the darkness below, touches down again.

“Did she cheat the whole time?”

He nods. “It was a really long affair. The whole marriage, basically. Same guy.”

Once again, my sympathy strikes hard. Here I’d thought it was horrible my dad cheated with multiple women—which it was. But there’s a different kind of sting, I imagine, when the asshole spouse has an actual relationship on the side.

“Who with?”

“An ‘investor’ for her blog. Fun fact, I had to get a DNA test during the divorce proceedings.” Theo holds up his fingers with a sliver of space left between them. “That’s how close the timing of it all was.”

He drops his hand and shrugs. “Or, who knows: maybe she knew damn well I was my dad’s kid—I am, by the way—and just lied because she assumed he’d give up custody, test-free. God knows that blog needed lots of Theo content to keep going.”

I get the feeling my next question won’t be welcome, but I’ve been dying to know for days. “Is the blog still up?”

He shakes his head. “Got a court order to remove all content of me. Not that it helped her get any less fucked in the head, mind you. She started lying about her own life, instead of mine.”

Theo rearranges again, moving his arm out from underneath me. I watch him pace to the railing, shrugging on his coat as he goes.

Wrapping two of the blankets around myself, I follow.

“Actually,” he sneers, “most of that started before she left. She faked a miscarriage, a brain tumor….”

“Oh, my God, are