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

“That,” she says, inhaling deeply, “was...something.”

“Look, I don’t want you thinking I’m some prick who flies off the handle at every—”

“I don’t think that.” She picks up the ice pack Georgia brought me earlier and presses it to my aching temple. I’m not sure if it’s the ice that helps most, or having her here. “I think you had every right to beat that guy up. What a douche.”

I laugh, quieting fast when her free hand touches my jaw. Carefully, she runs her thumb over the swollen section of my lip.

“Does it hurt?” she whispers.

As numb with lust as I just was with rage, I shake my head.

“Good,” she says, and kisses me until every last sliver of anger is gone.

Theo and I head to our room hours before anyone else.

“They’re still talking about it,” I tell him, when I come back from my eavesdropping mission at the top of the stairs. Instead of social media, the group is now raving over Theo’s well-deserved eruption and Max’s early departure. Much to everyone’s disappointment, Brooke went with him.

“If it makes you feel better, nobody blames you. I don’t think a single person wanted him here besides his girlfriend. And even that’s questionable.”

“It doesn’t make me feel better. I should have controlled myself.” Theo undresses with a slight stumble; whether that’s the whiskey on his breath or the aftermath of what few punches Max got in, I’m not sure.

I steady him by wrapping my arms tightly around his waist. In my hold, he relaxes.

“Ask me,” he sighs, after a moment of me just holding him, breathing in his scent. “I know you want to.”

“I don’t.”

“Liar,” he laughs quietly.

I press my face into his sternum and feel his heartbeat in my sinuses. “Don’t call me a liar,” I whisper.

I know he was kidding. And, even if he weren’t...that’s what I am. But I still can’t stand to hear it. It hurts more than him calling me honest.

“It’s not how it sounds,” he says, after a beat. “I didn’t ‘do porn.’ There just...used to be some videos of me out there. Let’s leave it at that.” He holds me at arm’s length and stares into my eyes. “They’re gone now. They’ve been gone.”

Yeah, I think bitterly, I know. I fought nonstop to take them down.

He’s wrong, though. Somewhere out there, a copy or two still exists. It always will. And, if nothing else, it’ll live in my head forever.

“Really. It’s okay.” I give him a smile I don’t mean, but that I know he’ll fall for. He always does. “If you say it’s not what it sounds like, then...I believe you.”

Theo stares at me another moment, then takes my face in his hands and kisses me. “You,” he declares against my mouth, “are amazing.”

Liar, I think, then hate myself all over again for making him one.

We change into sweatpants and T-shirts, climb into bed, and watch movies on the tablet he props up between us.

In the middle of a fight scene, I pause it and turn to face him. “I do have one question.”

“I knew it.” Theo flops into the pillows. “Okay, go. Let’s get it over with.”

“Not about the videos,” I correct, although I wish I could spill every question I’ve got about those, too. The biggest one is simply...why. And I know I can’t ask that.

“It’s about Max. You said you guys used to be friends. What happened?”

Theo wets his lips, thinking, then flinches at the pain; the lower corner is turning purple. Lightly, I touch it with my cold fingertips until he settles.

“He was one of the kids I overheard talking shit about me back in the day, that’s all. Most of them were just my Hamptons friends, people I only saw in the summertime. But Max…we went through school together. Our dads worked together. Anything one of us did, the other did too. Soccer, peewee football, sleepovers, detentions—you name it. Outside of my cousins, he was the closest I had to a best friend.”

“And you heard him joining in with everyone?”

“Leading it, actually.”

That sting in my heart comes back. At least the people talking bad about me in high school were enemies.

He props his head in his hand, elbow drilling into the pillows. “Realizing some of those kids just liked my money, the parties…it hurt, but it wasn’t the worst of it.”

I stretch my arm out underneath my head and push my fingers into his hair. “What was?”

“Finding out most of my friends, including Max, didn’t like me anymore because I was changing.”

It hits me milliseconds before I can ask. All our previous conversations collect in my head, forming the answer.

“You stopped being a bully,” I say softly.

He nods. “Started defending kids against my friends, too, calling them out on their shit, distancing myself when they stepped out of line.... But pulling a one-eighty like that didn’t sit well with my old crowd.” He messes with the strings of my sweatpants under the blanket while he talks, keeping his face and tone casual, but I know better.

I know better, because I’ve been there: having to play things cool. Ice fucking cold. Because the only thing that feels more pathetic than being the butt of someone’s jokes and fake friendships, is showing that they actually got to you.

“I’m glad you pulled a one-eighty.”

Weakly, he smiles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Because I like who you are now way better.” I cover his hand with mine on my abdomen. “Plus...I was one of those kids.”

Again, he nods. “I remember you telling me that, on our first date. You called yourself ‘socially