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

“Wouldn’t be so sure about that, babe.”

Callum’s voice booms from behind me, no longer muffled or distant.

I spin to face him. “How did you—”

He tosses something in my direction. It lands halfway under the armchair. I kneel and sweep it out with my hand.

It’s his key.

As I stand, all I can picture is him digging through my car at the ice rink. All I can do is shut my eyes and berate myself for being so foolish—for trusting him with even that little.

For leaving my purse on the seat.

For putting his old key right where he could find it, in the little zippered pocket where he knew I keep anything small and valuable.

And when I open my eyes, I berate myself even more for believing a simple key would be all he took.

“Thought you’d like to see this,” he tells Theo.

In his fingers is my license. He lets it clatter to the table.

I feel Theo staring at me, but I’m too scared to look back. Ironic, since Callum’s the dangerous one. His eyes are the ones that should be filling me with fear: they’re steeled with rage, glazed from God only knows, and so flat they look soulless.

But in Theo’s, I know I’d see something far scarier.

“Get out of here, Callum,” I snap, then soften my voice when I turn in Theo’s direction. “Look, it’s not how it—”

“Ruby Aria Jacobs,” he reads.

Like a magic spell, it freezes my heartbeat.

“Theo, I swear, it’s not.... I can explain it all, okay?”

Callum snorts. The scratched, overplayed record of my remorse flips to rage as I pivot and shove him.

“Go,” I seethe.

My gaze locks on his. It doesn’t scare me anymore. I wonder why it ever did—two beady, red windows into the mangled life of a boy who never tried to make things better. I used to feel bad for him, thinking he wanted out of the gutter and simply didn’t know how.

But no…he knew. He just wanted to pull me in with him.

“Get out of my house.” I bite off every word, fist closing around the hot metal of his key. My key. “Now.”

Callum smirks in that blood-boiling way, hands up by his head, mocking me. “Easy now, babe. Losing one boyfriend tonight already—sure you can afford to lose me, too?”

“You’re not my boyfriend. You’re fucking nothing to me.”

Callum cocks an eyebrow, running his tongue along the inner edge of his bottom lip. The place where all the scar tissue is.

“Tell him, Ruby. Tell him what you told me.”

I shove him again, trying to steer him to the door. Whatever’s in his bloodstream right now obliterates his balance, and he stumbles hard into the utility door under the stairs.

“Remember? That it was all fake?” He pulls himself up by the painted iron banister. The metal groans, barely able to hold his weight. “Just revenge?”

My stomach collapses. My lungs follow.

Most of those moments in our lives that stick with us, those short-term memories that age into long-term, feel insignificant at the time. Car rides with my aunt, holding my mother’s pearls…I remember them so vividly, but thought nothing of them as they happened.

Other memories, though—you feel them. The second they occur, you know they’re carving out their own suite in your head, where they’ll remain until the day you die. Like the night Theo filmed us. Callum, scooping me off that driveway.

And I know that right now, listening to his sick, mangled laugh as he pulls on the banister to right himself, is one of those times. My heart thunders again, as the truth I was too slow to reveal finally gets out there.

I feel it happening. This moment, becoming part of my Forever.

“What were you planning to do? You never did let me in on the details. Take his money? Film him and slap it up online?” Callum smiles knowingly at me.

As in, he knows he’s spewing lies. He knows he’s ruining my life. And he doesn’t care.

That smile is so crooked and wrong. It stretches far enough to one side to show the gap where a molar is missing, the one that turned black and had to be pulled. It makes me as sick to see the gap as the rotten tooth once did. Everything about him sickens me, now.

It sickens me most that I once looked at that cruel smile and made it my whole world.

“You’re welcome,” Callum sneers at Theo over my shoulder, as I corral him to the door, leaning my full weight into him. My nails claw at his chest. I feel frantic, and I don’t really know why. It’s done.

My secret is over.

I’d hoped I would be relieved, but I’m not. I realize it’s not enough, just having the truth out there.

It was supposed to be me who gave it to Theo.

The second Callum’s outside, I lock the deadbolt and doorknob. For once, he doesn’t put up a fight. His damage is done. He’s happy.

I watch through the peephole as he vanishes down the steps towards the parking lot, blending into the night. My fists relax into open palms against the door.

When I compose myself and return, Theo’s sitting again. I decide this is a good sign, even if he still won’t remove his jacket.

We both stare at my license, now centered perfectly on the coffee table.

I stand across from him and wait.

“Aria,” he says again, scratching the back of his head as he nods to himself, like he should have known.

I hate hearing him call me that. It’s not who I am.

But am I really Ruby, either? The version he thought he knew?

“Theo...this isn’t how I wanted it to come out. That—that was really fucked-up timing, because I was literally