Page 4 of Lights Out

I have two days off starting Friday. Wanna come over that night and bring a mask like this? I promise I’ll make it interesting for you.

His response didn’t come back until a few hours into my shift the next day because he’d been asleep like a normal person when I sent my text.

My heart sank as I read his words.

Damn, girl. You still alive? I thought you ghosted me. It’s been two months. Pass on the mask thing. I’m not into it, and I’m seeing someone anyway.

Two months? Had it really been that long? I scrolled up in our text thread, and, shit, it had. Maybe it was time to book anothertherapy session and ask if they had any tips for balancing a personal life alongside this line of work.

Because clearly, I was failing.

Chapter 2

Josh

You good, man?” I asked my roommate. We’d paused our video game five minutes ago so he could text someone, and I was getting bored.

Tyler flopped onto the couch next to me. “Yeah, just had to break things off with that girl Aly I was hooking up with.”

I frowned. “I thought you ended it months ago.”

He shook his head and ran a hand through his dark blond hair, flexing his bicep and turning to check his muscles out.

“Knock it off,”was on the tip of my tongue, but I kept my mouth shut. There wasn’t anyone here for Tyler to impress, but he’d been vain as long as I’d known him, and he posed even when he didn’t realize he was doing it. It was almost like a nervous tic at this point, so he must have been more bothered by the Aly situation than he was letting on.

“I thought she ghosted me,” he said. “But she probably got busy at work again.”

I turned toward the TV and tried to act natural. “She’s an ER nurse, right?”

I already knew the answer to that, along with several other facts like her address, where she’d gone to nursing school, what kind of grades she got, and what her current work schedule was. You know, normal things people knew about their roommate’s ex-hookups.

“Yeah,” Tyler said. “I don’t hear from her for two months, and then look at the shit she sends me.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it, and tossed it to me. I caught it out of the air and glanced down, freezing the second my eyes landed on the screen.

Oh, fuck.

It was happening. The day I’d dreaded since starting a secret social media account two years ago had finally arrived. My online life was colliding with my real one, and I was about to be found out.

Play it fucking cool, man, I told myself. Tyler was watching me, and I couldn’t let him see how freaked out I was. But, fuuuck, Aly had a mask kink, and of all the screenshots she could have sent my roommate, she chose this one.

I cleared my throat. “You never said she was into this kind of thing.” Which was weird because Tyler had a habit of telling me every sordid detail of his sex life, even though I’d begged him to keep it to himself.

He snorted. “I didn’t know she was, so it’s good I’m seeing Sarah because I’m not. I just want to get in, get off, and get the fuck out. I’m not down for playing games.”

How unfortunate for the people he slept with.

“I hear that,” I lied, tilting the phone toward me as if I were inspecting the picture, and, whoops, there went my thumb. “Shit. I just accidentally deleted the text.”

Tyler shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t need some shirtless dude on my screen.”

Some shirtless dude,I thought as I handed the phone back. So, he hadn’t looked at the picture too closely because if he had, he would have recognized the tattoos. My tattoos. A girl he’d slept with had sent him a screenshot from one of my videos, and I’d be laughing if not for the fear of discovery and the adrenaline roaring through my veins.

“You ready?” he asked, lifting his controller.

“Sure.”

He unpaused the game, and we went back to shooting at everything that moved. I tried to focus on the split screen before me, but all I could think of was that text. Aly wanted to be fucked by someone wearing a mask.

---