Page 35 of Manhattan Tormentor

I save him the trouble with whatever excuse he has ready. Hardening my voice until it’s cold. “Go ahead, deny it. Make it alright in your head that you got jerked off by a guy. It’s not gay, yeah? Two bro’s helping each other out, isn’t that right? Go ahead, I dare you.”

“This was a mistake. It never happened.” He tells me.

Gutting me from the inside.

I am so stupid.

“Get out,” I reply, looking through the window, my fingers chalk white as I grip the steering wheel.

“This was…”

“Yeah, yeah. I heard you the first time. Get out, it never happened.”

He slides out and slams the door behind him.

Watching him take the walk away from me cracks a pain inside me so wide I know I won’t be the same.

Straight guys can go to hell.

That one in particular.

C H A P T E R 9

Sage

“You hooked up.”

Not something I want to hear coming from my sister, and I half-choke on the too hot mocha latte.

She’s grinning as slyly as only Raene Fierro can.

Baby con artist. Prima donna diva.

She knows things because she’s as nosy as our mother.

It’s impossible to hide anything from her.

Usually I don’t. I have a tight relationship with Raene. Sometimes it feels more like we’re twins than siblings, with only twelve months between us.

Yeah, our parents got busy. All four of us have accepted the fact that they were banging again and making another baby only months after one of us was born.

Shaking that morbid thought from my head, I sip again while she goes on staring at me across the café table.

She can out wait any man, and it makes me sweat a little.

“Don’t say hooked up. You shouldn’t even know those two words.”

Shepft’sand rolls her pretty blue eyes.

I notice a kid in her grade watching her like a starving dog. Throwing my most menacing Fierro stare at him until he cowers and drops his gaze. Horn dog better keep his eyes to the floor too. I have no problem rallying the troops; those being Theo and Lachie. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve scared a boy away from Bunny.

“Who was it? Is he hot or a complete troll but you’re inexplicably attracted to his hunchback, anyway?”

I snort. She’s always been a funny little thing.

She won’t drop this unless I give her something.

So I shrug. “Who said I hooked up?”

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