Page 127 of Masked Sins
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE RECIPROCITY
Layla
That was, by far, the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced.
I know I’m not very experienced. Being demisexual means that for the majority of my adolescence, I fell for my guy friends, and once in a while, I’d entertain the idea of doing stuff with them. But when everything happened freshman year of high school, I gave up trying. My formative years were spent in my room at home, reading and spending time with my family. I never dated—never wanted to. I’m not completely inexperienced, but it’s harder for me to explore sex and relationships. I thought it was because of the assault.
Derek Nichols.
Star football player.
I’d been young and stupid. He set his sights on me, and I let him sweet-talk me into going on a walk around the field with him one night after a football game. Orion had driven me, and he was waiting in his car to drive me home. Derek took me out onto the field after everyone left. He showed me how to pass a football. He laughed with me, and I was smitten—or I thoughtI should be, at least. He was a popular senior, and I was a freshman.
He wanted to show me the locker room next, and I let him.
The next thing I knew, he’d flipped the lights off and his tongue was in my mouth. His hands felt so unwelcome, and I asked him to stop. Instead, he kept going.
I screamed.
He’d placed a hand over my mouth and had been using his fingers when Orion burst through the door.
I remember sobbing as Orion straddled Derek—punching him until his face was a bloodied pulp.
Derek was in a coma for three months, and he spent six months in the hospital.And I lost trust in men.
Until Starboy.
The connection happened so quickly.
I realize it’s because Orion knew it was me and used that to his advantage.
As I look over at my stepbrother, I imagine what it was like to see my name pop up in his messages.
“I don’t know if I ever thanked you,” I tell him as we walk down the main street in Crestwood.
His apartment is only a couple of blocks away, and like earlier, it’s still warm enough to be comfortable.
“For what?” he asks.
He’s holding my hand—and hasn’t let go since we left Inferno. It should feel weird, but instead, it feels normal. Like we’ve been doing this in another version of this life somewhere, and those alternative versions of ourselves have somehow crossed over into this dimension.
“For what happened in high school. With Derek Nichols.”
He huffs a laugh. “You were pretty mad at me back then.”
I smile. “I know. But I felt ostracized from my friends. From the school. Everyone hated me. Back then, that’s all thatmattered. Plus, I remember getting over my anger at you pretty quickly.”
Orion smiles as he remembers what he’d done for me the following week.
“I was a pretty great stepbrother,” he says. It reminds me of the ice cream truck that sat parked in front of our house for weeks, serving only strawberry ice cream in cones with little Ls on them. At the time, I thought it was a sweet gesture.
I felt … cherished.
I look up at him, and he’s staring straight ahead. Now… I see it in a different light.
I see a twenty-year-old struggling with trying to fit between a family with an emotionally absent father and his new family that wassodifferent from how he was raised. My dad rode him really hard when he was younger. He used to say he was making up for lost time—insinuating that Charles wasn’t doing a good job raising him.
