Page 16 of Triple Play
It’s one AM and I’m staring at my ceiling like it holds answers.
It doesn’t.
Never does.
Sleep is for people who don’t have nightmares waiting behind their eyelids. For people who didn’t stand helpless in their driveway at fourteen, watching firefighters battle a blaze that consumed everything. Everyone.
So I stare at the ceiling instead. Every light in my room blazing because darkness means fire means screaming means—
I cut that thought off. Practiced. Clean. And take a deep breath.
The house settles around me. Old bones creaking. Jordie snoring down the hall. Grant’s room silent as a tomb next door.
And her.
Elise.
Dark hair that falls in waves she doesn’t bother styling, hazel eyes that shift between green and gold depending on her mood, and a mouth that defaults to a smirk like she knows something you don’t. The girl who showed up last night and made my carefully controlled world tilt sideways.
I don’t do complicated. Don’t do feelings or connection or any of that shit that requires trust. Trust gets you hurt. Gets you left behind in another foster home with another family who couldn’t quite make it work.
I close my eyes, try to fucking sleep for once when I hear it.
A sound through the wall.
Faint. Barely there.
A buzzing.
My brain catalogs it automatically. Electric. Mechanical. Rhythmic.
Then I hear her gasp.
Fuck.
Is that?
Elise…using a vibrator?
My body responds before my brain catches up. Heat pooling low, cock going half-hard in my sweatpants because apparently I’m seventeen again with zero self-control.
She’s getting herself off. Ten feet away through this thin-as-paper wall. And I’m lying here listening like some kind of pervert.
I should leave. Go downstairs. Put headphones on. Do literally anything else.
I don’t move.
Another sound. Softer. A moan she’s trying to muffle and failing.
My hand moves to my dick without permission. Palms it through my sweats. I’m hard now. Fully. Pathetically.
This is wrong. I know it’s wrong.
But I can hear her breathing speed up. Can imagine what she looks like—her lush mouth relaxed in pleasure, those thighs spread, hand or toy or both working between her legs.
My hand slips into my waistband. Just to adjust. Just to relieve some of the pressure.
Liar.
