Page 44 of Fourth Wheel
I leave his room and pull his door closed, satisfied that I won’t have to wake him up again. I peek in on my mom and find her fast asleep, too.
Everyone’s settled. Everything’s fine. Maybe now I can finally get some sleep.
The climb back to my wing feels heavy. As soon as I hit the landing, I know why.
I’m pulled toward her room by a magnetism unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my life. This connection between us is as strong as the one that ties me to my brother. It’s a force I know I can’t fight forever.
I pace outside her door, drowning in indecision. I want to see her. I want to return the favor and rock her world the way she rocked mine. And even if she’s fast asleep and that’s not an option, I just want to hold her tonight.
I decide to go for it, twisting the doorknob as slowly as possible. But after a slight turn of my wrist, I’m met with resistance. I check again and get the same result. The door is locked.
“Good girl,” I mutter, spinning on my heel and heading back to my room where I belong.
I didn’t tell her to lock her door to keep him out. I told her to lock her door to keep me away.
Chapter 21
Maddie
Iwakeupwithoutan alarm as the sun peeks through the French doors of the balcony. I’m stiff and cranky but rested enough. Dempsey wants to take me home early, and I plan to be nothing but compliant after everything he went through last night.
Speaking of last night…
I smile at the memory of the fun we had on the balcony. That’s exactly what it was: good trouble and big fun. It could be like that all summer if Dempsey would pull the stick out of his ass and play along. He’ll be hard-pressed to look me in the eye and pretend he wasn’t as into that blow job as I was. I’veneverhad a man moaning for me quite like that.
I practically ran back to my room when I left him, locking the door and leaping into this bed so I could finish. I PRed in getting myself off last night, then couldn’t resist rubbing out one more to the memory of him spitting on my tits and playing me like an instrument.
My body tingles in remembrance, but I shove down those thoughts and force myself to focus on why I’m up so early to begin with. I grab my phone off the nightstand to check the time, then stare, slack-jawed, when I see every social media icon on my home screen maxed out with 99+ notifications.
Fuckity fuck.
All I have to do is open up Instagram to confirm what I already know. I’ve been tagged in dozens of videos from the party.
I click the first one that pops up; it already has more than three thousand views. I jolt when I hear my own voice through the device. I keep scrolling and clicking. Each video was shot at a different angle or with a filter applied to cut through the graininess. Some start long before I arrived on the scene. I can barely watch as they beat on Fielding, a mob against one. But Andrew wasn’t wrong: Fielding rallied them all together, then wound them up until they started wailing on him. He really did ask for it.
A lot of the videos have added reactions or stupid emojis over my face. A few of them have a filter applied to Adley, or music added in the background. These Hampton fuckers really put some effort into their content, that’s for damn sure.
A knock at the door startles me. I set my phone down and look up to find Dempsey standing in the doorway.
“Hey. Good morning. Is it okay if we go soon?” He speaks softly, his tone matching my mood.
Sucking in a steadying breath, I offer him a tight smile before nodding. I figured it would be like this between us this morning—measured and reserved. But I’m okay being at neutral with him when I’m feeling so raw.
I pick up my phone but accidentally swipe the screen in the process, unpausing the video I still have cued up. Fielding’s muffled voice fills the room, and Dempsey’s eyes dart to mine.
“What is that?” he demands, making it over to the bed in four strides and hovering over me until I’m forced to sit back down.
“It’s a video from last night,” I explain. “It’s… they’re all over social media.”
“They’re?” he growls.
“There’s a lot of them...”
“Show me,” he demands, perching on the end of the unmade bed.
I tuck my legs under me and place my phone in his hands, then exit the video to scroll through all the options.
“These are the ones I’m tagged in. There are more from before I arrived… then others don’t start until I’m at Fielding’s side.”
