Page 52 of Moody as a Minotaur

“Don’t you worry about that.” Nana shook her head. “I doubt he’s involved with the hunting. He’s simply gullible and naïve. Everyone is at that age.”

I didn’t remember ever beingthatgullible or naïve.

“Like when you got stuck in that storm drain,” Nana said, as if reading my mind.

“Hey. That wasn’t me being gullible or naïve. I was saving a duckling.”

The little baby had fallen through the grates as it followed its mother with its little brothers and sisters. I remember being focused on getting that baby bird and not worrying about anything else. After removing the cover, I’d squeezed my torso into the drain so I could grab it. Which I did. Unfortunately, the drain was a little tighter than I’d anticipated. I got stuck. Firefighters were called in to help break me out. But the duckling was saved and returned to his mama.

You’d think that would have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t.

Unfortunately, my so-called best friend at the time had taken a video of me wiggling around with my ass in the air when I was wedged in the hole. The video made the rounds through the school.

If I’d been straight, that might have worked to my advantage, because after that every girl sprouted heart eyes when I walked by, praising me for saving the duckling. Unfortunately, the only thing the guys did was laugh at me.

It wasn’t until later that I discovered my video had been uploaded to a porn site. That’d always struck me as odd, because I’d stayed completely clothed through the whole duckling debacle. Who knew people fantasized about other people getting stuck in the washing machine or under a bed or, ahem, in a storm drain and having them at their mercy?

And once something was on the internet, it never really went away, even after countless take-down notices. Ask me how I know.

“You were gullible and naïve to trust that little shit of a friend,” Nana pointed out.

I sighed because she made a good point. Although, to be fair to Josh, I doubted he anticipated it would take off the way it had. He’d been just as gullible and naïve as me, apparently.

“Do you think Finley will be okay?”

Nana nodded. “Of course. He has Girard blood running through him. We’re resilient.”

I hoped she was right because we’d arrived at Levi’s house now and it was time to enact the first part of the plan. My stomach fluttered as I eyed his house. I’d knownwhere Levi lived for a long time now, but he’d never once invited me inside. This felt like a big step in our relationship—er, I mean friendship.

Davina and Nana gave me a thumbs up as I joined Levi on his front step.

“Remember,” Nana said before he could open the door. “No hanky-panky right now. You’ve got business to do, and we’ll be right outside waiting. If you want to get horizontal, you do that on your own time.”

“Nana!” I scolded her.

“Well, you were ready to rip his clothes off on the sidewalk a little while ago. I don’t know what you’ll get up to when you are alone and behind closed doors.”

I groaned and shook my head. Levi’s face looked as flushed as I felt. He turned to the door, probably partly to hide his face from Nana and Davina. When the door swung open, I moved to step inside, but Levi slid in front of me, blocking my way.

He cleared his throat. “So, uh, my house is a little different from what you might have imagined…”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… I live in an apartment on the second floor, and I have a gym in the basement, but the main floor is…” His words trailed off.

“Why don’t you show me?” I patted his chest. “It’ll be fine. I swear.”

He blew out a breath and stepped aside.

I pushed the door open wider and gaped. Beyond the threshold at the other side of the small vestibule were shelves, so very many shelves. “Wow… This is…”

“I’m not a hoarder,” Levi said quickly. “I just… I have stuff.”

And, boy, was he right. There was a lot ofstuff, or rather shelf after shelf ofstuffarranged to create a walking path the same width as a normal corridor. I couldn’t see the walls or where the doors to the rooms were. The placement of the shelves almost felt like a maze, but that’d be weird, right?

The white shelves were all the same style and size, so although there were a lot of things to see—because not a single shelf was empty—the space felt more like a museum than a hoarder’s house. There weren’t heaps of garbage or piles of newspapers or mounds of forgotten purchases like I’d seen on that TV show. No, everything was placed with purpose.

The shelves I could see from the threshold contained dioramas of every description. Some looked like famous rooms from paintings, and others like movie sets. And that only covered the first two shelving units. They went on and on, covering all kinds of themes and places.