Page 24 of Fallen Rook

Tomcat: Hey, I unblocked you.

My nostrils flared. I’d fantasized about him ever since the night at the club, but I couldn’t shake off what he’d seen today and how ashamed it made me feel.

Tomcat: I gave your conundrum some thought, and I am willing to fuck you to prove you’re a bottom.

It was the closest thing to a joke he’d ever told me, and I almost laughed.

He was such a dick. A dick I’d like to suck, but…still a dick.

I enjoyed his aggressiveness, his confidence, and the fact that he was a special brand of awful, but somehow, I knew there was something more beneath the surface.

My fingers twitched; I wanted to sass back and tell him we had a deal if he was willing to take it as good as he dished it.

I grabbed my phone, then let it drop in my lap. This was doomed to crash, burn, and destroy me in the process.

What was I doing? This was a terrible idea. This man had spent the last three years trying to ruin me, and no one could guarantee he wouldn’t. He was now privy to two of my biggest secrets—my sexuality and my scars.

Nothing good was going to come out of this hookup.

Snatching my phone again, I blocked his number and took three deep breaths.

I scrambled up to my feet, showered, put on a crisp suit and a trickster smile, clasped a designer watch on my wrist, and put on my happy-go-lucky mask.

The venom of my secrets still coursing through my veins.

Chapter Nine

Tom

I stared at the phone in my hand.

How did we get here?

From blocking him, I’d gone to flooding his damn inbox in the span of forty-eight hours.

Me: Hey, I unblocked you.

Me: I thought about your conundrum, and I am willing to fuck you to prove you’re a bottom.

Me: If you don’t want to talk about what happened today, we don’t have to. I already proved I can keep a secret.

The last one I decided to delete, though. Better not lay it too thick with my potential informant.

I thought he’d get a kick out of my hookup proposal, but it had been ten hours and he still hadn’t answered, even though the message box indicated he’d read my first two texts.

Despite firmly believing he deserved the death penalty, I was worried. Worried he’d done something to himself. Worried it was because of me. The guilt festering beneath my exterior bubbled to the surface.

Fuck it. I bit the bullet and picked up the phone to call him.

For work. Just for work.

The line went straight to voicemail without ringing once. I frowned at my phone.

Did he…?

I seized my work phone from my desk and called the same number. He didn’t pick up. This time, it rang seven times before going to voicemail.

“Hey, this is Enzo. If you’re hearing this, you’re pretty bad at social cues. Or maybe you just want me too much to know when to quit. Unfortunately, I’m not three hundred years old, so I’m never going to listen to your voicemail. Guess you could text me, but if you got this far, you already did, and I ghosted you. Anyway, go METS. All my love. Bye.”