Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 135378 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135378 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
I’m not worried about Sophie reporting me now. She’s coming home with me tonight, so I don’t have to worry about what she does when she leaves.
She’s leaving with me.
That feels right.
Too right.
I never want to let her leave my side again.
I want her body curled up against mine every time she falls asleep.
I am gone for this fucking girl.
A fond smile tugs at my lips just looking at her sleeping on the bed.
I need to get it together and get out of here, though. We’ve stayed longer than I intended to, and I don’t know what her mental state will be when she wakes up, but in case it’s bad, I don’t want her driving herself to my house.
I grab the burner phone I brought here tonight and draw out my wallet to make sure I’m remembering the phone number right. I’m not in the habit of memorizing my friends’ numbers—I don’t even know my parents’ numbers by heart—but I didn’t want to program any numbers into this thing, either.
Unfolding the scrap of paper, I tap the flashlight feature on the phone. Once I can see the number, I enter it on my empty messages app and shoot off a text to take the temperature and see if he’s free.
“You around?”
I give it a few seconds, but nothing comes back.
That’s all right. I go over to the closed cabinet in the corner where Professor DeMarco keeps his sex tapes to get what I need.
The tapes are all kept together on a shelf and neatly labeled in bold black Sharpie. He doesn’t label the tapes by the girls’ names but by the general mood of the movie he’s made.
Lust. Anticipation. Desperation. Ambivalence.
This one will be called Reluctance.
I won’t write it myself. Just in case my pretty girl proves disobedient and the police end up involved, I can’t risk being sloppy with the details. My friend has a contact he claims is an expert at forgery, so I grab a couple of blank labels and take pictures of the others so she’ll have all the letters she’ll need to copy and in the correct case.
The phone lights up, and I glance at the display. The text back reads, “Yeah. You need something?”
I type back, “Remember what we talked about earlier? I’m at the house now. Any chance you could meet me for a pickup?”
“Maybe. What exactly am I picking up?”
“Date night with my girl ran long,” I tell him. “I’m gonna take her to my place, but I need someone to drive her car back to her dorm.”
“That’s it? Just a simple delivery? You don’t want me to get rid of it? You don’t need my help carrying anything heavy?”
Is it just me, or is he asking if I killed her?
“No, nothing crazy,” I assure him. “Just need you to drive the car to her place so it’ll be there for her when I take her home.”
Apparently satisfied that she’s still alive, he texts back, “All right. Be there in a few.”
“Thanks.”
I shake my head as I tuck my phone away, then I get back to what I was doing.
I finish up at the cabinet, swiping through photos to make sure I have what I need, then I slip the blank labels in my pocket and grab my backup plan—a tape that was once labeled Passion, but he put a bold strike through it and renamed it Vengeance.
I head back over to the bed and drop the tape on his pillow. I didn’t have a lot of time to research, but his affair with Passion went sour, hence the rename of her tape. I want to put it in his mind that maybe she broke in and fucked someone else in his bed. Given the crazy shit she did when he stopped seeing her, it should check out.
Just long enough to make sure he doesn’t go to the police before I have what I need to frame him.
He can’t go to the cops if he thinks it was her. Passion was the youngest student he fucked with—an advanced student, only sixteen years old. The law might consider her of consenting age, but I have a strong hunch the university faculty would feel differently if they found out about it.
It’s only a temporary smokescreen, so it doesn’t have to hold up.
Eventually, I want the fucker to know it was me.
Just not until I’m ready.
Besides, I’d like to use it against Sophie for now, see what I can make her do to protect the slimy fuck.
I put Sophie’s clothes on the mattress, and when she doesn’t wake up, I take a seat and reach out a hand to caress her face.
Her eyes open, and her sleepy gaze meets mine. Confusion briefly causes her brow to furrow as she looks around, trying to figure out where she is, maybe even why she’s somewhere she doesn’t recognize.