I look up and smile, then quickly look back down. “Yes, that would be fun.”

That’s the last question he asks me all afternoon. And I’m too timid to ask him anything. But I have a lot of questions.

What does that tattoo mean?

Where is his friend?

What will they do with me?

But never once does it occur to me that I should get up and walk out. Not once. And now that I’m here, lying with him in his bed, with his arms tucked around me, that startles me more than anything I’ve been through or anything that might come.

Because even though this morning my acceptance felt a little bit like salvation, this evening it has a whole new feel.

Defeat.

It feels like I’m giving up. Like I’m giving in to what they made me. A prisoner.

It feels like the end.

And after a few minutes of pondering this as I stay still and silent like I’ve been taught to do, I realize I like that.

I want the darkness to take over. I wish I was drugged up again so I could stop caring. I wish someone would drug me and make the darkness cover me like dirt over a grave.

And maybe these guys are the answer to that prayer. Maybe these guys will finally do what the other ones never would.

Maybe these guys will just let me die.

I turn my key in the door and let myself into the loft. There’s a light on over the oven in the kitchen, but aside from that it’s dark. I walk past and see the remnants of spaghetti, a sink full of dishes and evidence of an evening spent here without me.

I sigh as I hang my coat up and walk down the hall to my room. I don’t even want to think about JD and that girl. I spent all day thinking about them, and now I’m done. I kick my shoes off as I enter the room, then flip the switch on the wall. The first thing I see is the bathroom where this morning that girl sucked me off and I came so fast I’m almost embarrassed.

I turn away, reach behind my head and pull my shirt off. Then I unbutton my jeans and let them drop to the floor, giving my cock a tug since just the thought of her is starting to make me hard.

Usually I sleep naked, but I’m not ready for bed just yet. So I put on a pair of faded army-green cargo shorts and head into the bathroom to get the camera.

It’s gone.

Fucking JD.

I go out to the living room and look around. Maybe he was using it out here? I am rationalizing now. I know where that camera is.

A deep breath is necessary as I walk down the short hallway to JD’s room. The door is open and that’s a first. JD is a compulsive door-locker at night. I flip on the hallway light, because I do not want to disturb him, and spy the camera on his nightstand. My eyes track to the girl lying on the other side of JD, his arm wrapped protectively around her and the sheets only covering her lower half. Her breasts rise and fall with the pattern of her breathing.

I grab the camera and leave before I do something stupid like kick his ass. She’s not mine. So fuck it. He can have the bitch. She’s too skinny anyway. She looks like she’s on drugs, in fact. I hate the druggies. She probably has some kind of disease. Probably sucks in bed too. Just lies there, maybe. Or complains. Or hates it.

I close the door on my way out and walk back to the living room where the sliding metal barn doors on either side of my office entrance are wide open. I flip the light on and then close the doors behind me before setting the camera down on the desk and walking around to the other side to have a seat.

I stare at it.

She’s in there.

And me with her.

I can’t plug that thing into the computer fast enough. The software kicks in with a familiar ding and then the images, thousands of images because the thing was on continuous shutter release for the better part of thirty minutes, download onto my hard drive.

The anticipation is killing me.

I watch the thumbnails flash by and the progress bar light up and even that gets me excited.

The program finishes the download and begins erasing the memory card inside my camera, but I stop it. Just one copy is not enough. What if my computer crashed? What if it was stolen? What if I somehow lost all these pictures?

I can’t do it. Just the thought has me sweating.

So I leave them on there and unplug the camera. I have a shitload of memory cards in the desk, so I leave the card in, all the pictures intact.

And then I open up Photoshop and start going through them, one by one.

Her and JD under that awning on the mall. Jesus, that seems like weeks ago and it was this morning. Not even a whole day has passed by since I took these pictures. He’s kissing her in some, and holy fuck, even though it’s him and not me, everything about these pictures says sexy as all hell.

Skinny or not, she’s alluring. In one picture her incredible blue eyes are wide and innocent as she looks up at JD. The streaked makeup just makes the whole thing all that much more provocative. Like she’s hurt and she’s looking to him for help.

And everything about JD, as he gazes down on her, his hands reaching for her stained face, everything says give in to me and I’ll make it better.

A knock at the door pulls me from my fixation, and then the metal doors slide open.

“Hey,” JD says, coming into my office eating a bowl of cereal. He takes a seat on the couch alongside the wall to my left. “You just get home?”

I look over at him. He’s bare-chested, that’s how he always sleeps. And his hair is messy, so it looks like he was in bed for a while before getting up just now. That pisses me off because I can think of a million things he could’ve been doing in that bed with the girl.