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I close my eyes, the line of girls all through high school piling up to this fucking cherry on top. Every single one who wondered what was wrong with them when I didn’t try, bitter when I stopped, and some unapologetically toxic when I said no. By my senior year, they stopped blaming themselves and started laughing together about it.

I look over my shoulder, watching her on his lap just like she was on mine last month and knowing she wouldn’t have given him the time of day if I’d given her what she wanted.

“And yet,” I taunt, finally finding my voice. “I’m the one you want, aren’t I?”

She’s quiet for a moment but then finds her words. “I did.”

The corners of my lips turn up in a smile, and I walk back to the monitors, watching him but seeing myself. Seeing myself holding someone I can’t let go of.

“I think about sex,” I say softly. “All the time. I want it.”

I close my eyes again, going deep into that fantasy.

“I want to be in a dark place with someone,” I tell her. “A tight space. Touching her and not being able to put two words together because I can’t see anything else but her.” My breathing turns shallow again, and blood rushes to my groin. “She’s got me on a leash. Time freezes. I need it. Again and again. The warmth between her legs. Her mouth.” I wet my lips. “How every inch of her body is pressed against mine, and still, I need her closer.”

She sucks in a breath, and I grow harder.

“I want it so bad.”

“Me too,” she murmurs.

“Pull up your shirt.”

She hesitates. “He’s sleeping next to me.”

I smile again. “Pull up your shirt.”

I hear her swallow. “’Kay,” she whispers.

I imagine she’s in bed, warm and soft.

“I’m hard.” I breathe in and out slowly. “I’m always so hard when I go into my head and pull down her panties, feeling her lips brush mine. The skin between her thighs. So warm and wet.”

I tip her chin up—the girl in my head—making her look at me, because she’s scared too and she needs me to be strong. She needs me like I’m the reason her heart beats, and what she gets from me, she can’t get from anyone else.

It’s sex and more.

“I bet you’re all muscle, baby,” Schuyler pants. “So hard.”

“I am.” I draw in a breath, aching. “I want that girl who’s in my head so badly. She’s always there. So hot. So good at everything she does to me. I feel like I never want to fuck anyone else. I need her.”

“Yeah…”

My muscles tense, but I relax them, opening my eyes as the images disappear. Schuyler groans on the other end, masturbating, and all the anger I felt a few minutes ago cools.

Sweat dampens my chest, and I look down, seeing the bulge in my jeans.

“The thing is,” I tell her, my tone growing hard, “when that little animal in my head looks up at me and I look back at her… It’s never you I see, Schuyler.”

She stops her little mewls, and I steel my spine, closing out the video on the monitor.

“Your lip looks like it hurts,” I tell her, remembering how swollen it was in the video. “Try a cold compress.”

She sucks in a breath, and I hold back my smile as I hang up.

Every muscle in my body hardens and then relaxes, a shot of warmth seeping into my blood.

She’s lying. She didn’t blow him. That’s why she posted the video. She’s pushing me to react. If I won’t take what she offers, then she’s saving her pride. She’s at home, in bed, alone.

The truth is, I don’t see anyone in particular when I dream of the one. The girl in my head. It’s never a face. It could be Schuyler. Who knows? What I do have, though, is a feeling. Just a feeling. I want what I feel with the girl in my head. Something strong. Something only for me.

Lowering my eyes, I stare at the green drawer of the old steel military desk left behind by whoever was here last. I reach out and open it, seeing a tray of cell phones I found inside and have kept there since. Nokias, Motorolas, flip phones… A lot of eight, once dead until I plugged them in, replaced batteries, worked a little magic… I have no idea who left them here, but I think I know who one of them belonged to.

I grab the black Nokia, the weight about the same as my iPhone, but I flip it open and hit the key pad, bringing up his—or her—last conversation.

Don’t kill her, the owner of the phone messages someone they don’t have added to their contacts. Which means this was either a burner phone or a new one they hadn’t gotten around to setting up yet.