Chapter 1

1

“Law. Man. Don’t go in there!”

The noise level in our apartment—did the volume dial on the stereo get stuck on eleven, and how come the neighbors haven’t called the cops?—overwhelms the heads-up shouted in my direction, and although I hear it, the meaning doesn’t register in my brain until it’s too late and I’ve already opened the bedroom door.

The music is so loud, none of the people in the room seem to hear the door opening, but as I take in the scene before me, the warning sinks in. Whoever called out to me clearly knew what was going on and didn’t want me to see it. Or he didn’t want the people in there to get caught, didn’t want me to find my fiancé in our bedroom with a guy that isn’t me.

Frozen to the spot, my gaze zeroes in on Frankie. He sits on the edge of the still neatly made bed, his face turned toward me, but his eyes are closed so he doesn’t notice me. His shoulders are slumped and he’s wringing his hands and caressing the wide platinum engagement ring on his finger. His usually impeccably styled hair stands up in wild disarray as though someone’s dug his fingers into it and held it in a tight grip, and his lips are red and puffy. Well-used.

There’s no doubt what’s been going on in here just before I entered, and any uncertainty I might’ve harbored, disappears the second I shift my attention to the other person in the room.

Even though his back is turned to me, I recognize the movements of someone tucking his dick back into his pants. A dick that recently was deep into my fiancé’s throat, in our bedroom, in our home, with the place full of people who apparently knew what was going on in here.

My eyes—the only parts of my body still able to move—flicker back to Frankie. Franklin Ennis, the love of my life, the usually so happy and bubbly Frankie, whose head is hanging, whose mouth is downturned, whose body is folded in on itself.

Something heavy presses down on my chest, making my breath stutter in my throat. My lungs stop working, my head swims, and I rest my hand against the doorjamb so I won’t fall. I try to take a deep breath, but nothing happens. My free hand flies to my chest, and I can feel it rising and falling underneath my palm, but I’m suffocating. The steel band around my chest expands, takes over my belly, my throat, and I curl my hands into fists as I try to help my brain understand that oxygen is reaching my lungs, I am capable of breathing. But despite understanding intellectually, I’m choking.

I’m still struggling when the guy is all tucked into his pants and turns around. “Who the hell are you?” he barks when he catches sight of me.

Frankie’s head snaps up, eyes opening wide, and face crumpling when he sees me. His dick-swollen mouth forms my name, but I can’t hear him over the noise, or maybe he’s not saying it out loud.

Oh God, Lawrence, I’m sorry.

He shakes his head as his glassy eyes flow over and tears trickle down his cheeks. But he doesn’t try to hide; he lets me see every emotion that washes over his face. Guilt. Sadness. Remorse.

My first instinct is to envelop him in my arms and offer comfort. I even take a step forward, but a huffing laughter coming from Dick Guy stops me.

I whip my head in his direction; he’s checking me out with a smirk painted across his face and pelvis jutting out, as though he’s offering me a taste of what he’s got. He tilts his head in Frankie’s direction. “He yours?”

Neither Frankie nor I say anything, and our silence must be all the answer Dick Guy needs because he chuckles and saunters past me. “Thanks for loaning him to me. Now I’m giving him back.” His degrading words and cocky tone make me want to plant my fist between his eyes, but I still struggle to breathe and process what I just walked in on, and don’t move a muscle. Can’tmove a muscle.

He throws the door closed behind him, making me yelp and snatch away the hand still resting on the doorjamb. The noise outside barely dulls, the bass is thumping in my ears, in my chest, in my stomach.

Or is it my heart?

“Lawrence.”

This time I hear him; his voice is raspy and hoarse as though the guy’s dick has pushed its way deep into Frankie’s throat, into his goddamned lungs

Bile finds its way into my mouth. I gulp it down, refusing to throw up all over the floor, and the huge swallow of air burns a hole down my airway, and I can finally breathe. Eagerly, I drag down a breath and the feeling of fresh oxygen in my bloodstream unfreezes my limbs, and I’m moving.