“Sounds good to me. But we still gotta decide which.”
“Shut up for now, and let me finish watching this.” Noah gave Kaj’s thigh a gentle bite, making him hiss.
“I wouldn’t do that again if you really wanna finish watching it.”
Noah chuckled.
Ten minutes later, they were shifting on the couch.
Kaj stretched his back, and Noah sat up, grumbling when he grabbed his phone that had vibrated several times during the last hour.
“I’m so close to throwing it in the trash and—” Noah went rigid.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” Noah startled and jumped up to his feet.
“Jesper again?”
Noah didn’t answer, but the way his grip tightened on his phone as he pocketed it told Kaj he’d nailed it.
“It was about time.” He rolled his eyes, surprised by how the last weeks’ events had changed the way his mind reacted to the threat that man had always represented. He was worried, of course, but he wasn’t panicking or feeling unsafe like he used to. Maybe his brain had broken completely, disconnecting him from his emotions or something. “Anything good we can use?”
Since the public announcement of their relationship, they’d received a ton of messages, both supportive and hateful. However, Jesper had been a ghost.
They’d worried that he wasn’t as mental as they thought, and instead of making him show his ugly head, they’d push him to retreat and disappear forever, which, yeah, would have been nice, but at this point the only fair outcome for Kaj was revenge.
“N-not sure.” Noah looked everywhere but at Kaj. “I’ll have to give Mikkel my phone so he can check.”
“We can do it tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Noah said, standing there in the middle of the living room, completely paralyzed, as if his brain had short-circuited.
“What are you doing?”
“I… I’m going to the bathroom.”
Kaj watched Noah disappear down the hall, uneasiness coiling in his gut. He wouldn’t normally trust himself because he was super paranoid all the time, but something about Noah’s behavior was off and no one would convince him otherwise. The way his voice wavered just now. The way he purposely avoided looking Kaj in the eye. The way his entire stance stiffened… It didn’t sit right with him.
Kaj gave it a few minutes as he scrolled on his phone, but his mind was stuck on Noah and the sudden shift in his demeanor. Although they didn’t know initially, it had been months since he’d started receiving messages from Jesper. He was always a little agitated, disheartened, or simply absent afterward, but his reaction today was the strongest Kaj had ever seen. Maybe poking the monster hadn’t been such a good idea in the end.
“Hey…” Kaj said when Noah came back out all dressed. “Are we going somewhere?”
“No. I’m just—” Noah slicked his hair back as he walked toward the entrance. “We’re running out of soda, so I’m just gonna get some more and a couple frozen pizzas. I’m starting to get hungry,” he said while grabbing his keys and wallet from the console by the door.
“Uh… Sure.” Kaj frowned.
“You want anything?”
“No.”
“Okay. Be right back.”
As soon as the door clicked shut, Kaj got up from the couch and strode toward the fridge. He yanked it open, and—Yup. There was plenty of soda.
His stomach knotted. Noah had lied.
Why?
