These steps are cautious and slow, one after the other, before pausing halfway down. Her silent considerations are so loud, I almost hear them. Once she makes the decision we both knew she would, Serafina stops at the base of the stairs, her hand hooked around the post.
After Vanessa’s visit, I won’t handle hers.
“Hi,” she murmurs in a small voice that reminds me of the first night we met.
“Hi.” That’s polite, right? Polite isn’t what I should be, especially when she rocks on her heels, as if about to approach.
Leave. Go away. Go upstairs.
There’s nowhere safe from this woman. She has me caged down here like an animal, and now, she’s smashing the bars. Seems my bedroom wasn’t enough. The rest of this house will soon smell of her. Now, she’s insisting on cominghere, to my only safe space, where I escape to and recall all the reasons why my curiosity about Serafina Mancini must end. Down here, I can pretend she doesn’t exist.
Butnotif she’s encroaching.
She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, and it does something to my dick. Enough, my finger taps again and I look away. To the monitors. The servers. Hell, to the lightbulb in my lamp. Anything but her.
“Need something?”Please leave.
“Your sister mentioned you were down here and showed me the way.”
Of course she did. Because Ana enjoys making my life a living hell, and that is precisely what Serafina is becoming.
An unescapable hell. A torment to my senses.
“You disappeared so abruptly, and I was curious what you do down here.”
“This.”
“What’s ‘this’?” Her eyes, dimmed by the lack of windows down here, flick around my server racks, the computer desk, and the futon which often becomes my bed. And since my sister tormented me worse by placing Serafina’s bedroom beside mine, this futon will be exclusively where I sleep for the duration of her stay.
She paces closer. She wasn’t supposed to take this as an invitation.
Since common sense isn’t something I seem to retain around this woman, I gesture at one tower and explain its functionality, then the second, describing its purpose as a backup. I briefly go through the other devices—the switches and routers, allenterprise level equipment—in simple terms, and she seems to devour all my explanations eagerly, like she’s truly interested in my rambles.
Which is…interesting. There’s a reason why Vanessa only lingered by the stairs. No one in this house can stand my detailed explanations of what goes on down here.
With Serafina, maybe it’s her reactions, maybe it’s something else, but I nearly go hunt a second computer chair, only so she can sit at the desk and I show her how all the hardware functions, the software required.
Sheneedsto get away from me.
My head buzzes again. This time, nothing she says or does makes the sound go away, because sheisthe sound.
She wanders from the server racks to my desk, scanning the three monitors, the desktop computer decorated with RGB lighting, the headphone stand where two different kinds hang, ones for working and a gaming headset for the nights insomnia hits harder.
“You game?” She flicks the headset.
“Sometimes.”
“Hm.”
I want to know what she means by that, but it invites further conversation we shouldn’t be having. Still… “What’s ‘hm’?”
“Always wanted to try it out, but my façade during secondary school didn’t allow for it. The girl I thought I was doesn’t skip social events to stay home and play video games.”
“Maybe you need to stop worrying about what others think.” Fuck knows I’ve heard some negativity shot at me, but outside Padre, no one else mattered.
She does. I wonder what she thinks about me.
Does it matter?
