“Before you go into the room, I have to let you know we do require you to lie down flat like you’re in a coffin. Then, we drop hollow plastic balls on you for a couple minutes. They are the same type of balls that can be found at Chuck E. Cheese’s and Discovery Zone. After the allotted amount of time, the walls are shifted so the pressure will give your body the illusion of being buried alive. The experience is about ten minutes.”
I cleared my throat, trying to shake my anxiety. I glanced at Jett to see if he was contemplating going in with me. “You don’t have to come with. I’m going to do it.”
I couldn’t tell what he thought with the mask covering half his expression. He shrugged his shoulder and then wrapped his arm around my neck to pull me close to him. He whispered into my ear, “I’m not happy about you laying down on the ground in my jacket.” Then he said to the man, “We’re ready when you are.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The beeping this time was fast as hell to match my heart. I walked into that dark room with a man I wasn’t sure I would ever fully not want but definitely sure I trusted more than most. He watched me lie down on the ground and grumbled something about how filthy it must be.
Then he squatted down beside me and lifted up his mask. “You really okay doing this, Pix?”
My hand, completely disregarding my mind’s command, searched out his and held it. “I think I just need to do it and not focus on it.”
He slid the mask back onto his face and laid down right next to me. Then he pulled my body up against his. Turning on his side, he faced me and wrapped one arm around my waist.
“You’re supposed to lie on your back, Jett.”
“I’m supposed to be doing a lot of things I’m not doing tonight, Victory.”
“Like what?”
“I’m supposed to leave you and your damn fantasies alone.”
I sighed, waiting for something to happen. And avoiding looking over at the man I wanted way too much. “Then why don’t you?”
His hand slid from my waist up to my cheek and turned me to face him. “Because you make it your mission to glitter and shine brighter than every single object around you.”
“I don’t.”
He shook his head slowly, and then his lips were on mine and an eerie version of an Evanescence song began to play as balls fell on us. His hands held my face, and I lost myself in the way his tongue slid over mine, the way his body fit up against me, the way he didn’t let me up for air through the whole song. He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me closer, like our bodies needed to be right up against the other, like we were two molds that slipped into each other perfectly.
It seemed like just a small moment in time. Maybe a second or a minute that his lips brushed over me. Yet, the balls rolled off of us and he pulled away to stand. “Good enough distraction from being buried alive?”
The Phantom of the Opera glowered down at me from above, one of his large hands outstretched. He didn’t look at all tousled or shaken from what we had just done.
I, on the other hand, felt my heart stuttering as my mind disassembled all my hopes and dreams of a future with someone I could count on to be with me, stay with me.
“Pix?” he questioned when I didn’t immediately move from the ground.
I grabbed his hand and pulled myself up. Hurrying forward, not wanting to look at him anymore, I shoved through the exit doors, so ready to find Steven.
A werewolf—a real one, I swear—snarled at me as soon as I turned the corner. I screamed and toppled right back into the Phantom’s arms as the werewolf ran back into the forest on four legs, no joke.
Jett laughed so hard, his eyes scrunched closed behind his mask. I wiggled out of his grip and straightened his jacket as I huffed at him. “It’s not funny. That thing was real.”
“That thing was a fifteen-year-old kid. You’re scared of a fifteen-year-old.” Then he laughed hard as hell again.
I wanted to scream at him, but this was one of the few times I’d seen him relaxed and jovial.
Jett worked. He didn’t play.
Then and there, looking at him, I found something I was more afraid of than haunted houses, werewolves, or even getting sick again.
I was losing my heart to the Phantom of the Opera.
20
Jett