He focuses on the screen, taking his time, moving the mouse carefully, superimposing Deanna’s face on the drunken coed’s sexy frame, the background clearly showing the bar’s name in neon lights. The light is all wrong, pointing a giant, clear arrow to the falsehood of the pic. So he continues. Highlights her face, then adds bar shadows, the slight glow of neon light. A bit of grain, evidence of poor lighting captured by a cheap camera phone. He doesn’t rush, he checks the work carefully, and when done, clears the photo’s cache history and e-mails the image to Deanna, along with four other similar creations. Tomorrow she’ll post them to her Facebook wall, and another layer of the lie will be in place.

Her, aka JessReilly19, popular coed. Drinks Miller Lite with her fake ID. Likes live music and kegs.

Him, aka HackOffMyBigCock, fellow college student. Loves working out, football, and lap dances. Dabbles in hacking when he isn’t being the big man on campus.

We all live different lies.

CHAPTER 16

JEREMY KNOCKS ON my door at six, my smile not flinching, my game amping a bit, the back arch and finger play moving to level OhMyGodI’mGonnaCum. The client responds, and my coulda-been-fifteen-minute chat ends a hundred seconds later at seven minutes. I smile, wave, and hop off the bed when the END CHAT message fills the screen.

I yank open the door, casting a sympathetic glance at Jeremy. “Sorry, babe.”

“It’s fine. I know the drill.” He pushes off the opposite wall, tucking his phone in his pocket and bends down, lifting a box and ducking through the door behind me, his foot kicking it shut, his eyes sweeping over me appreciatively as he leans in for a kiss.

“Let me put something on.” I’m getting used to wearing clothes again. Feeling the warmth and friction of cotton, the cushion of one more layer when sitting on the hard concrete of my floor. The first time Jeremy came by after work, he couldn’t focus, his eyes tripping over my naked form, heels still on. He, in as few words as possible, politely told me to put some clothes on before he ate me alive. At the time it was really cute. Now, in the retelling of the story, it sounds creepy. I slip on sweatpants, shrug into a sweatshirt and peel off my heels, tossing them toward the bed. “I got another one? Who’s it from?”

He sets it on the table, one he built last weekend, if “to build” means assembling five pieces of wood, then using a hundred screws to hold it together. He insisted I needed one, and I’m embarrassed how often I’ve sat at it since. I still like leaning against the front door. Listening to the world outside, my secret perch, the peek into the other Sixers’ lives. But it is nice, especially when he’s here, to have a table. Room to spread out food. Something to lean on, put a laptop on. A sign that I am normal. That not everything has to have a base purpose for existence in this apartment. “Couldn’t tell. A random name, somewhere in New York. There’s more in the hall.”

The right side of my apartment holds a sea of boxes, 100 percent of them delivered by Jeremy. I’m not a FedEx girl; that relationship ended on its first delivery when the guy refused to leave a package without seeing my face. Jeremy’s with UPS, has been since our first interaction three years ago, when he left my thousand-dollar computer in the seedy hallway after only a brief argument. He’s since delivered countless more brown squares, the story of our courtship told in the mountain of boxes that fill my loft.

He heads back to the door, holding it open long enough to snag two more packages and haul them inside. The top box is small and square, the second one larger. The sight of it makes my feet pause, my mouth freezing in a half grin of tentative glee.

“Is that… for me?”

He says nothing, just gives me a wry grin, dropping the large package next to the fridge.

I can’t stop my smile. It turns into some kind of split-your-face-open expression, one that hurts my cheeks in its intensity. Not the brown box of a delivery, but a gift: plastic stretched tight over four cases of Dr Pepper. Four times eighteen equaled one shitload of fresh, never-been-opened carbonation. All for me, to fill my fridge and instantly satisfy every craving my body decides to conjure up. I knock him down with the force of my hug.

PART 2

“Please,” he whispers, his voice tight. “Deeper.”

CHAPTER 17

House Arrest Countdown: 2 Months, 2 Weeks

A QUIET HOUSE. Quiet, a luxury Marcus never recognized until he lived in a concrete block with seventy other men. A quick glance at the clock confirms the time. 11:14. No surprise his cock is awake. It’s used to a nighttime ritual of being jacked, the pitch black of his cell hiding the tight grip of his features, the twist and flex of his feet.