Velvet Midnight - Max Walker Page 0,26

the password and opening up the security camera interface. I stood behind him, a hand on the chair. It was a small enough room that his head was next to my crotch, and it didn’t look suspicious in the slightest—we were just crammed into the room.

Now, he if turned his head, then that would look suspicious.

Moments from last night flashed in my vision. As Benji looked for the recent footage, I couldn’t help but think about how good last night felt. It went beyond hooking up. Last night had opened my eyes, and it lit a fire underneath my still-closeted ass.

I spent all morning thinking about it. Around lunchtime, before everything went down with Tammy, I had made a promise to myself: I was going to come out as bi. I’d make a public post and rip it off like a bandage. Let people run with the story however they’d want, I didn’t care. I just wanted to be done with the hiding and the shame and the pressure of it all.

Plus, if the video ever did come out, it would take some of the sting out. The headlines wouldn’t read “Closeted Senator’s Son Caught in a Sex Tape Scandal.”

Still, it wouldn’t take all the sting out… What would Benji think?

Fuck.

Anxiety took its throne inside my chest, holding each lung in either hand, squeezing. I took in a deep breath, trying to fight the pressure.

“All right, check it out,” Benji said, holding a finger at the screen. I followed where he pointed, looking at the square of a black-and-white image. The timestamp in the corner said it was from the night before, at two in the morning.

Benji pressed Play and the trees unfroze, shifting in the wind, the moonlight highlighting the leaves and making it seem like a silver sea.

Underneath the ocean of silver leaves, something else flashed. A shape.

A person.

They wore a hefty coat, making it difficult to discern any kind of body type. A hat was pulled over their head, blocking the face. On the camera, the cap appeared to be white with two blue circles on the front, above the tongue. They moved in a hurry, going through the volunteer gate and then disappearing behind a row of bushes. Before they disappeared, I could see a backpack bouncing on their back.

“And that’s the only time they show up on camera,” Benji said, clicking on the different marks across the timeline, at one point picking the two of us up as we kissed and fondled our way back to the guest bedroom.

“Let’s, uh, take off the timestamp mark for this one.” Benji pressed a button, and the red tab disappeared.

“So they somehow dodged all the cameras after that first one?”

Benji nodded, his shoulders dipping. “They knew where to go. There’s only a very small route between the parking and the lake that isn’t covered by cameras.”

He sighed, and I could tell his frustration was starting to bubble up. I let go of the chair, grabbing his shoulder instead. I massaged him, the tension inside his shoulders and neck almost instantly disappearing.

“This is a good thing, Benj.”

“Really? How? We only got a two-second glimpse of whoever did it, and they were completely covered.”

“Yeah, but think about it. How else could they have dodged all the cameras without knowing about them first?”

Benji rolled his head. The bones in his neck popped, and he gave a relieved exhale.

“So you’re saying—”

“This isn’t a crazy stranger or a stalker. I think this is someone who knows the sanctuary. Whoever hurt Tammy, whoever this Dove is, you already know them.”

Benji’s head dropped, and the tension filled his muscles like a stiffening poison, returning even though my fingers still kneaded into him.

No amount of deep-tissue or pressure-point work would make Benji feel better in that moment.

Instead, I just stood by him, a hand on the nape of his neck, thumb tracing soft circles on his skin as we replayed that short clip over and over again, trying to spot any discerning details in the coat-wearing figure.

11

Benjamin Gold

The cold evening air felt good, even if the tips of my ears felt replaced with tiny ice cubes. The lake glittered in front of us with light from the setting sun, turning it into an orange mirror, the water like a portal into some other world. I absentmindedly scratched the top of Tammy’s head while Rex worked on her back. It had been four days since the threat, and Tammy was already back to her normal and back-scratching-addicted