A sticky note stuck to the top of the tissue paper. It said, Hope this helps! It’s from the seventies (??), but it’s pretty much on point. Ignore the hair. Study hard! (Really hard.) Love, Kelly + Joe.
I smiled, confused. Ignore the hair? What the hell were they talking about?
That smile faded as I set the tissue paper aside.
There, on the cover, were five words that I never wanted to see again for as long as I lived.
The Joy of Gay Sex.
I said, “What,” to the empty room.
Little colored tabs stuck out from the side. Not believing what I was seeing, I opened to one of the pages with an orange tab. Inside was another sticky note, this time written by Joe.
This move is a little more practiced. Make sure to stretch before trying. Like, stretch everywhere. Trust me on that. My gaze fell to the page underneath the note to see a man with an ecstatic look on his face as another man who apparently had shrubbery instead of a bush shoved his dick in—
“No,” I said. “No, no, no.”
The entire fucking book was annotated with dozens of tabs.
I dropped it back on the bed as if scalded. I was going to end them. No. Worse. I was going to ask Gordo if there was a resurrection spell he knew, and then I was going to murder them, bring them back to life, and then murder them again. They would know my wrath. I would destroy them.
“Never,” I swore. “I will never pick up that book again. What the fuck.”
I STARTLED WHEN I HEARD Jessie say, “There you are. You’ve been up here for almost an hour. Your mom is showing Gavin how to—”
I threw the book against the wall. “I’m not doing anything weird!”
Jessie blinked, looking between me and the book that fell to the floor on the opposite side of my room. “Uh. Okay. You don’t have to shout at me.” Her eyes narrowed. “But now I think you’re doing something weird.”
The first thing I realized was that my face was on fire.
This was followed by the fact that I was very, very sweaty.
And possibly a little aroused.
Much to my dismay and horror.
I couldn’t have been more thankful that Jessie wasn’t a wolf. My room must have smelled like a brothel. I tried to act nonchalant. I started to lean back on my bed but slipped off the edge and fell to the floor, almost biting my tongue clean in half.
Jessie stared at me. “What the fuck.”
“What are you doing in my room!”
“Your door was open,” she said slowly. “Why are you yelling?” She glanced at the book on the floor. Thankfully, it’d fallen with the cover facedown. So long as she didn’t try to pick it up, she probably wouldn’t be able to tell what it was.
Which meant, of course, that she immediately went toward the book.
I stood quickly, tripping over my own feet as I surged toward the book, trying to beat her there. I should have won. She was a human. I was a wolf. I was a killing machine capable of great power with my fangs and claws. Yes, she was deadly, but I was a creature of the night. I was the monster in the dark. I was—
Falling face-first onto the floor.
I grabbed her ankle, trying to stop her from getting to the book.
“Oh no,” she said, pulling her foot away from my sweat-slick palm. “Now I have to see what this is about.”
“It’s nothing!” I cried. “Don’t look!”
She crouched down above the book. “What? Jesus, Carter. It’s probably nothing I haven’t seen before. I’m surrounded by men. Nothing you do will surprise—oh my god.”