Lust Next Door - S01 E53

Story 4 months ago

Lust Next Door - S01 E53

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 53

_________________

Connor was happy to see Serena actually drop her guard a bit and enjoy the party. He was also surprised by how much he was enjoying this party as opposed to his others. The smaller setting resulted in better people being here, where the focus wasn't on getting drunk the fastest and forgetting the whole night but instead on actually socializing. He loved watching her laugh and smile around his friends, loved seeing her whole face light up and her shoulders relax.

Seeing her like this made him feel so warm inside he thought others might notice. He sat on the sidelines, observing her happiness like it was his own.

When she mentioned going to get a drink, Connor nodded and took a long swig of his own beer. Sitting amongst his closest friends, everything felt like it was clicking right into place for him. It was like the universe was spelling it out for him.

Tonight's the night, do it.

Josh nudged an elbow into Connor's side, tilting a sly smile at him, "You haven't taken your eyes off her all night. I hope you know that there's basically a giant neon sign strapped on your chest saying, 'I'm whipped.'" He mumbled low enough so only Connor would hear.

He instantly furrowed his eyebrows and ripped the smile off his face. He shoved his face into his cup and swung his hand back to slap Josh's chest, "I regret telling you now."

"Telling me what? That Connor Deluca is about to be a one-woman man?"

Connor felt his face heating up. He refused to respond to Josh's teasing, letting the man next to him laugh.

"I think it's good, refreshing seeing you so happy. Tonight's also been fun, and she's fun. She clicks really well with everyone."

When he changed the topic to Serena, Connor instantly felt more interested in the conversation.

An easy smile filtered on his face as she watched the sliding glass door into his house, where she disappeared, "Yeah, she really does."

Before Josh could respond, though, the door opened, and where he expected to see Serena walk through, instead, Liam and another older-looking man did.

"Well, look who decided to show up," Luca called from their little group, his words inviting him and his friend over to join. Connor immediately sat rigid, not enjoying the strain that seemed to settle in the air, and he wasn't entirely sure it was all due to Liam.

His friend stood a bit taller than Liam did, and he looked older. He was wearing a dark grey button-up shirt and some black slacks. Looking like he just came from some corporate office, his clothing was nearly the exact opposite of Liam's, but their faces held a similar likeness.

Connor squinted at the two of them as Luca and the others carried on.

Zach inquisitively pointed between Liam and the other man, "Liam, who's your friend?"

Liam turned to the older man as if remembering the quiet guy was even there, "Oh yeah, guys, this is my older brother, Peter." Connor was starting to stand up now, figuring he would introduce himself and try and keep things feeling light-hearted like they were right now. He didn't want there to be any reason for things to upset Serena. Keeping things civil between Liam and him was an excellent place to start with that.

"He's in town visiting right now, so I figured I would bring him along with me." Liam finally turned to Connor, acknowledging his existence for the first time that night. And to his surprise, Liam looked pretty neutral, normal even. No hint of malice behind his features. "That's alright with you, right, Connor? I know Josh was keeping the guest list pretty managed."

If Liam was willing to be nice, so was he. This guy had a permanent spot on his team. After all, if they could be friendly again, that would be ideal.

So he stood up and put on his best shit-eating grin, meeting the two men in the middle and sticking out his hand, "Fine by me, pleasure meeting you, Peter. My name is Connor. I'm on the same team as your brother."

The man gave him a smile back and shook his hand, but something about the Cheshire grin made Connor's blood turn cold.

"Pleasure's all mine, and you have a lovely home." His voice was hoarse, almost as if he spent a lifetime yelling and smoking a pack a day.

Connor looked up at his large house, admiring it for a second before nodding, "Thanks. It's a wonder I haven't ruined it already with the parties I used to throw."

Peter raised a curious eyebrow, "They get bigger than this?"

He blew out a sharp breath, "This ain't nothing. You should have seen how big they used to be." A specific five-foot-five brunette made those huge parties largely unappealing now, though. Connor thought as it brought a soft smile to his face.

"Well, color me disappointed I missed them, I may look old, but I can outdrink all of you. I've been drinking brown liqueur for enjoyment since I was seventeen."

That caused them all to roar up in laughter, along with Peter; he was still coming down from his chuckles at a retort Luca gave when the sound of beer hitting the pavement caused them all to look over at the sliding glass door.

What he saw, however, made his heart drop to the furthest pit of his stomach.

Serena stood there looking scared, and not like she saw a shadow move in the dark scared. She looked like all the bones in her body had been hit with a hammer and were making her shake. She was wide-eyed, and her face was pale as paper. He could see from where he stood 15 feet away how rapidly her chest was rising and falling. And all that fear was directed right at the older man standing right in front of him.

Connor knitted his eyebrows together, his whole body feeling like he had gotten whiplash from his cluelessness. He had no idea what happened, no idea how this Peter person drew such a reaction out of her if they haven't even met yet.

He looked between the two of him and saw the same exact look mirror on Peter's face. Except he had an edge of anger in it, there strung under all the shock was anger.

The line that buzzed between them didn't feel new. It felt old and weighted down by feelings. It seemed forcibly mended as if it snapped once and was now desperately retying itself together.

As Connor stared between their unrelenting gaze playing mental gymnastics to try and figure it out, his whole body went rigid and dangerously cold. The puzzle pieces snapped so loudly together in his mind he barely noticed Serena take off in a sprint away from his house.

"Serena!" He yelled after her, the skies seeming to crash down on him. But he got distracted by his own rage to be able to chase after her. His eyes peeled slowly over to Peter, his face now a murderous glare.

"You're the guy..." He mumbled dangerously low, his tone so dark it pulled Peter's attention towards him. It was apparent now the reason Serena reacted the way she did, like she saw a ghost.

Because she was a ghost from her horrible past.

Serena shared with him that she didn't know barely anyone growing up. She told me virtually everyone that had been close to her and the person who could possibly reduce her to that state was the guy who had physically and sexually abused her at seventeen.

Connor had seen how she reacted to just the thought of him, so there was no mistaking it in his mind. This was him.

Connor felt such a violent red haze wash over his whole body, and it made his clenched fists shake.

It was Connor's turn to be at the receiving end of Peter's fearful gaze. He took a slow step towards them, closing the limited and strained air between them.

Peter could see on his face that he was connecting that dots, and his forehead glistened with a visible sheen of sweat.

Liam stepped forward now, concerned, "What's going on?" He said lightly, hoping to diffuse the situation. But not even god himself could come down from the heavens right now to stop Connor's warpath.

His chest hurt from the anger-blazing fireworks inside of it.

"You're the guy," He was louder now, walking towards him till he was backed into a corner. "The fucking disgusting pedophile who groomed her." Connor's hand connected with his chest, slamming him back into the side of his house with a thud, "hurt her." He yelled, his voice a nasty bark as he pushed him again.

Everyone around them now seemed to shake off their shock, jumping into action now to midgate the situation. His teammates came over to him and tried to guide him away from Peter, but he pushed them off.

"She- She consented to everything." He mumbled now, his face turning dark and stern cold. He could see the embarrassment hidden beneath those cowardly features, too. It only made him angrier.

"Consented." Connor spit out a laugh, getting into his face as he hissed out loud enough for everyone to hear. He would not let this pitiful man hide from what he did. "Did she consent to be trapped in a home for years, cut off from everyone? Did she consent to lose every normal experience a young adult has? Did she consent to get her fucking fingers broken by you?"

He could hear a chilly silence settle over everyone, Dean and Josh, who had been doing their best to hold Connor back, were now letting up their grips completely as if silently saying, let this mother fucker have it.

"Blinking probably looks like consent to you, a piece of human filth." Connor reached up and punched right next to his head, making him flinch hard, "She was Seventeen, and you stole what was supposed to be the best parts of her life. I'll make sure you hurt, just like you made her."

This deadly promise seemed to register with Peter finally, and he stepped into action. Clearly, the coward was hardwired into a flight mood because he went dashing off toward where Serena disappeared to. His tail was tucked between his legs.

Connor was faster than him, though. He tackled him to the pavement. The two men tumbled close to the edge of the pool. Wrestling like dogs fighting for the top, and Connor won. He made it his life's mission in these split seconds to win every aspect of this brawl for her because she didn't all those years ago. He pinned him under his body, and his fist came down in a bloody breathless rage. He wouldn't stop, couldn't; Serena's smile, her tears, and her shaking body was the only thing that burned behind his vision. Everything around him didn't matter. When people came around to try and pull Connor off him, He shoved and elbowed them off like gnats.

He saw red; the satisfying crunch of his face beneath his fist was better than breathing right now. He wouldn't, couldn't stop. He hammered his fist down, smashing blows down into his ribs as well.

He was utterly relentless.

He heard screams and high-pitched cries behind him, people screaming for him to stop.

"You're gonna kill him!" Liam yelled, drowned out under the depths of his own anger.

Good, he thought, good.

He got one final hit into his cheekbone before two bodies caught under his arms and pulled him off roughly. It wasn't until then that he regained consciousness and accessed the scene he created.

Liam was trying to charge at him, his anger almost matched his as he yelled obscenities at Connor, but Josh and Dean held him at bay.

Peter was lying on the ground, a woman he didn't know and Luca were accessing him, Putting two fingers under his neck and checking for a pulse. But a minute later, he heard the man groan and groggily sit up.

His nose was crooked, visibly crooked, and blood covered nearly every inch of his features. His right eye was swollen shut, and the left was on its way to be. This is when Connor had half a mind to look down at his hands. He was shaking from the adrenaline, his fist covered in blood and slashes from the beatings.

He was panting, too, his whole body humming with pure pleasure. A slow smile spread across his lips as he staggered onto his feet.

"I'm gonna fucking put you in jail, you crazy bastard! That's fucking assault!" Liam screamed, pointing his finger at him like he was willing them to become a gun, desperately trying to lunge over the people holding him back.

Connor just leveled a blank stare at him, "Let's start by putting your pedo brother in jail. How bout' that."

He glanced around the patio area. A couple of girls were whispering into their phones, looking around skeptically. He knew exactly who they were talking to.

"Looks like the police are on their way anyways." Connor snapped out.

Peter seemed to snap awake at the sound of that, "I can't be here. There's a restraining order." He said weakly.

That instantly made him think of Serena, and he had no idea where she had gone, no doubt falling to pieces somewhere. His heart sank and filled the void in

Liam was still relentlessly trying to get to him, making Josh glance over his shoulder at him, "Please go somewhere else. I need to get them both out of here."

Josh didn't have to tell him twice.

He took off into a jog over to Serena's house, figuring she would be there or her car would be gone if she wasn't. Meanwhile, he took out his phone and started spam calling her, every one of his calls dropping after the two rings.

He cursed under his breath; rounding the corner into his driveway, he saw her car unmoved from the spot in front of his.

She had to be home.

Connor ran up the steps to her door, knocking on it, ringing it, and after no response, the fear and anxiety piled inside his chest. He started banging.

"Shortcake, it's me! I promise you're safe. Please, please open up."

Connor begged, pleading into the wooden panels of the door still, his heart strands snapped in his chest. He saw flashes of her hurting alone, and hot tears burned violently at the corners of his eyes. He didn't want to think like that, but he couldn't help it. She looked as if she wanted to disappear when he last saw her.

"Serena!" He yelled, now desperately reaching for the handle. When he turned it, he surprisingly found that the latch clicked and creaked open. It was unlocked.

He would never enter her house without an invite usually, but his sheer worry drove him forward. He had to know if she was okay. His hands and body were trembling as he entered, his mind swirling with the worst possible outcomes.

He stepped inside, and the house was pitch black. No lights were on anywhere, not even upstairs, where her room was located.

"Serena!" He yelled again, his voice booming through the empty home, bouncing off the walls and sending eerie chills throughout his bones.

Being in her felt wrong.

He moved in further, checking the living room and then the kitchen, but she was nowhere, and no one had responded to him. Every light was out, and he couldn't find any trace of her. He ran upstairs, checking every room up there with no luck before circling back down to the kitchen.

He blew out an exasperated and weighted breath, stepping out of the kitchen and into the downstairs hallway; that was when he noticed the one and only light illuminating her...office? Yeah, her office. He remembered walking in there one day.

"Serena, it's Connor." He announced himself, figuring she was probably in there. He was assuming she was pretty jumpy, and he didn't want her to think he was Peter.

He moved into the door frame, pushing the door open slowly. His heart was beating so fast, and when he finally peered fully into the room. He was shocked and a bit relieved to see it empty.

The only sign of activity was her desktop computer on and lighting up the whole room with its fluorescent glow.

Connor's eyebrows knitted together slowly and moved closer to it like it was a bomb about to explode.

Everything in him told him not to look that this was a massive evasion of privacy. But he was also drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It might give him some sort of idea where she went; maybe she booked a flight to Tahiti and never planned on returning. Who knows.

He moved around her desk and leaned down to look at the bright computer screen. His eyes needed a second to fully adjust to the searing light after squinting through a dark empty house.

It was a document filled and filled with words and bullet points. Connor's eyes moved quickly back and forth, reading bits and pieces.

Plot points I can't lose sight off:

-The wishing well

-love triangle stuff

-Big climax scene???

-Main character's flaws! (flush these out)

He kept reading.

Getting into the thirty chapters, I really wanna start setting up some drama!

It was an outline of a story, and all throughout it, Serena's voice rang through like she was reading it in his head.

His eyes flicked up to the corner of the document reading the title.

Skylyn Voss'Down Frozen Wells'outline

Connor felt his heart still wholly in his body, his blood going cold. He reread the title five times, maybe even more, trying to wrap his brain around what he was seeing.

She said she was an editor, and she knew Melody. Surely, she had Skylyn's outline because editors needed that stuff? She didn't, wouldn't, lie to him.

His eyes flicked up to the other tabs, and he clicked the second one open, now full-on snooping through her things. But he couldn't help it; something profound was looming over him, an awful feeling he was at the precipice of something big.

The second tab, titled 'Down Frozen Wells'_Skylyn Voss, popped open, and it was a document. This one was set up more like a story as opposed to an outline. Words were displayed in paragraphs, dialogue sprinkled in there, and Connor's eyes were moving so quickly around it all he felt like the words were blurry. His heart was beating a million miles a minute. He finally settled on the very last word written; it looked like it was stopped mid-sentence.

Micah turned to Trinity and...

Unfinished. The blinking cursor stared at him and felt like scorn against his heart, mocking him. Why would an editor have unfinished writing?

They didn't; he was intelligent enough to know editors weren't sent unfinished work.

The idea that Serena was lying to him became more and more clear the more he discovered. Now his brain was grappling with the fact he may have accidentally figured out who his favorite author was. This felt all types of wrong, and his heart felt like it was given whiplash and third-degree burns all at the same time. He was having a hard time believing he had figured it out. This whole time, he obsessed and read Skylyn's books, wondering who they were. She had been right next door to him. It didn't feel real. Most importantly, how he found out didn't feel right, not after all he had told her.

He spent the next five minutes staring at the fuzzy words in front of him and replaying every interaction he had with Serena.

How nervous she got when he mentioned Skylyn, the lack of explanation for months over her occupation, the fact she was able to stay home all day and afford a house like the one she was in.

It all smacked him right in the face, and he stood there feeling like a complete and utter dumbfounded idiot.

He finally clicked the third tab, which was her Gmail, and opened up a singular email chain with Melody.

Melody@gmpublications. com: Hey, do you have any new chapters for me? The boss wants to see something new from Skylyn this year. Can I tell him that's possible?

He could hear the nail being driven into the coffin.

Serena Jade was actually Skylyn Voss.

His neighbor was the author who changed his life. Not only that, he had told her absolutely all of his deepest confessions, and instead of telling him the truth.

She sat there and made him look like an idiot while he did it.

•