Page 88 of The Difference Between

Laughter and conversation louden like a threat.

Gavin wets his lips, completely at ease from his standing position as he looks down at me. “Ask me nicely.”

“Now how many bedrooms are up here?” a woman asks.

I could scream.

“Please go out with me, Gavin.” The words fire out of me, desperate and strained.

“Okay, okay.” Gavin waves his hands like white flags. “No need to beg, Miss Reese. I’ll go out with you.”

Asshole.

He shuts the door and for a split second, we’re swallowed by dark. My lungs fill with concrete the way they always do when I’m in a space this small. The dark makes it worse. I am not trapped, I am not trapped, I am not trapped.

Gavin turns the closet light on, and I let out a shaky exhale before scowling at him then prying off the lid of the tub.

And there it is: Theo’s secret.

My “Aha!” meets Gavin’s “What the . . . ?”

I can overlook most of the things in the box. The whips. The handcuffs. Even the butt plug. Just because my sex life isn’t active enough to explore most of this stash, doesn’t mean Theo shouldn’t be allowed to have his fun.

But it’s the photos I won’t be able to look past.

Photos that put him in the hell-fucking-no category for fathering my child.

Because there, in a stack of Polaroids, is Theo.

Dressed like a baby.

I stand next to Gavin and thumb through the evidence of Theo in various states of baby. He’s alone in most, but there are several with different women spanking him or giving him a bottle. Ah—there’s the bib.

The one with him nursing from a woman’s breast? I’ll never unsee that.

Gavin’s eyes go so wide I laugh.

“And here I thought that you had mommy issues.” We exchange a look as I flip to the next photo. “Told you we’d find something.”

At the one of Theo sans the diaper and holding only a rattle, Gavin groans and looks away. “What the fu⁠—”

I put a hand over his mouth as the once-distant voices are now people in the room.

“You can see the primary is spacious,” a man’s voice says. Theo’s voice.

Gavin’s terrified eyes meet mine. I remove my hand from his mouth to put the photos away and snap the lid back into place as quietly as possible. Gavin turns off the light, and my body petrifies.

“Love this bed,” a woman says.

My hands grapple in the dark for Gavin. He finds my waist and pulls me flush against him.

I fist his shirt, forcing myself to breathe. I’ve always hated tight spaces—especially when they’re dark—but I always work through the initial panic quickly because I’ve never truly been trapped. But here, during an illegal search with people on the other side of the door, I am trapped, and my body knows. I can’t breathe, I can’t move, and my heart might be beating itself broke.

Oh, no.

“Um.” My throat’s pinched. I sniff and manage a shaky, “Fresh wood.” I take two shallow breaths. Muffled voices penetrate the wall; it registers. “People.”

Breathe.