The Virgin’s Bucket List Episode 4

📖 The Story Continues

The stranger’s hand remained locked around Lindsay’s wrist, warm and undeniably alive. His open eyes held none of the blank obedience she expected from a machine; they were sharp with confusion and a growing anger. Lindsay’s mind scrambled for a reasonable explanation, yet Julie’s message still glowed on the phone beside her. “You can talk too?” she blurted.

He stared at her. Lindsay mistook his speechless disbelief for advanced programming and marveled at what technology could accomplish. Julie must have spent a fortune, she decided. The embarrassment of being caught touching him began to fade beneath astonishment at the most realistic robot she had ever seen.

“What?” he asked, releasing her as if contact with her had become dangerous. Lindsay rubbed her wrist and tried to recover a shred of dignity. There was no graceful way to explain why she had been examining his body, so she settled on the truth as she understood it.

“Aren’t you a sex robot?” The question hung between them. His expression shifted from confusion to offended comprehension, and Lindsay finally noticed details no machine should possess: the water-darkened hair, the uneven breath, and the human flush spreading beneath his skin.

“I’m not a robot.” His answer was flat enough to crack her certainty. Lindsay glanced at Julie’s message again, then at the furious stranger occupying her bed, while every choice she had made during the past several minutes replayed in merciless detail.

“You’re real?” Horror squeezed the words into a whisper. He sat up, securing the towel at his hips, and Lindsay stumbled backward. The stranger she had touched without permission was not an embarrassing birthday gift but an actual man who could remember every second.

Shame rapidly transformed into self-defense. “Then why are you naked in my bed?” she demanded. If he had broken into her room, his outrage did not absolve him. She pointed toward the door and called him a pervert, raising her voice in hopes that someone else might be home.

He stood and asked her to stop shouting. His height was far more intimidating now that she knew he was human, yet irritation rather than threat defined his face. “This is Coach Johnson’s place, right?” he asked, as though that should explain everything.

The mention of her father interrupted Lindsay’s panic. She confirmed it cautiously, demanding to know how he knew Mike. The stranger said he was the coach’s new starter, but that explanation only created more questions. Lindsay knew most of her father’s players by sight, and she had never seen this one before.

“And?” he challenged when she pointed that out. Lindsay bristled at the arrogance of a naked intruder expecting her to accept a football reference as identification. Her father might organize his entire life around the sport, but that did not mean every athlete was entitled to wander into their home.

She reached for her phone, prepared to call the police or Mike—whichever answered first. The stranger moved to stop her, insisting there had been a misunderstanding. His sudden motion loosened the towel that was already hanging precariously from his hips.

The fabric dropped. Lindsay’s gaze followed it before shock snapped her eyes upward, but the image had already registered. She let out a scream and covered her face with both hands, nearly dropping her phone in the process.

The stranger cursed and snatched up the towel. He was now as mortified as she was, which offered a small and deeply unhelpful reassurance that the exposure had been accidental. Lindsay turned toward the wall and demanded that he cover himself immediately.

He wrapped the towel firmly around his waist and told her it was safe to look. Lindsay refused. Her birthday had moved from lonely to humiliating to completely insane, and she suspected Alyssa would somehow discover this too.

“Can you just be quiet, please?” he asked, lowering his voice. He no longer sounded angry, only desperate to prevent the entire neighborhood from arriving. “I will explain everything.”

Lindsay risked a glance through her fingers. He had stepped away from her and kept both hands visible, granting her the space she needed. The courtesy did not erase the fact that he had been naked in her bed, but it made her pause before calling for help.

She lowered her hands and ordered him to begin with his name. The stranger drew a careful breath, as if introducing himself might finally return the evening to sanity. “Wayne,” he said. Something about the name brushed against an old, unreachable corner of Lindsay’s memory.

Before she could grasp that faint recognition, anger and embarrassment buried it. Wayne claimed he belonged in the house, knew her father, and had an explanation for everything. Lindsay folded her arms and gave the nearly naked stranger one chance to prove why she should believe any of it.