SEXT

“Coffee shop?” he asks before I can even open my mouth to suggest it. I shoot him a grateful sideways smile and we head off toward what’s quickly becoming our spot. Somewhere along the way, he loops his hand through mine, and I squeeze his fingers tightly, enjoying the warmth of his grip, the steadiness of his support.

“So,” he starts as we step into the warm, reassuringly coffee-scented air of the corner coffee shop where we had our first date. “Tell me what happened.”

“I need caffeine first,” I protest. Like a mind-reader, he’s already in line. He orders for us both, and I notice with a little secret thrill that he remembered my order from last time. He already knows how I like my coffee. How many guys would notice that, let alone remember it?

We take a seat at the back, the same one where we sat last time, and I blow on my latte while he takes small sips of his tall black coffee.

“You made it sound like bad news,” he finally says, when the silence has stretched on too long.

“It’s not. It’s just… Complicated news,” I reply.

He lifts his eyebrows, expectant. Waiting for me to explain.

It doesn’t take more than that to get me to spill. I launch into the full story, from the moment I first told my boss everything, up to her proposal. “I don’t know how you’d feel about it; I know you wanted to warn her, give her a chance to back off, but she hacked corporate servers, Zayne…”

“I know.” He grimaces and blows on his coffee absently, before taking another long gulp. “But you’re right. She’s broken laws at this point. I can’t protect her from herself. It was her choice to hack your company, use that against you. She’d already gone way too far with taking that photo and putting it out in the world, she didn’t have to try and ruin your career along with it.” He scowls and shakes his head so hard that a lock of his blond hair falls across his forehead. I fight the urge to reach out and brush it back. That’s fast becoming a habit already.

“I’m sorry, Zayne.”

“Don’t be,” he answers fiercely, almost as soon as the words are out of my mouth. “I keep telling you this, Clove, but I mean it—you did not do anything. You don’t deserve any of this. Whatever we can do to fix this for you, we will.”

“So if I asked you for your ex’s details to send to my boss…”

He nods. “I’ll send you everything I have as soon as we get back home. Name, address, the way I think she hacked my account, in case it’s how she hacked your company’s too. All of it.”

“Thank you.” I bite my lip. “So…” His turn now. “How did your side of it go?”

He groans and drains the rest of his coffee in one swig. “She’s still living in the same apartment she had when we were dating. I’m not sure she has much of a social life, friends. It was weird.” He winces, closes his eyes. “She seems obsessed, really.”

I frown, my brows drawing together. “That bad?”

“Her whole apartment is just plastered with photos of us. Old ones, ones from years ago. And then newer photos, photos of me. Some of them she’s…” He clears his throat. I can tell that he’s badly shaken—and no wonder, given what he had to face today. “Some she’s Photoshopped me into. Others are me out on dates with other girls, people from the app who I met months ago. She’s crossed out all their faces, drawn curses on the pages. There’s one of you…” His voice breaks and he clenches his coffee cup so hard that the now-empty paper crumples in his fist. “She just sounds so normal when you speak to her. Like this is all so practical and mundane. Like she doesn’t even realize anything is weird about it.”

I reach across the table to rest my hand on top of his. “She needs help, Zayne.”

“I know. I tried to talk her into coming with me to a hospital, talking to a doctor, anything. She refused. Said it was none of my business. And I told her I’m deleting my account on that app, so she can stop bothering to hack it. She just told me that I got what I deserved.”

“But she hasn’t hacked any of your other devices or accounts, you don’t think?”

“Not that I could tell. Everything she had, all those pictures and information, it was all from the dating app. And she’s not exactly subtle. If she’d hacked other pieces of my life, I think there’d be evidence sitting around her house. Or she’d talk about it, mention it somehow. She isn’t sly, that’s one thing I have to say for her.” He laughs, a low, bitter laugh. “She always tells you the truth about exactly how fucking batshit she is.” His voice breaks on that, the bitterness too sharp for him to maintain. “I just want to see her somewhere safe. A hospital maybe, or with her family. She needs somebody to stop her from doing this.”