Big O Box Set

He meets my gaze, and I ignore the shock of pain in my gut. Hold his eye, because dammit, he should at least need to look me in the eye while he lies to my face. “No,” he says. “I won’t deny it.”

The blow lands hard. At least he didn’t lie, I think, distantly. But it doesn’t help very much. The truth still hurts.

I pull my hand free from his. The elevator doors have long since closed again, but when I stab at the button, they open once more, ready to whisk me away from here. From him.

“Clove, please, wait.”

I step into the elevator, but he steps in with me, pins me against the back wall with his hands on both of my shoulders, gripping me tight, desperation in his eyes. “I can explain,” he says.

I laugh once, sharp and bitter. “Right. Like you’ve explained everything so far.”

“I only made the new profile for you.”

My eyebrows shoot up so high that it’s a wonder they remain attached to my face. “You think that’s helping your case? You made a whole profile to trick me? Great.”

“No, that’s not… Not to trick you, Clove. To match with you.”

“What the hell are you talking about.”

He’s digging in his pocket now, pulling out his phone. I reach past him to press the ground floor button, but hesitate halfway there. The elevator doors close, leaving us suspended in midair above my floor, but I still, I don’t hit the button. Part of me wants to know, too badly, how this story pans out.

I hate that part of me.

“Clove, that night when I fought off your stalker… It wasn’t the first time I noticed you.”

I scowl at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ve been wanting to talk to you for years. Trying to find ways to get closer to you. But you never noticed, never saw me standing there. I thought a few months ago, when you joined this app, that maybe this would be it. The way I could get through to you. Finally connect. We matched, actually, three months ago. On my old profile.”

I frown. “What?” No we didn’t. No way. I would remember that.

He’s nodding. “But you unmatched me almost right away. Before I could even message you or say anything.”

I grimace. I do have a tendency to do that. When my app gets too clogged with matches, I trim it down. Swipe left again on any guy who I’m not 100% sure would be my type, just to clear the space for guys who are more my speed. “Prove it,” I hear myself saying anyway, because I still don’t think I would have missed something like that. Zayne is hot as hell in his profile pictures. Would I really unmatch him?

You spent years walking right past him, part of me points out. And besides, it’s not like his profile said anything much about his interests or hobbies. Or even his job. Maybe I just assumed we’d have nothing in common. He was pretty but that was about it.

Zayne, for his part, has sprung into action. He scrolls through his phone, and then hands it to me. I stare at the app page, both unfamiliar and familiar all at once. It’s his other profile, his real one. There are a few dozen messages sitting unread—probably from all those girls he’s been messaging while we’ve been apart for a few hours, I can’t help thinking, because even if he explains this profile, it still doesn’t explain why he’d lie to me about wanting to get off the app when he clearly doesn’t want to stop messaging other women yet. I ignore those and watch as he swipes onto my profile, searching by previous matches.

There I am. Right on the screen, in the same pixels that damned him yesterday.

Previously matched, it says, but there’s no contact button, no way to message. He’s right. We matched at some point, and then I unmatched him.

“But…” I trail off, biting my lip.

He heaves a sigh. “Clove, I liked you from the start. I tried to talk to you on here, but you shut it down. And you never noticed me at the door. So that night when that asshole tried to follow you home, and you finally seemed to look at me—really look— I had to jump on that chance. The only way to talk to you, I figured, was a match like this. I already knew you were on the app, and we live in the same building, so I figured if I made a new profile, it’d pair us soon enough. And it did, thank god.” His eyes bore into mine, as if he’s willing me to believe him.

I want to. So badly. I want to just give in, quit asking all these questions, trust him. But that’s so hard to do. Especially after everything that’s happened. Everything I’ve seen.

I shake my head. “Okay, so you made a whole profile just to stalk me. Great. That’s a real point in your favor.”

“It wasn’t to stalk you, Clove, it was just to start a conversation. If you hadn’t been interested, I would’ve dropped things right away. But you answered, you struck up a conversation with me. It went both ways.”

“Right. And how special was it really? More entertaining than the other dozen conversations you have going on right now?” I roll my eyes and hand the phone back to him.

“What, these?” He laughs, a scoff in the back of his throat. “I haven’t checked this profile in weeks. Especially not since I met you.”

“Then why do you have so many unread messages?” I point out, rolling my eyes. Now I do lean past him to jab the first floor button.

He’s faster though, and double-taps it to unselect the floor, leaving us suspended in midair once more. “Clove, look.” He opens his message section and points me at it. “See these last read messages? They’re from weeks ago, some of them months.”

I stare at the inbox, my brow furrowing. “That can’t be right.”

Now it’s his turn to scowl. “What, I can’t possibly be telling you the truth?”

&nbs

p; “What happened to all the conversations with the other women?” I counter, crossing my arms.

“Other… What? Clove, there are no other women. There haven’t been since we met.”

“That’s not what I saw.”

“Saw where?” His frown has deepened even further, though I don’t think it’s directed at me. He looks a million miles away now, thinking hard.

To bring him back to reality, I pull my phone out of my pocket. Now it’s my turn to open my app and pull up the messages that came in yesterday. I flip the screen around, hold it out for him to see. At least today the incoming calls and spamming sext-messages from total strangers have calmed down enough that I can safely use it. Enough to show him this, at any rate.

He reads. With every line he reads, his eyebrows rise higher, and his jaw clenches. By the time he reaches the end of the messages, he looks furious, angrier than I’ve ever seen him. His fists are clenched at his sides, and his whole body trembles from the force of his fury.

“How fucking dare she.”

I swallow again. Against my better judgment, against all of my instincts, I believe that anger. He can’t be this good of an actor, no way. “Your ex?” I ask, a hesitant tremor in my voice.

He clenches my phone so tight in one fist that I’m almost afraid the screen will shatter. “How did she even…”

I gently pry my phone from his fingers, mostly to save its life. “Did she make up those conversations? Because some of them…” I pull open the one where he’s talking to another girl. Trouble sleeping? “Seem awfully familiar.” I lift one pointed eyebrow.

Zayne grimaces. “Some of them are real. Probably most of them, I don’t remember. But the dates are all wrong. Look.” He scrolls through his phone. It takes him a while, but he eventually locates one of the conversations, the one with CandyCane. Sure enough, it took place almost two years ago. Same with another one, shortly afterward, with XtraSaucy. In fact, almost all of the conversations are from that time period. The screenshots are real, identical to his account message history. All except for the dates which had been carefully, meticulously altered.