SEXT

I roll over to kiss his jaw lightly, and he sighs, shifting in his sleep.

“Five more minutes,” he murmurs.

My chest tightens. Something about this, the way it feels so normal and natural to wake up in his arms, is so sweet it’s almost painful. “Zayne.” I nudge him. “Your phone is going off.”

“Five minutes,” he repeats. Then he heaves a sigh and cracks one eyelid to peer at me. “Wait. We changed it last night didn’t we.”

I have a dim memory of around 3:30 in the morning, as he coaxed me into one more romp, his fingers stroking along my mound. “I believe you said I couldn’t let you sleep through this alarm on pain of death and/or dismembering from Paul.”

Zayne groans and levers himself up on one elbow. “I guess a deal’s a deal, then.” He glances over at me, and pouts a little as his gaze drips over my body. “Unfortunately I won’t have time to make you scream for mercy again this morning…”

I laugh and swat his shoulder. He grins and catches my wrist, tugs me forward into a quick kiss.

“But I’ll settle for an IOU.” He winks, and I feel a flush of heat, both in my cheeks and deep in my belly at the promise of another round tonight.

It could always be like this. We could always be like this.

“Zayne…” I swallow hard, unsure where to go with that. I want to tell him what I’m feeling, but it seems so fast, so sudden.

He curls his fingers around mine and lifts my hand to his lips for a slow kiss along my knuckles. “I know, Clove. This is… I didn’t expect this either. But let’s enjoy it as it comes. And as for the rest, the photo…” His face falls, somewhere halfway between sorrow and anger. “I am so sorry for all of it. I’ll find a way to fix it, no matter what it takes. I just… I can’t bear the idea of knowing that I did that to you.”

“You didn’t.” I shake my head, firm and fierce. “Your ex isn’t your fault. We’ll figure it out together. Who knows?” I force a laugh, a carefree expression I don’t really feel. “Maybe the company has already written back to me. Maybe they found the culprit and we won’t need to worry about this anymore. They could get the photo removed from the other website, have it shut down somehow.”

“Maybe.” He smiles too, and though both of us can tell that it’s forced and fake, neither of us wants to admit it. So, we lean in and kiss again, our lips forcing all the emotions we can’t express into that one kiss.

When he leaves, I linger by the doorway staring after him for longer than I care to admit. I feel unmoored, purposeless. Without my job, I’m not sure where I ought to be anymore, what I should be doing with myself right now. I guess just solving his whole photo attack mystery and getting back to my regular routine as quickly as humanly possible.

So, with that thought in mind, I skip cooking breakfast altogether. I normally skip it anyway, but these past few days with Zayne, he’s been cooking for me each morning, and I find myself missing the habit of it, the routine of eating first thing in the morning to wake up my brain before I start to tackle the day ahead.

Who knew so much about you could change so quickly when you meet the right person? With Zayne, I feel like so many missing pieces are clicking into place that it’s hard to keep track of how fast it’s all moving.

But I don’t regret it. I’m loving this ride, crazy as it may be.

Still, today, I decide to forego the breakfast, because I want to get straight to work. I power up my computer, leaving my phone safely shut off so that I don’t see any of the harassing messages. Not yet. I’ll deal with those later, when I have to. For now, I log onto the app’s website and scan my inbox, praying for a response.

But I don’t see any reply with the company header on it. No answer to my long message about what happened to me, about my picture being stolen from this site and used in a horrible attack on a different site.

There are a couple regular messages, a lot of “hey” and “’sup baby” with winking faces. I ignore those.

Then there’s one more message, from a blank profile. The name just says YouShouldKnow. There’s no photo or anything. But it’s the subject of the email itself that catches my eye. Catches my eye, and makes my stomach sink inside me, nerves firing all over again.

About Zayne.

Zayne doesn’t use his real name on his profile. Nobody does on this site. We’ve all learned better by now—me especially, given everything that kicked off this week even without my real name being accessible on this app.