Chapter 6
Aimee
I stuffed my wet towels into the building’s dryer with a little too much force, taking my frustrations out on my laundry. The cyberstalking was getting worse.
But there was no fucking way some idiot on the internet knew where I lived. And even if he did, he wouldn’t have the guts to come here and confront me about my podcast content.
Would he?
No. This was his plan. He wanted me to question everything. He wanted me to be creeped out by the eerie flicker of the laundry room’s fluorescent lights, or to worry that the footsteps in the hall signaled danger.
But I knew the truth: shitty light fixtures and another resident with some clothes to wash.
I wasn’t going to panic. It wasn’t like there was anything that could stop these kinds of guys, anyway.
At the start of my podcasting, I’d tried, but every move seemed to make things worse.
The police couldn’t do anything, not unless a stalker acted on his threats.
Fighting with guys like this riled them up, and blocking them had no impact, since they were mostly using burner accounts.
It was a fact of life for a public figure on the internet.
And everyone kept telling me they were harmless.
I know where you live.
He was lying, right? Like, he couldn’t be planning to show up to my building and… I shuddered, not even wanting to let my brain go down that path.
I was just closing the door to the dryer and tapping my card on the reader when Rhett stumbled in, looking like he hadn’t slept in days, with a laundry basket full of towels balanced on top of a basket full of dark-colored jeans and t-shirts in a precarious pile.
He tripped over the doorstop, nearly face-planting as he lurched forward, trying to keep the stacked baskets balanced. Rhett was many things—tall, broad-shouldered, irritatingly handsome—but clumsy wasn’t one of them.
The door began to swing closed behind him, and my heart leapt into my throat. I lunged forward, shoving past Rhett with enough force to make him stumble backward.
“Don’t let it—!” I yelled, reaching for the door, my fingers grazing the metal as it clicked shut. “Fuck.”
“What?” Rhett blinked at me, his exhausted brain clearly not processing what had happened. He set down his overflowing laundry baskets and ran a hand through his already chaotic hair. “Oh. Hi, Aims.”
I pointed to the sign taped above the doorknob—a wrinkled piece of paper with DO NOT CLOSE DOOR. KNOB brOKEN written in red Sharpie. “The door’s broken. We’re locked in.”
Rhett stared at the sign like it was written in ancient Sumerian. “What? Sorry, I haven’t been sleeping. Twenty-four-hour shift turned into more of a thirty, and I got home and realized I had to baby-safe the whole apartment.”
I turned from my futile jiggling of the doorknob to stare at him. “Baby-safe?”
“Did you know kittens chew on electrical wires? It’s wild keeping them from danger.”
“You and Troy got kittens?”
“Troy keeps saying they’re my mistake, not his,” he muttered vaguely. Then he sighed dreamily. “But none of it is a mistake. They’re adorable.”
I smiled. “I’m sure they are. But how? Why?”
Rhett sighed and moved to the washing machine, dumping in his laundry with zero regard for sorting or capacity limits. “It was an accident. We had the annual calendar photoshoot for the fire department. With animals. For charity.”
He jabbed at the buttons on the machine like they had personally offended him, then turned back to examine the door.
“How do you accidentally adopt kittens? Don’t you have to fill out an application?”
“I don’t know, Aims. They were cute. The lady handed me some papers, and I wrote things. Troy kept flexing his muscles. Did you know he has cum gutters?”
“You… wrote things.”
“Yep. I was sad he hasn’t asked me to suck his cock, and I panicked. Next thing I knew, I was driving home with a cardboard box that meowed while Troy sat there having cum gutters.”
“Stop saying cum gutters.”
He shrugged and knelt to inspect the doorknob more closely, his exhaustion seeming to give way to irritation. “I can stop saying it, but we both know they’re there and we both want to lick them.”
I rubbed my forehead, trying to extract that insanely sexy mental image from my brain, a flush of heat rushing straight to my core. I turned to Rhett, watching him kneel beside the doorknob and examine it.
“This door is a goddamn fire hazard. Who leaves a broken door without fixing it?”
“Our shitty landlord?”
“Screws are on the other side.” Rhett pulled out a Leatherman multi-tool from his pocket and started examining the doorknob. I watched his long fingers handle the multi-tool with a confidence that made my stomach tighten.
Beneath Rhett’s goofball exterior, he had a soft, steady capability that did something for me, especially when paired with Troy’s charm and protective nature. Together, the two of them could take a woman apart in ways she’d probably never recover from.
I shook off that thought as he sat back with a sigh. “No luck?”
“If we could access the hinges…” He looked up and sighed, shaking his head. “Everything I could unscrew is on the wrong side of the door.”
He folded up his multi-tool and stood, brushing the dust off his jeans. “I guess we might as well wait it out. We’re stuck in here.”
He went back to his laundry baskets and started shoving the contents into two different washers.
“This is a breach of like six different safety codes,” he muttered.
“Why didn’t they prop the door open with something more than a rubber doorstop?
Or tape off the latch so no one would get trapped in here?
So many options, and the damn building chose none of them. ”
I stayed quiet, watching him work. This was a different Rhett than I was used to—no jokes, no easy smiles, none of the playful banter that usually characterized our interactions. He seemed genuinely upset, and not just about the door.
I pulled out my phone, already knowing it was useless. The building management had installed a tap-to-pay payment system, bragging that they could now accept mobile payments, failing to realize that cell phones never worked in this room. “No signal.”
“Great,” Rhett muttered, swiping his card across the card reader and starting his load. “So we’re stuck until someone else needs to do laundry.”
“Shit. How long will that be?”
He spun, examining the machines in the room. “That washer over there isn’t yours, is it?” He pointed to a machine that was chugging away.
“Nah.”
“Good news. When they come down to change their laundry to the dryer, we’ll be free.” He exhaled heavily and hopped onto the washing machine he’d just loaded, letting his long legs dangle.
“Let’s hope they’re the type to be diligent about not letting it sit. I have a podcast to edit.”
“Sorry,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t mean to trap us in here.”
“It’s okay,” I said, hopping up onto the dryer across from his machine. “It’s not your fault the door’s broken.”
“No, but it is my fault I didn’t notice the sign.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “I’m not usually this…” He gestured vaguely at himself.
“Sleep-deprived and grumpy?” I supplied.
A ghost of his usual smile flickered across his face. “Yeah, that.”
I hesitated, torn between curiosity about the kittens and concern about his obvious distress. The second won out.
“What’s going on, Rhett? And don’t say ‘nothing’ or ‘kittens’ because I’m not buying it.”
He started fidgeting with the Leatherman again, turning it over and over in his hands, staring down at it like it might offer answers. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet.
“Aims, I’m so confused.”
The raw honesty in those four words hit me harder than I expected. Rhett—confident, easygoing Rhett who always seemed to have his shit together despite his class clown act—looked genuinely lost.
“About Troy?” I asked gently.
He nodded, still not looking up. “About Troy. About feelings in general. About the fact that I can’t stop thinking about that kiss. But he’s completely dismissed it. And I’m still crushing on…” His eyes darted to me, and he cleared his throat. “Maybe I’m just gross.”
“You’re not gross. You’re hot as hell, and you damn well know that.”
“Then why does everyone friendzone me? It’s not just Troy. There’s this girl too—” He cleared his throat. “Um, a random girl. You don’t know her. Never met her.”
“But she’s nice?”
“So cool, brilliant, beautiful, the whole package. Slightly off-limits because, um. Never mind. Anyway, I’ve been nursing a crush for a while. And I don’t know how to deal with having feelings for multiple people at once. Hell, I barely know how to deal with feelings for one person.”
“Sweetheart, people get mixed-up feelings all the time. It’ll sort itself out.”
He let out a hollow laugh. “Must be handy to be an expert on relationships. You don’t need to ask anyone for advice.”
I reached out and nudged his boot with my slipper. “Just because I can give other people fantastic, research-backed advice doesn’t mean I have my own shit together. Just because I know the science doesn’t mean I listen to the science.”
Rhett scoffed. “Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad. You’re amazing. I’m sure there are dozens of great guys out there who’d scoop you up in an instant.”
“You’ve met some of my recent dates,” I countered. “Knowing there are great guys out there is one thing. Finding them is another. And don’t even get me started on all the various pieces of my own advice I ignore.”
He looked up at me then, really looked, and something in his expression shifted. “Like what?”
“You want the sad origin story?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light even as my stomach tightened with the familiar anxiety that came whenever I thought about my past.
“Someone very recently told me not to be so pushy, so please observe my calm, gentle demeanor. You only need to share if you feel comfortable.”
I grinned. “But you really want to know so you can poke your nose into more of my business.”