10. Tate
Tate
“Push yourself,” Roman demands in a low tone, way too fucking close to my face. “Push harder. You’re stronger than that. Now show me.”
I let out a guttural protest as I press my feet down hard on the bottom of the hack squat machine, every inch of my legs feeling like molten fire from the strain.
“Fuck this,” I hiss.
We’ve been in the gym for over an hour, and while most of Roman’s gym session was a breeze for me, he saved the machine from the absolute depths of hell for last.
“No. One more,” he barks at me.
“Can’t fucking do it—”
“One more, Tate.”
I groan as I go for another rep and my quads and glutes scream with the exertion. My heart slams in my chest as I push through and powerfully force my body up in the machine, using every last goddamn muscle in my legs.
“Holyfuckingshit,” I whisper as I reach the apex and then push out of the machine, leaning over to catch my breath.
“That’s how you fucking do it,” Roman says, and his giant mitt of a hand lands on my shoulder, giving it an encouraging grip.
I breathe deeply. “I hate you.”
“So hate me. I’m making you stronger. Now that your awful form is fixed maybe you can get close to my weight on the machine—”
I reach out and smack his ass hard, and he catches my wrist and shoves my arm back. I lean backward, gulping down air, smiling at him.
He gives me a wicked, hungry smile, still clutching my wrist as he body blocks me.
My cock throbs at that look, even now, while my whole body feels like it’s about to give out from under me.
He’s been looking at me like that multiple times this week, and each time I swear he’s about to grab me and swallow me whole. He really is like an animal, sometimes, and I love it when I get his cold exterior to break.
I give my wrist a tug and he drops it, nodding as he finally steps back. “You’re a good trainer.”
“You did well.”
He glances over toward the windows that look out toward the main hall of the building, and he does a double take.
I look over and see Hunter there, waving at him from outside the gym.
“One second,” Roman tells me, and he takes off in a jog toward the glass double doors.
I chug from my water bottle as I watch him swing the door open and have a conversation with Hunter.
The two of them went off to have a private talk yesterday, too, while I was making cake with Rayne.
What the hell could they be discussing?
If it were regular Onyx Society business, wouldn’t they have just talked about it right there in the kitchen?
Both of them pull out their phones. They’re looking down intently at something, and Roman frowns, his expression going stony as he sees what Hunter shows him.
And then, suddenly, Roman’s eyes look up to meet mine.
He lifts two fingers and curls them toward him, gesturing for me to come. I collect my gym bag, my keys, and my water bottle, heading out to the main hallway.
“Tate,” Roman says as I approach.
The hallway is crowded, but the other students are walking back and forth, heading to yoga classes or the rowing room or into the gym. I lean against the wall by the windows and I frown at Roman.
“What’s up?”
“Tate, do you know who this is?” Hunter asks me, and he holds out his phone.
He’s looking at the Instagram page of the guy I gave a blow job on that beach, months and months ago.
“Of course I do. He’s the person I ruined my life for, with one goddamn mistake of a hookup. I follow him on here. Not that I check it very much.”
“Are you aware he has a private account?”
I furrow my brow. “No. I don’t know anything about the guy.
He never even told me his name. He added me on Instagram while I was on the same beach as him, then messaged me about a hookup.
Half of his posts are of girls with big tits, which I thought was funny, because…
well, he certainly liked fucking my mouth, at least.”
Hunter nods. “Well, another account was made from the same origin and the same password as his public account.”
“How do you know what the password is?”
His lashes flick up to me. “I’ll explain that in a minute. I shouldn’t have access to it, but there was a way.”
“Jesus. Okay. So… the guy I blew on the beach has another account?”
“Exactly,” Hunter explains. “And when I logged in…”
He holds out his phone and shows me the recent posts.
My stomach drops.
Most of the photos are nondescript pictures of New York City. Many of them taken near the neighborhood where I grew up.
But one of the most recent pictures, right at the top of the page, is a direct photo of the rock that was left at my door.
The symbols are all on it, carved crudely, exactly as I found them.
“How did you… how did you find this person?” I ask, feeling like I’m going to be sick. “His face was never exposed in the images of us. That goddamn hat, pulled low over his face…”
“His name is Lucian Farina. I wrote some lines of code that could scour all hate comments made about you on every article posted about you in the last year. It looked for similarities in the way people typed, and what they said. It was Roman’s idea.”
“And?”
“And there was one commenter in particular who seemed more unhinged than the others. Most of the websites had their security locked down, but one of the trashier gossip sites had absolute garbage security. I was able to access the commenters’ emails and passwords.”
“This is why I asked Hunter,” Roman adds. “I don’t know how, but he is a wizard. The real hacker.”
“It’s not all that complex, really. The email address was very simple to get, but the website also didn't have one-way password hashing. All it took was a couple post requests with code injections sent into the unprotected backend, and I was able to grab all the passwords in plain text.”
“Wow.”
“So, I scoured for other instances of that same email address on other websites, used the same password, and… this is the Instagram I gained access to.”
I pull in a long breath. “So the person sending me threats was the guy I was with, not people who were mad about it?”
“Could be both, or it could be just him,” Roman says. “Did he seem dangerous when you were with him?”
“He just seemed very hungry for sex, to be honest. He was very rude to the bartenders at the place by the beach, though.”
“Definitely a red flag,” Hunter says. “But the threats you’ve received since that day have been detailed?”
“The ones I got when I was in the city were. It wasn’t just rocks at the door. It was notes saying shit like I would take pleasure in seeing you take your last breath.”
“And this is exactly why you should take it seriously,” Roman tells me firmly, reaching out to squeeze my hand.
“This person is crazy enough to say that, and crazy enough to find you at Crimson, come all the way here, and put a fucking rock at your door? Jesus, Tate… hold on. Did the guy smoke cigarettes?”
I nod. “He had a pack, at the beach, yes.”
Roman frowns. “This could have been the man who was on the quad watching you that night, when you first got here.”
I exhale, fluttering my eyes shut. “I hate this. I hate all of this.”
“One small piece of good news is that I saw the location data from his last post on Instagram,” Hunter says. “As of two days ago, last night, and an hour ago, and all of them were posted from New York City, not here at Crimson.”
“Thank fuck,” I say.
“So for right this moment you are safe. From him, at least.”
“But all it takes is a few hours in a car, and he could be here,” Roman warns us both. “Stay vigilant.”
Hunter nods. “I have an alert set to message me any time he makes a new post, on a website, or on either of his IG pages. I will know, and keep you both informed.”
“And I will have Maks look up every shred of history, and past information, about the name Lucian Farina,” Roman says. “We can meet with Maks right now. Let’s shower off. Hunter… I owe you everything.”
He gives Roman a little salute. “I want to help. I have to go meet Rayne for a date, but please call me if you need anything.”
“Where are you and Rayne headed for your date?”
Hunter smiles. “I’m taking him to laser tag, and I’m going to whoop his ass. I like when he gets competitive with me, because at first he’s all silently pissed off at me, and then we fuck it out later.”
I laugh, reaching up to give him a high-five. “So hot.”
“It’s very hot, and very fun.”
“Have a good night,” I tell him. “And thank you so much, Hunter. I don’t deserve it, but everyone here has been so kind to me.”
“You totally deserve it, Landrey,” he calls back as he walks away. “Be kinder to yourself, kid!”
He walks off into the crowd and it’s just me and Roman again.
“Your squats were perfect today,” he tells me, shoving his phone into his pocket as we start to walk toward the locker room.
“Fuck, we need to figure this shit out. Tonight, we’ll meet with Maks.
Tomorrow, you should join me in the library and we’ll look up crime news articles from that area of New York he takes pictures in. ”
“Fuck no,” I protest. “Not tomorrow night. Fall Lantern Fair. Remember?”
“We need to take this seriously.”
“Well, I need to go have fun with the rest of the guys. He’s not even near the campus right now. Ollie told me he was going to bring green apple vodka in a flask tomorrow.”
“Shitty cheap liquor, when we have better at home?”
“Fuck you,” I tell him, anger rising in my voice.
“You have no care for your own safety.”
“You have no regard for my fucking freedom,” I tell him. “I haven’t gone out a single night this week because I always stay home to be safe. Nothing’s going to happen to me at a festival on campus, especially if you’re with me.”
“And look at you. Alive. Safe. Following my rules.”
My throat tightens all of a sudden.
I won’t let any tears fall. Not in front of him. But I’m so fucking sick of this.
I look down at the ground, refusing to meet his eyes.
“I have to live my life, Roman,” I say, my voice going a little hoarse at the end. I finally look back up at him, giving him a pleading look.
When his expression doesn’t budge, I give up.