Chapter 7
chapter
seven
SHAY
Void hadn’t messaged me all week. His silence didn’t feel like a test or a punishment. It felt like he was waiting, like he was giving me space to decide whether I really wanted this.
It was weird.
He was simultaneously respecting my boundaries while breaking them.
So I went about my week as usual. I went to work, I bought overly expensive Mexican food, and I argued about the difference between enemies to lovers and rivals to lovers at book club.
I could almost tell myself it was a fluke. That whatever had happened with Void was a figment of my overactive, kinky imagination.
Then, on Thursday, I carpooled with Eames and Olly and paused as they went inside, taking a selfie just outside my building. The red brick juxtaposed against the overcast gray morning.
“You coming?” Eames held the door open, waiting.
“Uh…” The black skull mask had popped up.
Void had watched it.
“Coming!” I shoved my phone into my bag and ran after them.
After once again exploding in a mess of pens and scrunchies, I got to work. Almost immediately, my computer froze. Weird. These computers were designed specifically to handle large processing.
Somewhere in the building was a supercomputer. Rows and rows of data towers, wires, coolant, all powered my little desktop.
I did the ol’ IT trick—turned it on and off again—and waited.
There were a few models I needed to run for Jenna.
We were coauthoring a paper much closer to my area on standard dark matter interactions and systematic shifts in cosmic age determination.
In normal talk, we were wondering if our assumptions about dark matter were biasing how old we thought the universe was.
I tapped my foot against the floor, legs jiggling, waiting for the computer to turn back on.
Lying is not the game, Maniac. You answer my questions, and I’ll decide when you’re ready. When you stop answering, I’ll know you’re not.
When, he said, as if it was a foregone conclusion that I would tap out.
That was why I responded. Why I pulled out my computer and sent a message.
If we met…what would happen?
I thought you didn’t plan to meet me.
I still don’t.
I said instantly. A moment later I added,
I’m just curious. What would we do?
A few moments, and then he said:
Your profile is still up. Didn’t I tell you nothing good will come from it?
Idk. I’m hoping I come from it.
Shit. Fuck. I stared at the words, wishing I could delete them, when—
“Shay?”
I put my phone face down on the desk, turning to find my boss, Jenna.
She leaned against a whiteboard that maybe, at one time, had held serious scientific equations, but now only contained the world’s longest running game of hangman.
Eames was ridiculously competitive. The last word he chose was Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, or the longest word in the English language.
“I’m almost finished,” I said. “The computer is being especially slow today.” As I said that, it froze again.
Jenna leaned over my shoulder. “Is it frozen?”
“Second time this morning,” I said.
“Weird,” she said, echoing my thoughts, then stood up. After promising to have tech come look at it, she left.
“Download too much porn off LimeWire again?” Eames asked.
“I wonder what tech will say about all the hentai Shay keeps on her computer,” Olly mused, not turning away from the model she was working on.
I rolled my eyes and leaned against my chair, pushing it back to an angle. There wasn’t much I could do without a computer. I could read and annotate the stack of papers I had on my desk…
My eyes dropped to my phone as I thrummed my fingers in a staccato rhythm.
I grabbed the stack of papers, sifting through the Post-its I’d applied as some effort of organization.
Red: New theories.
Green: My field.
Pink: Friends in unrelated fields.
Yellow…shit. What was yellow?
I set the yellow aside to deal with later and grabbed the green pile. My eyes once again wandered to my phone.
I would just take a small peek.
It was actually a smart decision. I wouldn’t be able to focus otherwise.
Void had responded almost immediately after my last message.
Let’s play a game.
Okay, Jigsaw.
Three dots.
Brat.
I rolled my lips between my teeth at the response, trying to suppress a smile.
What game?
You answer one of my questions, and I’ll answer one of yours. If you don’t answer, you owe me a picture.
What kind of picture?
The kind you don’t want getting out.
I worked my bottom lip between my teeth.
Does that mean you’ll owe me a picture if you don’t answer?
Yes.
Deal.
What is so out of control in your life that you need someone to take it from you?
Fuck. Should have seen that coming.
I pulled a paper off my green pile, trying to distract myself. I didn’t have to answer. I could send a photo.
I don’t technically know this person. I shouldn’t care about what he thought. But I…liked him. As much as you can like someone you’ve never seen. I liked talking to him. I liked flirting with him. And, as weird as it sounds, because everything about this was so not normal, I liked feeling normal.
I can’t control when I get sick.
Shit. I was doing this. I was telling a complete stranger my deepest insides.
I can’t control getting better.
I’d never been skydiving like my sister, but I did let her talk me into a horrifying hike where you had to hold a chain to keep from tumbling hundreds of feet into death. The adrenaline that day made my knees wobble and legs shake.
That was how I felt replying to Void.
I can’t control my fiancé cheating on me. I don’t fucking control anything.
Adrenaline burned my throat. I was all at once naked and on fire.
I waited for him to nope out. To realize he’d matched with something broken.
Good girl.
Once again praise settled like wine in my bloodstream. There must be something seriously wrong with me that I like being called good girl. I bet my sister would say it was unresolved daddy issues.
In books, when someone called the heroine a good girl, it was in response to something sexual. He’d called me a good girl for exposing my insides to him.
Are you married?
Oh, right.
Ex-fiancé.
I amended.
Did he know about your fantasies?
No one knows them.
Except you went unsaid.
Why did you break up?
It’s my turn. Why me? Why are you stalking me?
Three dots appeared, then disappeared, then reappeared.
I don’t know.
I rolled my eyes, typing quickly.
Lying isn’t the game, Void.
I sat back, fiddling with the stack of papers, waiting for Void to reply. It was almost five minutes before he did.
I wish I could say it was just to keep you safe from the kind of people you’ll attract with that profile, but I don’t think I’ll get you out of my head until I know exactly what you look like shattering on my cock.
I swallowed no air, chest tight, and stared at the message until it blurred into nothing. I’d always expected sexting to be like, What are you wearing? This was…
Intense. Thrilling. Dark.
But I didn’t respond.
I didn’t know how to respond.
Luckily, he sent a follow-up so I didn’t have to.
But that will never happen.
My heart plummeted into my stomach.
Why?
I typed before I could stop myself. Void’s thought bubble popped, then disappeared, then popped up.
If you’re not going to answer, you owe me a photo.
I stared at the screen, waiting for a response. Seriously, what the hell was wrong with me? A stalker, a literal criminal, had more sense for safety than I did.
Lithie has BPD, or borderline personality disorder, so she always got the rep for being impulsive and reckless. But I don’t know, I think maybe she was just louder about it.
It took two minutes before he sent one. My breath caught. A wave of heat slid through my body, rippling and distorting, like the air on a hot summer day.
A hard, rigid outline of his cock in gray sweatpants.
There was a knock and my gaze shot up, finding a thin man in the doorway. I slammed the phone down, feeling caught. Eames and Olly shot me a look.
“Someone called IT,” he said.
“Right. Yeah.” I shook my head—get a fucking grip—and explained the issue. While he got to work, I grabbed my phone and quickly sent a response.
If you want me to stay away, that photo isn’t helping.
Just playing by the rules.
You really don’t plan to meet me?
No.
What if I answer every question?
Maybe, but you won’t.
I chewed my bottom lip, suppressing a smile.
You can’t scare me.
We’ll see, Maniac.