Chapter 14
Lauren
Trick gave an exaggerated grunt of pain as the back of my hand made contact with his rock-hard bicep.
“I thought he was one of your best friends?” I asked, grinning.
“He is, that’s why I like to give him shit.”
My phone buzzed on the coffee table, and an email notification flashed on the screen. My heart sank at the sight, and Trick grabbed it, cursing under his breath as he read the name of the sender.
Your Soulmate.
He tapped the screen, bringing up the request for my passcode, then held out the phone for me. I stared at it for a few seconds, then slowly shook my head.
“You do it,” I mumbled, reciting the six-digit code.
He entered it, then swiped and tapped until he found what he was looking for. His jaw clenched and his expression hardened as he glared at the screen.
“Sonofabitch.”
I took a deep breath before whispering, “Let me see it.”
Trick leaned closer to me and tilted the phone so I could read the screen.
“Why are you ignoring me? Are you trying to punish me? You know I love you, and I’ve missed you so much. I didn’t mean to hurt you. You promised we’d be together, ‘til death do us part, but you lied. You should have kept your promise. ‘Til death do us part.”
“That lousy, cheating, motherfucking asshole!” I fumed, jumping to my feet and pacing the length of my living room.
“I should have kept my promise? Me?” My voice took on a shrill tone that I wasn’t proud of, but I was too pissed off to care.
“I’m not the one who fucked my way through half of Allegheny County!
” I whirled around, waving my hand for emphasis, and almost clocked Trick on the side of the head.
“Woah, calm down,” he said, rearing back to avoid my flailing arm. “Just – ”
“Calm down? Seriously? I’ll show you calm, Jase Patrick. Just watch how calm I am when I – ”
He reached for me and clasped his hands around my biceps to halt my furious pacing, then rubbed his hands soothingly up and down my arms.
“I know you’re pissed, and you have every fuckin’ right to be, but I need you to calm down,” he emphasized when I opened my mouth to give him an earful, “so we can call Bull. We need to give him access to your account, right now.”
I took several long, deep breaths in an attempt to get my fury under control.
Trick gingerly pulled me into a hug, and my anger started to subside as his arms enveloped me and held me tightly against him.
I breathed in the scent of leather that lingered on his shirt, along with something I’d come to recognize as uniquely him.
“You’ve got this, darlin’,” he said softly.
He pressed a kiss to my temple, then rested his cheek against my head for a minute before releasing me and taking a step back.
He took my hand and led me back to the couch. Pulling his phone out of the inner pocket of his cut, he called Bull.
“I’ve got you on speakerphone, and Lauren’s here with me. She just got another email from that asshole, and it veered off the rails real fuckin’ quick. What do you need from her to access her account?”
“Damn,” came the gruff response. “Lauren, I’ll need your username and password, then I’ll be able to see any emails as they come in.
I’m gonna have you send him a message with an attachment, so I can sneak in malware which will give me backdoor access to his system.
Unless he has some epic firewall protection going on, he won’t even know it’s there. ”
“A Trojan horse,” I said, having seen something about that on one of the police dramas I liked to watch on TV.
“Exactly, honey. I’ll send it to his regular account since I think he’s more likely to open something from you on that one, rather than the soulmate thing. Is there anything you might need to send to him regarding your condo sale, something he would assume is a legitimate document?”
I had just the thing. “My lawyer told me to send Beau a list of any personal property that I wanted to collect. I took everything that was important to me already and just planned to leave the rest behind, but Beau doesn’t know that.”
A low, rumbly laugh echoed through the phone’s speaker, and Trick gave me a wide grin.
“That’s perfect. If you can type something up quickly and leave it in your drafts folder, I’ll add the malware to the attachment and send it off.
Then as soon as he opens it, I’ll be able to see every keystroke, every password, his encryption software, all of it.
We’ll nail the fucker’s ass to the wall. ”
“Thanks, Bull. I’ll send it over in just a few minutes, along with my access info.”
I got up and retrieved my laptop, then created a word document listing the couch that Beau and the Boobalicious Bimbo had used for their selfie, along with the end tables, the rug, and the fancy as hell espresso maker that I’d bought when we’d first moved in.
I never used it, but Beau loved it and it would piss him off if he thought that I wanted it back.
I opened my email and cackled to myself as I composed a message that I knew would push his buttons, then attached the list and saved it all as a draft.
“Done,” I announced with satisfaction.
Trick gave me Bull’s number so I could text him my username and password.
When I finished, Trick tugged me back down to sit next to him on the couch.
“I want to circle back to his latest email, darlin’. I don’t like the sound of that ‘til death do us part bullshit, and what did he mean when he apologized for hurting you? You said he wasn’t violent.”
“He wasn’t,” I confirmed. “I assume he was talking about hurting me by cheating on me, but yeah, the ‘til death stuff was definitely odd. It’s not like we had said our wedding vows yet.”
“He’s escalating, Lauren, and that’s a dangerous sign.”
I exhaled shakily, suddenly exhausted by this whole situation. “When this started, it was hard to believe that Beau could be a real threat, but I don’t think I can deny it anymore.” I admitted softly.
Trick wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close, so that my head rested on his shoulder. After a moment’s hesitation, I slid my arm around his waist and relaxed into his hold.
“I should have known better than to get involved with him.”
“What do you mean?”
I chuckled bitterly. “On our first date, we ran into one of his ex-girlfriends. She told me that Beau was a player and wished me luck. He assured me she was just bitter about being dumped. I believed him. On our second date, the restaurant hostess clearly recognized him, which wasn’t a red flag until I went to the ladies’ room before we left and heard her and one of the servers talking about ‘the sexy fireman who came in with a different woman every time.’ He didn’t deny it, so I declined date number three. ”
I heaved a sigh, then told him, “I should have listened to my gut, but he pursued me for weeks, promising that this time was different, that he wasn’t seeing anyone else and that he was ready for a serious relationship.”
“Let me guess, he hadn’t really changed?”
“Nope,” I said, my voice tight with anger.
“I thought he had, and maybe he did for a while, but about a month after he accused me of cheating on him, we were out to dinner one evening and a very angry blonde spotted us and stormed up to our table. She was livid that he had ghosted her after spending the night at a hotel with her a few weeks earlier.” I scoffed.
“He’d told me he was covering a shift for a guy at work that night.
Once she realized I was his fiancée and that she’d unknowingly been the side chick, she was almost as horrified as I was. ”
His grip on me tightened, and he brushed his lips across my forehead in a feather-light kiss.
“I want to find that dickweasel and beat the life right out of him for hurting you.”
I snorted at his description. “It was an ugly scene. She dumped his half-eaten plate of linguine with clams in his lap. I followed that up by pouring the last of my red wine over his head before announcing to the entire restaurant that he was a cheating sack of steaming dog shit. Not my finest moment, but it was liberating.”
“Good for you, darlin’,” his voice rumbled in my ear.
I took a deep breath, and finished my sad, pathetic story.
“I moved out that night. I stayed with my best friend, Katrina, at first, but Beau wouldn’t leave me alone.
He showed up on her doorstep at all hours, turned up at my favorite lunch place, and hung around outside the studio where I recorded.
He couldn’t believe that I wasn’t willing to listen to his excuses, even after I’d found out that he’d been hooking up with random women on Tinder for months.
Then, I found out that he and Katrina had slept together right after we got engaged. ”
“Shit, that was some fucking friend.”
“Yeah,” I agreed shakily. “All of our mutual friends knew by that point, and I was so fucking humiliated. There was no way I wanted to stay in Pittsburgh then. Indianapolis was home for the first fourteen years of my life, and Uncle Bill was here, so I figured it was a good place to start over.”
“And here you are, living your best life.”
I chuckled softly, before tipping my head back to look at him. “Yep, living my best life, with my jagoff of an ex stalking me, a permanently pissed off cat who thinks he’s the king of this castle, my cranky uncle, and you as my self-appointed bodyguard.”
I hesitated before adding, “Thank you again for everything, Trick. You’re…different than I thought you were when we first met.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask what that means,” he admitted.
I shifted out of his arms and turned to face him, trying to decide just how much brutal honesty he could take.
“I thought you were a lot like Beau – a player, a huge flirt, nothing but heartache wrapped up in muscles, and charm, and sex appeal. I was sure you were trouble, especially after the first time I saw you.”
He winced and gave me a look filled with regret, and I hurried to reassure him that my opinion had changed.