Catalina and Diego never got over each other after high school, but years later they meet by chance, and multi-millionaire Diego sweeps her off of her feet.
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Diego and Catali...
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"Dude, where's Cata now?"
I shoot Liam a sideways glance.
"She's taking the day off. She's reading and napping. In my room." I hope my glare stops any further questions about her.
I'm in the kitchen with Liam and Sawyer. I've declared a Gamerhouse state of emergency, and we're broadcasting a video that we took a month ago when we went grocery shopping. It's an hour long video of us cracking jokes and Sawyer walking around the store, high – I don't smoke that shit, so I was the sober one – and I hope that fans will be entertained enough not to notice we're absent from the live stream.
"She'll be staying with us for a while. With me."
"Look, you've got to give us more to go on here. You need to come clean. Are you two together?" Liam asks, serious.
I nod.
"We might be able to help more if we knew the whole story. Why did you want her email disabled? Why did you go dark all weekend?" asks Sawyer.
I sigh. "Fine. This stays between us.
Sawyer shoots me a puzzled look.
"I'm fucking serious, Sawyer."
"I got it. Between us."
"We grew up together. I was her brother's best friend and practically lived at their house. Cata and I used to game together when we were kids. Then we graduated, and we started ..." My voice trails off.
"Started to what?" Liam prods.
"We dated the summer after graduation. And things were cool. Really cool. Until she texted me some photos. I accidentally left my phone at work, at the game store. I never figured out who stole the phone, if it was someone at that store or a customer or what, or who spread the photos around. The phone was found in the trash outside the store."
Both Liam and Sawyer sigh and look at the floor.
"We broke up after that. Well, I kind of broke up with her. It was complicated, I thought she should go to New York without me, try to start a new life away from the scandal. And me. I felt responsible for her shame."
"So the first time you saw her was when she delivered pizzas here?" Liam asks.
"Yep."
"Wow. Dude." Sawyer sounds incredulous. "Well, it's got to be someone from your past, or her past, who knows about the photos. Unless you still have the photos somewhere on a server and someone hacked in."
I shake my head vigorously. "No. I deleted them years ago, right when I got my phone back after it happened. I was scared shitless. The cops almost arrested me and charged me with a sex crime because I was eighteen and she was seventeen, technically a minor. I mean, I don't know what's floating around out there, but I assumed that interest in them died down after she left Palmira."
