My phone had been hacked.
I hadn't seen this coming, though maybe I should have figured out that someone had hacked my phone given how he'd somehow always known where I was, but it hadn't crossed my mind. I was angry at myself for not having thought about it sooner—maybe then, things wouldn't have gone this far.
For some reason, this, more than most of what he had done, made me feel truly violated. Not only had he entered my life and turned it upside down, but he'd infiltrated it and made it a mental warzone.
Who could've done this?
Wait...
I blinked in shock as Gideon's words finally caught up with me.
And you need to write down a list over everyone who might've had access to your phone. And I mean everyone, even that best friend of yours.
Why on earth made Gideon suggest Kevin?
"No." I shook my head. "Kevin never would have done anything like that to me. I trust him."
If there was someone I could fully trust in this world, it was him. Since we'd become friends, he had been the person who stood by me when the going got tough. He helped me with my social anxiety; made me laugh when I'd wanted to cry; made me look forward to work even though school had taken most of my energy.
He was my person. And that Gideon even hinted at him maybe being the one who had tormented me made my stomach roll with nausea.
Gideons eyes narrowed. "Do you truly trust him, without a shadow of doubt?"
"Yes," I answered without any hesitation. "He's the kindest person I've ever met. There's not a single mean bone in his body. Besides...what possible reason could he have to do something like this?"
"Well," Callan cut in, his tone contemplating. "You'd say he's the closest friend you have, right?"
"Yeah?" My voice tinged with confusion, unsure where he was going with this.
"Can't it stand to reason that he was jealous when he no longer had your undivided attention?"
"I mean...everyone could be jealous of losing the attention from someone they cared about, but Kevin would've never acted on it, if he even felt jealous, which I'm pretty sure he didn't. He even urged me to give you guys a second chance. Anyways, he got his own boyfriend, so he wouldn't worry about mine—ah...he wouldn't worry about our past arrangement." I didn't want to look at the guys, sure they had caught my little slip.
Was my blush spreading? It felt like it was spreading. My chest was kind of burning a little, and my neck was hot. I hadn't meant to apply that they were my boyfriends. I didn't really think of them as that. Nope, not my boyfriends. We were just...shit, what even were we? Former dominants and submissive? I mean, we were, but it wasn't all we were either. Friends? No, that seemed wrong somehow, it felt like we were more than that. There was too much tension between us to dwindle down our relationship to just friends. But what was more than friends, but less than boyfriends and girlfriend?
Complicated.
We were complicated.
At last, I glanced back up at them, only to find them all looking at me, wearing a level of heat in their eyes that sent delightful shivers down my body.
Safe to say they'd caught it, and honestly...it didn't look like they minded me almost calling them my boyfriends. Not at all.
Fuck, Emma, don't even go there. You've just moved in with them, no need to make it more complicated. Just...I don't know, focus on getting everything else back in order before you try dating more than one man.
"So..." I said, awkwardly breaking up the tension building between us. "Kevin's got his attention elsewhere, and he'd never fault me for dividing my attention either. He's only ever wanted the best for me, and as it turned out, the best was you guys."
Aaaand, the tension was back. Whoops.
"Was?" Mateo muttered, and I had a feeling he was voicing what the other two were thinking, given how Callan's and Gideon's stare intensified at his question.
I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable talking about my feelings with all their attention directed at me.
"Is," I corrected, my voice small and insecure. There was just something about admitting to your deepest feelings to others that left you feeling bare and fragile. "You guys are what's best for me." Because weren't they? If we put aside the incident of them withholding information from me, they'd singlehandedly managed to make me more comfortable in my own body, made me try new things, made me less anxious and more relaxed, they'd gotten me out of my monotone routine of a life and made me experience what it was like to live.
Happy. They had made me happy.
Finding life exciting was rare for an overthinker, and true happiness was even more so.
Mateo gave me the brightest smile, and it made me realize that I hadn't seen his dimples in far too long. This was the kind of smile you'd fall into and become addicted of; a smile that when you saw it after being without it for so long, you felt like your heart bled just a little because you had missed it more than you could've guessed.
While Callan he didn't smile like Mateo, there was an openness to his expression that showed just how much he'd hid himself from me while...Well, I guess while he didn't know where we stood. The blankness and muted feelings were gone. Now, now I saw both relief and happiness in his green eyes that almost had me want to promise him the moon so his eyes could keep shining.
And for once, Gideon's hands weren't in a fist, and his jaw weren't clenched. The ever so present anger was...gone. His face was all smoothed out; no tightness to be seen. His eyes—his dark, dark eyes—emitted the first light I had ever seen from him, and at this moment, his eyes didn't appear all that dark; more amber than black. They reminded me of fall, and I dearly loved fall.
Their reaction made me understand that these last weeks hadn't only been hard for me, but for them too. I guess I hadn't noticed that us breaking off whatever we had, hadn't only impacted me. Truthfully, no matter how much they'd tried to be open about their feelings towards me, and how they wanted me back, I'd been too insecure to believe they actually did want me—not just as a submissive, but as something more. But this, their expressions, and reactions, it was the validation I needed to know that my feelings weren't one-sided.
It hadn't been just words they'd told me.
They really did care about me.
Somehow, that realization hit me right in the chest, giving my heart a beat that was both old and new, both lighter and livelier than before, but faster too.
This was getting too real, too quickly. And from what I'd learned about myself since he entered my life, whenever I was afraid, I ran instead of staying and fight. And right now, I was afraid of having my feelings reciprocated. It was strange—stupid really, that that was something I was afraid of, but yet, there it was.
I'd never been in a real relationship with someone, and I'd definitely not been in love, and suddenly, possibly, having to face those two things was...frightening.
X weeks ago (How many weeks ago did they break up?), I'd found myself falling for three men. But instead of them breaking my fall and becoming my haven, I had crashed and burned.
Falling was scary, but the idea of love was absolutely terrifying.
The heartbreak I'd gone through when I felt deceived and hurt by them would've been a much more heartbreaking if I'd loved them.
Love...Love had no parachute, and no safety net. It wasn't logical or sane. It could wreak havoc, or bring you to paradise, and the thing was, you'd never find out which one of the two ways it would go until you were right in the middle of it.
Love was a chance game, a gamble, a roll of the dice; I just needed to figure out if I was ready to play and risk my heart.
I coughed, like by clearing my throat, I was also clearing the heaviness in the room.
Callan clearly having noticed that I was uncomfortable came in with a save. "We believe Kev's a good guy too, but what we're saying is that you need to think of everyone who could've had access to your phone at some point without you being present. It's better to be safe than sorry. Sometimes people you should trust the most do the hurting." Was it just me, or did he glance briefly at Gideon when he said that? "You should consider everyone. Even us," he stated.
My eyes widened. "You?" I gaped. "Why on earth would you suggest that?"
"Because, statistically speaking, there's a bigger chance that your stalker is someone you know rather than a stranger."
Well...shit. That was the kind of information that I knew wouldn't stop turning in my head. It would keep me guessing and wondering and overthinking.
"Is it someone I know, or could it be acquaintances too?" I asked, feeling more and more dumb at not having researched this subject myself ages ago. So much for wanting to clear this up on my own...
"It can be everyone. Strangers, someone you've passed on the street, someone you say only say hi to, those you hang out with at school. There's really no limitation of who it could be, unfortunately," Callan answered.
Great.
Just great.
I could sense my brain trying to work its gears, but the exhaustion was like cobwebs in my mind, keeping the gears from turning too much. It was both a blessing and a curse; for once, I didn't have the ability to overthink, and for once, overthinking might have helped solve this mystery faster.
"That's comforting," I said dryly. It was something I'd wondered about before, if he was someone I knew, someone I'd talked to—someone I trusted. It made me sick to my stomach to think about.
I stared at my plate in dismay, still having much to finish before Gideon would allow me to leave and get the sleep I desperately longed for. I needed an escape from all of this; from my feelings for them, their feelings for me, and especially from the thoughts of him. I was finally safe, and my body was noticing it; I didn't need to be on constant watch, and my body didn't need to be alert twenty-four-seven. Bit by bit I was relaxing, and with it, came the tiredness that had built up over these weeks.
Would Gideon just let me leave the plate as it was or...? I looked up to see his own eyes narrow, as if he were reading my mind. I was guessing that was a no, he would not accept anything less than me finishing everything he'd ordered me to.
With more effort than anyone else eating Gideon's food would've struggled with, I chewed and swallowed, again, and again, and again, until each of the items he'd demanded I'd eat was gone from my plate.
My stomach didn't necessarily hurt from all that food, but I didn't think I'd ever felt this full before, though, I'd probably only eaten about half of what I normally did, before all this.
"I'm all done," I said proudly, like I was some kid who wanted to get praise from her parents. And when I thought that I realized it wasn't much different, because I did want praise for doing what I'd been ordered to do. It wasn't even anything sexual about it. I just...it felt like a reward of sorts.
And I wasn't disappointed.
"Good girl," Gideon praised me, lighting something up inside me. His hand went to the back of my neck and squeezed almost lovingly, and it felt like he wanted to pull me closer to him, as if he wanted to give me a kiss, or something. "You can be excused now," he said and regrettably let me go. "Sleep well, baby girl."
The other guys murmured something of the same kind, and I was...disappointed and suddenly nervous. For some reason, I'd thought that...hell, I didn't know what I'd thought. That I wouldn't be alone anymore? That the guys would constantly keep me company so I'd feel safe? Why would they ever do that when I was the one who broke thing up with them? It wasn't like I'd voiced what I wanted, and it wasn't like I should expect they do more for me than they already did.
I rose from my seat, but I didn't get further than to the kitchen entryway before I hesitated. The thought of being alone, even if I'd only be a few rooms down and in close proximity to them, made me feel jittery.
"Are you alright, gorgeous?"
I looked over my shoulder and gave Mateo a tentative smile as I wrung my hands. "Yeah, I just..."
"We can't help you if we don't know what you need, Sweetheart," Callan urged me softly.
Letting out a sigh, I said shyly, "Could someone keep me company, maybe? I don't...I'm not all that comfortable being alone yet. You don't need to stay the whole night if you don't want to, but I just don't want to be alone right now."
"Of course," Mateo said without any sort of hesitation. "We should've thought of that."
I shook my head. "You couldn't have known."
"We definitely could've," Mateo disagreed.
"Well..." I kept wringing my hands, feeling more out of place by the second, but not because of them, but more because my fear left me exposed, and I didn't like that. "I'll just go get ready for bed," I said, leaving it up to Mateo and Callan to figure out who would join me. I already knew Gideon would refuse, or at the very least, only stay until I'd fallen asleep.
Fifteen minutes later, Callan joined me in bed and promptly pulled me to his front, so he was spooning me, his head snuggling the crook of my neck. He was never one to miss a chance to cuddle with me, and come to think of it, neither was Mateo. I truly and sincerely didn't mind it at all.
"Mateo wanted to come, but he needed to get some work done before tomorrow," he informed me, his mouth moving against my neck as he talked. And I stiffened.
Callan, misinterpreting my reaction, started pulling away, "Sorry, I—"
"No, I..." I started. "I forgot about school."
"School?" he asked, slightly confused. "Emma, you're in no condition to go to school tomorrow."
"But..." I sighed and turned around, facing him. "I can't miss more days. I've skipped too many already."
"You won't be 'skipping' this one. You'll take a few days, if not more, off."
"What? No, I can't do that," I objected, feeling the weight of the pressure to not give up, to not fail at getting the degree I'd always wanted.
"You can and you will."
"But—"
Callan reached out and cupped my cheek gently. "Remember you promising us to listen when we're taking care of you?"
I nodded.
"This is me trying to take care of you. You need rest, and you need to recharge. You can't do anything on empty batteries, or else you'll crash harder than you're doing now, and I promise you that if that happens, it'll take a lot more for you to get back on track. We'll fill out an online medical absence form for your university tomorrow. I'll get Doctor Stevens to come see you and have her write your professors a doctor's note as well."
My heart swelled. "You really do think of everything, don't you?" I whispered.
"All for you, my Bella. It's all for you," he whispered back, and the intimacy of his words were more powerful than any kiss I've ever had.
He leaned over and placed a kiss on my forehead. "Now get some sleep. I'll be here all night."
As tired as I was, and as comfortable as Callan had made me, I couldn't sleep. What Gideon had said about my phone being hacked was nagging at the back of my head.
"You can place your phone here." The sound of Jennifer's voice echoed in my ears as she'd pointed at the basket by the desk. The only place I ever left my phone unattended outside of work was when I'd been at Desire's Den. They had a rule against phones in the club. I didn't always have it on me at my jobs either, but having seen Oliver being beaten, I could at least rule him out. But that left my co-workers at Euphoria, as well as Jennifer. I remember that she hadn't liked me from the beginning—before I met Mateo and started the arrangement with him and the guys. I'd never really thought about why she'd disliked me from the second she'd met me.
Could Jennifer have had anything to do with this? Could she somehow have helped him? By why would she have done that? Why did she dislike me so much?
If she'd done it, then she would know who he is.