Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 131789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
“I am sorry.” RJ faces me, but I don’t turn to meet his eyes while I fish for a rock in the dirt with my foot. “I’ve spent all night thinking how you must feel. And I get it. I massively screwed up.”
“You were a conniving, sneaky little creeper who invaded my privacy so I’d go out with you.” I find a good one and dust the sand off, then fling it at the black, gently lapping tide.
“You’re right. And I justified it to myself a dozen different ways.”
“Because you knew it was wrong.”
“I did.”
At least he admits it. I’m all done handing out Brownie points, but he’s earned himself another minute of my indulgence.
“Go on.” With my foot I scrape the dirt for more rocks.
“In my head, I told myself I only wanted to get a sense of who you were so I could understand how to approach you.”
I chuck another rock at the water and watch it skid. “Most people do that by talking, you know. They don’t break into people’s bank accounts to figure out how much to spend on a birthday present.”
“True.” He clears his throat to cover a laugh, and so help me I will shove his face in the mud if he so much as chuckles. “Today made me realize something. I think my moral compass has gone a little off-kilter. You know, like I started messing around with computers as a hobby. I wanted to learn more. Then I had to test myself. So this silly thing I got into as a kid took over my life and became this crutch I leaned on for everything. I didn’t give it a second thought.”
“That’s pretty messed up, RJ.” I get a couple more skips out of my next rock. The patterns it draws on the water expand and glide toward the darkness in all directions. “But you’re the one who let it get out of hand.”
“I admit that now. In my defense, I think I became functionally brain-dead when I first saw you. Like here’s this stunning chick who is clever and sarcastic and I’m dying to know her, but I think somewhere along the way I forgot how to just interact with people.” He leans forward, dropping his chin in his hands as he rests his elbows on his knees. “You know, moving around, I made it a rule not to get attached to people. Why bother, right? Except part of that was making sure I could reject them before they left me. And I guess the hacking gave me—”
He stops abruptly, and I can’t stop myself from glancing over to see what’s up. The startled look on his face makes me frown.
“What?”
RJ drags a palm over his forehead, for a moment shielding his eyes from my view. “I think I had an epiphany,” he mumbles, sounding so unhappy I have to fight a laugh.
But I refuse to reveal a trace of humor right now. He’ll think he wore me down, and we’re not there at all.
“Hacking gives me access to information nobody else has,” he finally says. “And, well, when you know people’s secrets, it gives you power. Control.”
“The upper hand,” I murmur, albeit reluctantly. Because I know all about needing that upper hand.
“Yeah.” He nods a couple times. “But finding out people’s secrets that way… You think it helps you know them, right? But it doesn’t. It’s not real. It’s just words or pictures on screens. It’s not the same as actually having a person share something with you. That’s the real part.” Regret softens his profile. “I’m really sorry. I should’ve waited for you to open up to me on your own time. I thought us having something in common would speed up the process, but that’s not how this relationship stuff works, is it?”
“No,” I agree wryly. “It’s not.” I’m out of rocks, so I clasp my hands in my lap. “Want to know the part I hate most about all this?”
He looks up, braced for the worst but somehow resigned.
“Even worse than wasting my time and betraying my trust, I found out this person I was starting to like never existed. Evaporated into the thin air of a thousand tiny lies. I don’t know if you understand what that feels like.”
His voice goes a little husky. “Sloane, come on. I admit I lied about liking the same band, but the rest was true. I’m the same person. Just more flawed than I let on.”
“I’ve been going over things in my head tonight and it occurred to me that maybe your best trick was that you somehow avoided really telling me anything about yourself.”
“It wasn’t on purpose.”
I believe he believes that, but I know it isn’t true. I’m a fairly guarded person and he makes my perimeter look like a chain-link fence. But that’s for his therapist to sort out. Can’t fix his whole personality in one night.