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Bash?
In the dark before dawn, Gunner sat up in the motel bed and opened the text. What’s up? Send.
Here is Derek Forester’s social media page. Pay attention to the last three posts. There was a link to click, and Gunner hit it.
The page was pictures of some unfamiliar man with black hair and dark eyebrows. Clean-shaven, chiseled jaw, boring-ass looking model of a man. Dark eyes and an empty smile, and as he scrolled down, most of the pictures had a woman in them. Hallie. Holy fuck.
He threw the covers off his legs as his body overheated. He sat on the edge of the mattress, elbows on his knees as he scrolled down the page.
Tell me when you’re done looking at his page, Bash texted.
Gunner flicked his text out of the way, and then scrolled to the beginning of his pictures with Hallie.
She was genuinely smiling in these. Happy, perhaps. There were pictures of her serving tables—smiling at him, waving, dressed in black pants and a white button-up shirt with an apron, her hair pulled back. It was bleach-blonde in these.
A picture of her sitting at a bar top, filling out paperwork.
A picture of them smiling in a selfie at some bar.
A snarl rattled his throat, and he ran his hand roughly through his hair. He didn’t like any of this.
God, she was pretty, but as he scrolled up, her smile changed. There was a picture of them at some sort of black-tie event. She was wearing a skintight, sequined black dress. She looked gorgeous, but her eyes were empty as she smiled at the camera. Derek was whispering in her ear. To anyone else it might’ve seemed like a romantic picture, but Gunner knew her real smile. This wasn’t it.
There were more selfies of her walking behind him, her head down, her eyes vacant. Her nose was perfect, and then it wasn’t. Then it was crooked. He checked the dates of those posts. There was a six-week gap, probably to let her heal up.
The snarl got louder and he stood, hoping to relieve the tingling in his fingers.
Her eyes went completely blank in the pictures following. There were thousands of likes on these posts. Thousands and thousands. His captions were quirky and quick-witted, explained away her disassociation with little jokes.
…One of us hates pictures more than the other…
…I thought it was the woman who would want to ask for selfies…
…deep down she loves me…
She wasn’t happy in any of these pictures.
There were hundreds of comments talking about how gorgeous she was, asking when he would propose to her, encouraging him to have beautiful babies with her.
He wanted to puke.
One comment on a picture of her vacant stare caught his attention. She looks miserable. The comment had been posted by a Corey Gable. That was her cousin. He just knew it. Attagirl.
He scrolled up through beautiful empty-eye pictures of her shopping with him, of him buying her a car, handing her a key to a gorgeous apartment.
He scrolled up and up to the last three posts, like Bash had pointed out.
A few days ago, Derek had posted a picture of a glass of liquor on ice in some fancy bar with high-end bottles in the background. Missing my lady. Do you think I should go get her back?
Thousands of likes.
Hundreds of comments encouraging him to do it.
The next one was a picture of him in a boardroom, arms locked on a table, talking to a room full of people. Another day in the office. All the money in the world doesn’t mean shit if I’m going home to an empty house. God, I miss her.
Thousands of likes.
Hundreds of comments telling him to go get her.
