What in the cinnamon toast fuck is going on?
Printed out chats from the highly selective dating app Kaya were taped to my walls. They covered my counters. They were plastered every-fucking-where.
I turned just as Greer came down the stairs, wearing her pretty dress and heels like she was going to leave. I would block the door if I had to. Hell, I would drop to my knees and beg if that was what it took to keep her there. But she wasn’t making a beeline out of my life. Her watchful gaze was on me.
“You didn’t do this?” she asked, and it gutted me that she would think I was capable of that kind of malice.
“No. Fuck no. You have to believe me. Baby, please. I’m a prick, but I’m not that big of a prick.”
“If this wasn’t you, who was it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t give a shit right now. Say you believe me.”
Her jaw clenched, and despite my reassurances, there was still so much sadness in her hazel eyes. “I believe you.”
She wasn’t lying, but she also wasn’t softening. There was no relieved smile. She wasn’t crashing into my arms the way I wanted.
“Greer—”
“Later,” she said. “Right now, we need to deal with this. Because if this wasn’t you, that means someone broke in.”
Shit. My focus had been on talking Greer down, I hadn’t thought of anything beyond that. But she was right.
“I’m calling the cops,” I said. “Call Maddie and get Easton over here.”
“At least you’resmart enough to never send a dick pic,” Easton said a couple of hours later as we stood in the kitchen.
“Yeah, but only because I can’t fit the whole thing in one picture,” I joked, forcing lightness I didn’t feel.
Greer was still pissed.
No, it was worse than that.
Greer was checked out.
Police detectives had come and gone. Other than the papers plastered everywhere, there was nothing else disturbed. Nothing missing. And since I hadn’t been home for a couple days—and had left a construction team in my house when I took off to Greer’s—there was no specific timeframe to narrow anything down.
Once we got the okay from the cops, Maddie had taken down all of the screenshots while Greer had arranged for a locksmith to come immediately to change all of my locks. The security company would come first thing in the morning to update the system.
I could’ve handled all that, but I wasn’t about to argue with her. Not when she looked so fucking sad.
“You’re going to have to increase Hank’s hours,” Easton pointed out—something I’d already thought about. “Or hire more security.”
“Both,” I said. As badly as I’d wanted my privacy, I wouldn’t take risks. Not if I was going to have Greer in my life.
And that was looking more and more like anif.
I thought that even before my siren came into the kitchen to announce, “Maddie and Easton are going to drop me off at home.”
Home.
When we were at Gilded, that’s what she’d called my house. A few hours later, and everything had gone to hell.
“No,” I said.
She lifted her stubborn chin. “You can’t just say no.”
“I can, and I did.”
