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A couple of ticks of silence pass between us. “Oh, yeah. Right. Yasmine. How are you?”
“I’m good.” Hope swells in my chest.
“How did you find me?” And then it shrivels up and dies.
A hacker broke into the motel’s security cameras, time-stamping our arrival and using that information to break into the motel’s mainframe to retrieve your personal information.
“I had help,” I say instead.
“Help?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Try me.” He’s not letting me off the hook.
“Oh … a hacker,” I say like it’s no big deal.
“I’m sorry. Did you say a hacker?” There’s a tinge of humor in his voice.
Great. He thinks I’m crazy. “A professional hacker.”
“That’s not disturbing or anything.”
A Jurassic-looking insect flies near my face. I flail my arms to get it away, yelping in panic.
“Everything okay?” he asks, more of a formality than actual concern.
“Yeah. There was a bug.” Damn Texas and its insects. “Anyway, my best friend’s stepbrother-slash-whatever hacks people—companies, I mean—for a living. Legally, of course. I can assure you, he’s a professional and not some creeper living in his mom’s basement. I had no other way of finding you, so they offered to help.”
“Was there something you needed?” Hunter isn’t being a dick, per se, but his thin veil of politeness is slipping.
“We need to talk.”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
I roll my lips together to keep from snapping back at his smart-ass question. “In person. We need to talk in person,” I say carefully. “I can come to you, or you can come to me.”
“To New York?” He remembers.
“No. I’m in Houston. I live here now.”
“Cool,” he says, not sounding the least bit interested. But why would he be? He thinks I’m a stalker.
“So … about meeting up?”
“I’m out of town,” he says.
“When will you be back?”
He hesitates, and my gut sinks to the floor. “Look … Yasmine. You and I, that was a one-time thing. I don’t think we should see each other again.”
Yep. I suck in bed. That’s why he ditched me. And that’s why he’s being a dick right now. “That’s not what this is about.”
“What is this about?”
I bite the inside of my cheek, low-key irritated. “I rather not talk about it over the phone.”
“I won’t have time to meet up when I get back.”
