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He shakes his head. “Can’t have you alerting Gram and Ashley to my plans. Maybe I should make sure you haven’t already.”
“You may be a thief, but I doubt you’re a hacker.”
But as the words leave my mouth, Timofey presses his thumb to my phone and then shows me my home screen. My mouth falls open.
“Pavel had the tech guys give me access when you were living with me. Just in case.”
“And you sayIcan’t be trusted? Apparently, while I thought we were working together and getting along, you were setting up backdoor ways to spy on me. Who is dishonest now?”
Timofey pretends to think about it for a second. Then he arrives at his sarcastic conclusion: “Still you, darling.”
He taps on my phone and scrolls around. His eyebrows lift when he finds what he wants. “There we are. Your text thread with Ashley.”
Whatever Timofey is looking for, he won’t find it in my conversation with her. That doesn’t mean he won’t find a lot of other things out, though.
Without thinking about it, I lunge across the room and make a mad grab for my phone.
Timofey shifts so I collide with his shoulder. He holds my phone above his head, a foot out of my reach, and scrolls through the thread.
He takes up a terrible imitation of Ashley’s voice. “‘Noelle is crazy. I say, if you can get with someone as hot as Timofey, you ride that train as long as you can. And by ‘train’ I mean—’” Timofey glances down at me. “Does that eggplant emoji mean what I think it means?”
I swipe wildly for the phone. “Give it here!”
“Hm. I guess it does.” He laughs. “You took her advice to heart. Should I tell her how we fucked in Noelle’s closet? Ashley is a gossip. She’d love that.”
“You’re a disgusting excuse for a—”
“That’s what you said to Ashley, too. ‘You’re gross, Ash. I work for Timofey. It’s not about sex.’Once a liar, always a liar.”
“I’m not a liar!”
He ignores me and reads Ashley’s response. “‘With a Greek god impersonator like that, it’s always about sex. How can you look at those biceps and thick thighs and think of anything else? It’s a shame he has a kid; otherwise, I’d try to get with him.’”
Timofey looks down at me again. “You should’ve told Ashley you planned to make me kidless as soon as you could.”
“I didn’t take Benjamin.” The words wheeze out of me as I try and fail to drag Timofey’s arms back down to where I can reach my phone.
“‘What does him having a kid matter? Benjamin is adorable,’you wrote back.” Timofey scrolls through the rest of the conversation. “Ashley says she never wanted to be a mom, and she would be jealous of all the time I spent with the kid. Quality human you chose as your friend, Piper. Jealous of a baby. She’s a gem.”
Now, I fight a little less hard. Maybe…maybe these texts will get through to Timofey in a way my words can’t. Maybe they’ll make a difference.
He keeps reading, shifting to my response—and an even worse impression of me. “‘Timofey might be the most beautiful man I’ve ever met, but the most attractive thing about him is the way he treats Benjamin. That baby boy will grow up knowing he is loved. That’s almost all a kid can ask for.’”
His voice fades as he speaks until it’s barely a whisper by the end.
I wish I knew what to say, but the words don’t touch my tongue. Some part of me knows that if he won’t believe the texts I never planned on him reading, there’s nothing I can say to his face. It’s a distinctly heavy weariness that settles in my chest as I watch him.
I’m no longer afraid of him—I’m just tired of fighting.
“I sent that message after the shooting at the rehearsal dinner,” I whisper. “We were hiding out at the penthouse in the city, and I was watching you hold Benjamin up to the glass windows. You were pointing out the different buildings and showing him the cars on the streets below. It was… it was really sweet.”
He stares silently at the phone for a few seconds. Then he pockets it. “You will take the big bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Timofey—”
“Don’t try to leave,” he continues, moving into the sitting room. “It won’t work and all it will do is ruin our sleep.”
Without another word, he drops onto the sofa and closes his eyes.
