“It’s fine,” I said. Shit, I’d touched a nerve. I needed to get us back on safer ground. “More coffee?” She drank at least a pot a night, and her cup looked like it needed to be topped off.
She held it out to me. “Yes, please.”
I went to the kitchen and poured us more. Aly was typing on her phone when I turned back around, and I watched as she hit a final button and then looked toward my phone, which sat next to my laptop, as if waiting for something. Did she just text me? The masked me?
If so, she would get a vague, slightly teasing response in three, two, one…
Her phone chimed, and she looked disappointed for half a second until she read the text and grinned, shaking her head like she was amused and didn’t want to be. I knew the expression well. She’d worn it almost constantly last night.
She fired off another text as I returned to the living room with our cups, grinning even wider when the next reply came through.
The auto-response program I’d loaded onto my burner was pretty sophisticated. It could carry on an entire smartass/flirtatious conversation with her in my absence, though I hoped she didn’t keep this up for long. The program was good, but it wasn’t perfect, and she looked like she had finally stopped suspecting me. Josh me. After all, I couldn’t be her masked admirer if he was texting her back, could I?
“Thank you,” she said, setting her phone down to take her coffee. She looked more relaxed than a moment ago, like her back was no longer up now that she didn’t suspect me.
Mwah ha ha ha ha.
My evil plan was working. Step one: get Aly to drop her guard. Step two: fuck her on this couch.
Oh, wait, no. I’d skipped a few steps somewhere.
But, god, the temptation was strong. Relaxed Aly was almost as hot as feisty Aly, and I had to stop myself from staring at her instead of pretending I was watching my fake hacking program work its magic.
Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to suffer such compunction, and I could feel her gaze like a physical touch as she watched me watch the screen. I’d been worried earlier that my need for her might be tied to our shared kink, and without a mask between us, the excitement would dull. I should have known better. I wanted her just as much now as last night, and from the way she stared at me so intently, I was beginning to think it went both ways.
Keep it up, baby, I thought, and see if I don’t out myself right now just so I can give into this driving need to yank your scrub pants down and –
“What’s it like being a computer programmer?” she asked.
I cleared my throat and shifted my hips, trying to ease my erection sideways so it wasn’t digging straight into my fly. Was she making small talk, or did she really want to know?
I took a sip of coffee and sat back, risking a glance at her. She looked genuinely interested.
“It’s a little like how you described nursing. Challenging but rewarding, if in different ways.”
“What made you want to get into it?”
I reluctantly pulled my gaze from her – I’d been staring at her mouth again and almost missed the question. The second it registered, my stomach plummeted. I was already playing enough games with her, and I didn’t want to start piling lies on top of them, so I settled for a half-truth instead.
“My dad wasn’t a good man. He tried to find us when Mom and I left him. Learning how to hide us from him online was the reason I first started coding.”
“Oh, wow,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head. “Don’t be. It’s in the past. We’re free from him now.” The whole world was, thanks to his state-sanctioned execution. “Lighter topic,” I said. “If you were locked in a room full of spiders, would you rather have the lights on or off?”
Aly leaned toward me until I had no choice but to look at her again. “That’s lighter?” she asked, brows lifted in concern.
Her eyes were so pretty this close. “Than my dad? Yeah.”
She sat back. “Lights on, I guess. So I could see the spiders coming. You?”
I nodded. “Same.”
“Would you rather be trapped alone in outer space or at the bottom of the ocean?” she asked.
“Those are both terrible. Outer space.”
“Same. But why?”
I grinned. “I’m banking on the chance of an alien rescue.”
She smiled back, her gaze dipping toward my dimples again and going slightly unfocused.
My heart started beating so hard that it rattled my ribcage. When was the last time I’d done this? Sat and talked with a woman? I couldn’t remember ever being so at ease around one, at least not as an adult. Part of me was always wound up, waiting for them to find out who I was and for that knowledge to ruin everything. Maybe I should have felt that with Aly, but Tyler wasn’t a liar, and if he said she avoided true crime like the plague, he meant it.
“Would you rather change sexes every time you sneeze or not know the difference between a baby and a muffin?” I asked.
She laughed, throwing her head back and almost spilling her drink. “That second part is twisted. I’ll take changing sexes. Sounds fun.”
I nodded. “Same.”
A mischievous look crept into her expression, and her gaze dropped to my lap.
I glanced down, but the hem of my sweatshirt still hid what was happening beneath it.
She lifted her eyes to mine, her gaze searing. “Would you rather ejaculate one tadpole-sized sperm every time you come or a hundred regular-sized ones that can all talk?”
I sucked in a breath full of coffee and immediately started choking. Aly patted me on the back while I leaned forward, hacking as my lungs tried to expel the liquid invasion.
“Sorry,” she said. “Should have waited until you swallowed. I’ve caught a lot of people off guard with that one.”
“That is a truly impossible question,” I wheezed.
She quit patting me and rubbed her hand over my back instead, and I decided to stay right where I was until she felt like stopping. “I know. Because on the one hand, ow. On the other, you could never get rid of them.” She raised her voice to a much higher register, sounding like a munchkin. “Nooo. Don’t flush us, Josh. We’re aliiive.”
Aly had left my house almost eight hours ago, and I was desperate to see her in person again. I’d declared her the winner of our impromptu game of Would You Rather after she made me nearly choke to death again with a question about crying tiny rocks or sweating pickle juice.
My computer screen showed me that she was busy at work, still dealing with the fallout of the mass shooting. Another one of the victims had succumbed to their wounds during the day, and the news organizations and local politicians were both working overtime to either bring attention to or away from the event, depending on their affiliations.
Mom had called me in a blind panic earlier. She didn’t watch the news these days, not that anyone could blame her for that, given her past, but someone had told her about the tragedy, and she hadn’t heard from me, so her mind went straight to the worst-case scenario.
The half-sob she let out when I picked up the phone stabbed into my heart, and I resolved to call her and Rob, my stepdad, more often.
We caught up after she calmed down, and when she asked if I was seeing anyone, a hopeful tone in her voice, I caved and told her a little about Aly. Not much – Mom would probably have me committed as a precaution if she knew the truth about my behavior – but that I was seeing someone and it was still new and that she was a trauma nurse who was helping the victims of the shooting.
“She sounds like a good woman,” Mom said. “And you must really like her. I can’t remember the last time you told me about someone.”