He rang the doorbell again. “Why did you put a root kit on my computer? Damn it! What are you up to, Hannah?”
I felt light-headed. How had he found out? I had been so careful.
Except for that woman who claimed to have seen me.
Shit.
He stood on my stoop pounding on the door. He wasn’t going away. I could hear my email ping in the kitchen. Over and over again.
“Who the hell are you, Hannah? What’s going on? Open the fucking door!”
Go away….
He was close to knowing everything. I should have known he’d figure it all out.
“This wasn’t all an act, was it, Hannah?” He sounded broken. So, so sad.
I had done that.
“What were you looking for?” I heard a thud and imagined him pressing his palms against the door, his head bent low, his shoulders stooped as the weight of my deception dragged him down.
Another ping from my computer. I had to figure out what I was going to do with the tracker software. I had to deal with Toxicwrath.
But Mason…
I stood by the front door for almost fifteen minutes. He rang the doorbell a few more times. Part of me wanted to go to him. To open the door and explain everything. To tell him the truth. To free myself of this horrible, horrible guilt.
I didn’t want him to leave. I didn’t want to hurt him.
I thought of the tracker program. Of how I had been duped by my shadow partner.
I was such a fucking idiot.
Toxicwrath had been using me all along. He needed me to do the dirty work.
And my ego had made that very, very easy.
I had been the mark all along.
“Hannah!” Mason shouted, banging on the door harder. He wiggled the doorknob, but it was locked. “Please open up!” he pleaded. “I just want to know!”
I walked slowly to the door, pressing my hands against the wood. The urge to go to him was overwhelming.
I realized that the instinct to turn to him now that my world had imploded was strong. Because I trusted Mason to make me feel better.
Because I cared about Mason.
No. This went deeper than that.
“Mason,” I whispered, covering my face with my hands as he pounded on the door, my name a curse on his lips.
But I never opened the door. I couldn’t.
And when he finally drove away, I felt like curling into a ball on the floor and never getting up again.
We were officially over.
There was no coming back from it.
