“So, we were talking about Matt possibly being a traitor,” she says when we manage to stop kissing for a few seconds.
“Yeah, let me show you.” We resituate ourselves on the couch. I’m sitting deep in the corner so that Malia can stay in my lap, and she turns around, leaning back against my chest. I walk her through how I noticed another player accessing our game at really odd times—middle of the night, very early mornings, random afternoons when most people are at work.
“See how there’re a lot of times when the person logs in but then gets right back out? Those were times another member of our team was on. But here are other times, when no one else was on, when they stayed on for longer. I couldn’t track what they were doing, but I also couldn’t figure out how a random player was getting access to our mission.”
“Ahhh.” Malia nods. “So it had to be someone on the team, using an anonymous account.”
“Exactly. Either that or someone hacked us and got our passwords and data. I decided to check the first option out first and traced the player’s IP back to the same place Matt plays from most of the time.”
She puts her hand up on the side of my face and pats it gently. “You are such a genius.”
“Meh.” I kiss the top of her head.
“So what are we going to do?” she asks. “Matt will deny it to the rest of the team, and we don’t technically have proof since all of this comes from you snooping in the back end.”
“Oh, kitten, there’s more.”
Malia fully turns to look at me. “Kitten?” she says with an arch of her eyebrow.
“Yeah, it didn’t work, but it sounded good in my head.”
She snorts with laughter and turns back to the screen. “What’s your plan?”
“I created a fake set of files and switched them without a trace. We’re going to tell the rest of the team that we have to send the files over, even though we haven’t found the mole, because our time is up. Matt will obviously go in to retrieve it once we’ve delivered it to the drop, and when he opens it, it will make the word Traitor appear above his character’s head and follow him around.”
Malia’s shoulders shake. “You did not.”
“It seemed fun.”
Malia starts messaging our team, seeing who can get on to do the drop, telling them that our British contact reached out and said they have to take delivery by tonight. Matt is the first to tell us he’s up for the mission.
An hour later, our team is gathered. Macie, the woman whose character is our gadget expert, is the first to notice that Malia and I are in the same place.
“Yeah, we’ve been playing together since we live near each other. It’s fun,” Malia says with a wink in my direction.
“Fun,” Macie repeats suggestively. Neither Malia nor I reply.
The delivery goes well. I suggest we break for dinner and then meet back together in an hour to confirm our contact has received the drop and make plans for our next steps. We probably won’t get new mission tasks from the game until it confirms that our British contact has our files, but Malia and I are hoping that Matt will take the opportunity to scoop up the Trojan horse we left for him.
“LetsEat or Vincenzo’s?” I ask, standing and then offering Malia a hand to pull her up.
“Vincenzo’s, of course.” She holds my hand as we leave the game room for the kitchen.
Malia working beside me in my kitchen in bare feet and my hoodie is a circumstance that makes me stop, press her against the kitchen counter, and kiss her soundly for a while. And it happens multiple times. It’s actually a wonder we get the pizza into the oven and finished before our hour-long dinner break is up.
Matt is suspiciously absent when we reconvene, but what no one else on our team knew is that Malia and I placed a spy cam at the drop site before we went to prep our dinner. When we replay the footage for the team, sure enough, it shows Matt’s character coming into frame and grabbing the package. A second later a big, bold, red “Traitor” appears above his head, and then he quickly logs out and disappears.
We spend a little while explaining to the team—leaving out my behind-the-scenes work and calling it an anonymous tip to Malia—how we suspected Matt. Then we leave our safehouse,kick Matt off the team, find a new location, and set up a plan to deliver the actual file tomorrow night.
Malia is yawning every few seconds by the time we’re done. “I don’t want to leave,” she says, leaning against me. “But I’m exhausted.”
“It’s been a big day.” I wrap my arm around her for a few more minutes of cuddling. “A wedding, turning our fake relationship into a real one, catching a traitor …”
“All good things,” she says around another yawn. As selfish as I want to be and keep her here, I have to be a good boyfriend and drive her home.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, though,” she says as we kiss goodbye just inside her doorway.
“Of course.” I pull her close in a tight hug. “You already promised me every day.”
