Someone was in my apartment. But who? Who would have…
Wait a fucking minute.
We’re gonna have his ass deported.
In the heat of the moment, I’d kind of thought Todd was being racist, seeing another brown person and assuming we were dating—but what if… what if he meant deported toEngland? There’s one obvious recent addition to my life who fits that description. But then there’s the fact that whoever broke in was good enough to bypass my security and erase themselves from the cameras. It’s not exactly a common skill set to have… to get past my security, you’d have to be someone like SpyderMan… And… I’ve always kind of thought SpyderMan was British!
Okay, settle down, Mads. That’s not jumping to conclusions; that’s pole-vaulting to them.
I need proof. I need… to see the person that broke in. My cameras clearly can’t be trusted, but I happen to know the only person with a record that can’t be tampered with.
Mrs. Louis is retired, so she’s usually home. When I tell her what I’m looking for, she welcomes me into her apartment, immediately getting busy sorting through the stack of unlabeled tapes vaguely organized by date. She chattershappily at me about her grandkids while I pretend like my hands aren’t itching to take over. It takes probably three times as long as it should, but eventually she finds the tape from the day I want, pops it into her actual, real-life, somehow-still-operational VCR, and presses play with an actual button that makes a clicking sound and gets stuck, catching on years of grime.
The image is fuzzy, so I instinctively squint, like squinting is going to do anything to help with the flicker lines and rolling shutter banding. My breath is fucking bated as the timestamp I need approaches. It’s the middle of a workday, so there’s not much activity happening on the street. Eventually, a Caucasian, fit, tall man approaches the building. He definitely doesn’t live here. He’s wearing some kind of uniform, holding a clipboard, and he carries himself like he belongs, but…
When he looks up at the camera, adrenaline-spiked blood surges through my veins, bringing heat to my cheeks as the rest of my body tingles, volleying back and forth between cold shivers and spreading warmth.
“Pause it!”
It’s him. It’s Peter. My hot British Houdini. He even works for that cable company.
“Can I borrow this?” I ask, sounding breathless.
“Of course, dearie. Anything you need,” she promises sweetly. “Did you get what you wanted?”
“I’m not sure,” I mumble, then catch her quizzical look. “I mean, yes. Thank you. That’s all I need. I’ll bring this back soon.”
As I descend the stairs with the tape clutched to my chest, I worry at my bottom lip and turn over the facts. Peter was here. No one else went in or out of the building in that time frame, and it’s not like one of my neighbors has the know-how to loop cameras and disarm my security. Ithadto be him.
Peter broke into my place.
So the question is… why? Why would he be in my apartment?
Of course, my mind immediately goes to my computer—the most valuable and incriminating thing I own, with all its secrets buried deep within the drive. If anyone else ever got access to those secrets, I’d be beyond screwed. It’s enough to put me away for life, or land me on the shit list of dozens of powerful, dangerous people. But I always lock it, and it would take a statistically improbable amount of luck or 100 years with a password cracking program to get in, so I’m not super worried on that front.
I can’t rule out the possibility that he’s after my secrets, but what if he’s just…stalkingme? Did he break in for a creepy reason—like to roll around in my bed or steal my panties? Did he beat up Todd on my behalf? Is that scary or unbelievably hot?
Peter has had plenty of chances to hurt me; that’s clearly not what this is about. And my gut is saying, you can’t fake the kind of chemistry we have. Talking to him has always been easy—too easy, really—and so many things about him feel so unsettlingly familiar.
But is Peter my SpyderMan? Now that I put them in the same thought like that, the name seems much less like a weird fluke and more like a joke I was too oblivious to get.
It would be the most incredible coincidence of my life if the guy I’m dating happens to be the online contact I’ve been in love with for two years, but… no more of a coincidence than Peter and SpyderMan being twodifferentpeople with the exact same skill set, and sense of humor, and background.
My hands are practically shaking as I get my door unlocked. I haven’t felt this alive in a long time. Nothing gets me fired up more than having a puzzle to solve—and if this one means finding out who my internet crush is, I’m not wasting a second to get started.
Well, okay, first, I’m going to upgrade my damn security.
My phone buzzes, and my stomach flips over so hard at the sight of his name I nearly drop it.
Lick-the-Bean Peter
You invited me over last time, and I’d love to take you up on that. I’ll bring dinner, if you’d like.
His texts are the perfect mix of dominance and courtesy. He never dumps the decision-making on me, and he always makes me feel like he wants to see me. I close my eyes and hug my phone to my chest, wishing it would fill up the cracks that just formed, shattering my momentary excitement.
If I’d gotten this message a few hours ago, I would have been so stoked. I’d be trying to come up with something flirty to say back and planning an outfit to make him drool. Now, I’m sitting here, wondering if I should have been more suspicious—that he’s always been a little too good to be true.
Time to find out.
