“Ah, that’s a bit embarrassing.”
If he was going to sayfrom messaging you for months over the span of a year, then she didn’t thinkembarrassingwas the word she’d use. “Tell me.” The forcefulness of her words surprised her a little. She usually got her way through jokes and sneakiness, not blunt demands.
“Well, I found your name through the party’s guest list and then had my assistant get your number. I apologize, I am well aware that it’s a breach of privacy. I told myself checking up on you outweighed that, but now that I say it out loud, I see how odd this must be.”
Oh honey. Odd didn’t begin to cover any part of this situation. She rubbed her fingers over her lips, glad she’d used her long-lasting lipstick today. “So you didn’t get my number from your own phone?”
He paused. “I beg your pardon?”
“It wasn’t in your contacts already?”
“How would it be in my contacts already?”
“Because you’ve been texting me for quite a while.”
The pause was longer now. “I beg your pardon,” he repeated.
Jia didn’t need to repeat herself, but she did. “Someone has been messaging me for the last couple months. Sending me poetry, telling me how beautiful I am, how special I am.” It had been the second part that had truly won her over. She heard she was beautiful a lot. Rarely did anyone tell her she was remarkable in any other way. “It came from your account. You’re saying it wasn’t you?” She clenched her hand into a fist to stop the shaking.
Despite her nerves, this felt right. Listening to Rhiannon and Katrina was good, but her gut’s first instinct was usually what she needed. She didn’t want to leave this alone. She wanted this confrontation. She deserved it, damn it.
Confirmation. Closure.
“I assure you, no. It was not me. Since my brother’s death, I’ve been busy wrapping up his estate and focusing on my niece and our move to America. I have had no time to be texting anyone, let alone someone I’ve never met.”
She swallowed. She wanted to keep believing that he was lying, that he had been a malicious cruel prankster, and that she hadn’t been catfished. For some reason, the latter was so much worse.
Yet... his bewilderment rang too true, even over the phone, and this was one of the two plausible scenarios she’d considered.
“Wait a minute,” he murmured. “That’s why you looked so sad.”
Her cheeks flushed, but she was too tongue-tied to confirm it or deny it.
“You thought I was rejecting you. I was not.”
She nodded, though he couldn’t see her. Her throat was too clogged up to speak. So who had it been? “Are you sure it wasn’t you?” She was dismayed at how plaintive she sounded, a far cry from the forceful demands she’d made a few moments ago.
If it wasn’t him, that left a whole world of suspects who could have taken advantage of her. And if she never knew who it was, then how would she ever trust anyone again?
Dev’s voice gentled. “It was not. Do you have the messages? Can I see them?”
Her first instinct was to say no, but this wasn’t some sacred relationship to be preserved now, was it? Jia put her phone on speaker, opened the app, and scrolled back through her DMs. “I do. This is the first one you sent, from what appears to be your official account.”Hello. I’m sorry to bother you, but I merely wanted to tell you that dress is gorgeous. You look like you were dipped in gold.
She took a screenshot and texted it. “There.”
His long silence made her squirm. “Hello?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I’m in a bit of shock. I’m trying to think who... others handle my social media, you see. I didn’t even have any of these apps on my phone until recently.”
It was exactly what Rhiannon had suggested then. Jia hugged her knees to her chest. Her outrage was leaving her in slow waves, and grief was setting in. It was harder to maintain anger when she couldn’t visualize a clear target for it. “Oh.” She should have known she wasn’t talking to the real Dev. In the span of a few minutes, he’d already mentioned his niece. Fake Dev had never talked about her.
You should have thought that was weird then. You knew his brother and grandfather had passed away.Of course he would talk about his family.
“The date on this... it’s over a year ago.”
“We chatted for a while then, but it fizzled out. We reconnected a couple months ago.”
“May I see the more recent texts as well?”
