Like my brother.
But that profile would attract the wrong kind of man—a man like Terry. So before I knew it, I’d reverse image searched her photo.
She was too easily discovered. Her profile photo sent me to a public social media account of what appeared to be her friend’s profile. She was tagged with two other people. From there Ifound her full name, which led me to a profile at the local university and—Jesus Christ.
Her home address was on many white pages knockoff sites.
“Shit,” I said aloud. “Fuck.”
I opened up the app and sent her a ping.
Make thatthreetimes today she’d made me an idiot.
chapter
five
SHAY
Three weeks before the graveyard.
Don’t act like you don’t want my cock. You’re so fuckin’ wet. I can see it from here.
I leaned forward, adjusting a parameter from cold dark matter to hot while a cowboy whispered in my ear. Listening to a cowboy dirty talk the woman he’d kidnapped while testing how dark matter models affected CMB-derived age estimates was maybenotmost people’s idea of a good Monday.
For me, it was just a tea short of ideal.
After book club, I’d spent the rest of the Saturday nursing my hangover. On Sunday, the four of us grabbed brunch at a local place known for its insane avocado toast and great tea. Now I waited for my program to finish running. Sometimes it was only a few seconds, and other times it was a minute or two. Either way, more time for dark cowboy.
Get on your knees, baby girl, and crawl.
The program finished, and the results weren’t unexpected. I’d run and rerun this experiment hundreds of times. But something goingrightalways stressed me out more thansomething going wrong. When it was too easy, it usually meant I’d missed something.
I leaned forward, double-checking the parameters.
Yeah, just like that. Fuck, you look so good swallowing my cock?—
A tap on my shoulder startled me out of focus.
“Oh!” I slipped my headphones off haphazardly so they hung off one ear, and turned to find my boss, Jenna. “Hey?—”
“Such a good fucking girl.” My audiobook cut me off.
Wait.
That shouldn’t be so loud.
A wave of dread rushed through me. Had my audiobook been playing through my fucking speakers? As if to answer, the low, growly narrator continued.
“Be my good little, cumslu?—”
I slammed the pause button, cheeks hot as I met my boss’s eyes. Behind her, a group of about ten college students stared.
“Just showing the physics undergrads around and figured I’d check to see if you were done with that file I needed…” She trailed off, a small quirk to her lips. “Didn’t realize you were busy.”
Fucking kill me now.
Jenna was a perpetually cool woman in her early fifties. She was of the Timothy Leary branch of scientists. Boundary breaking. Not concerned with hierarchical bullshit. Looking for real answers.
