Page 58 of He Hate Me

“If we don’t use his place, then we’re doing it in the backseat of your car or an empty classroom after hours. That’s even riskier than doing it here.”

“Then why not just do it here?”

“Do you feel safe having sex in this house? Because I don’t.”

“Since when? We had sex last night.”

“And it’s a miracle we didn’t get caught.” She seems unconvinced, so I get behind Devin’s desk and gesture for her to join me. She seems uncertain at first, but eventually comes to stand next to where I’m sitting. I log in and the screen resolves.

“What am I looking at?”

“Surveillance video.” On the screen is a grid of eight squares showing different views of the house. I put the cursor over each one, naming the location as I do. “This is courtyard 1, courtyard 2, garage, front door, sliding door, kitchen door⁠—“

“Isn’t that the spot where I, I…” she stammers, embarrassed. The camera has a clear view of the spot where she got on her knees and gave me a blowjob.

“Yeah,” I say. “He keeps adding new cameras. There’s been one outside the gate in the service alley for a while, but he just put this one up a few days ago. It’s probably my fault for dropping a cigarette butt or something.”

“That seems like overkill?”

“It does, and I haven’t even shown you half. Here’s three views of the back lawn, the exterior of the sunroom, inside the sunroom, inside the foyer, inside the family room, inside the kitchen⁠—“

“I get the idea,” she says, looking worried.

“You need to see two more of these.” She nods hugging herself around the middle. This is really disturbing to her, as it should be. It’s alarming to think someone might be spying on you without your knowledge, and it’s worse when it’s someone you trust.

I scroll down and show her a view of the hallway that runs from one side to the other of the second floor, and the interior of the downstairs powder room. Her mouth falls open.

“You think he just sits up here watching us? My friends use that powder room whenever they come over. There were probably eight cheerleaders peeing in there last weekend. People change their clothes in there. There has to be an explanation for this.”

“I don’t know, Deja,” I say. I showed her the video feeds to convince her to come to Rourke’s, but I also think she has a right to know this is going on. It’s a huge invasion of privacy.

“So when I came to your room last night, did the camera capture it? Does Devin know?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. There are hundreds of hours of video if you tally everything up. There’s no reason he would look at that specific 30 seconds. The hallway is pretty boring. I doubt he checks it unless an alarm goes off. The only alarms up here are on the windows.”

She doesn’t look entirely reassured, but I can’t tell her that Anton hacked the system and deleted the few seconds of video. No matter how many cameras Devin puts up, he’ll never see me where I’m not supposed to be. Anton is willing to cover Deja under that blanket, so I don’t get kicked out; he still needs me here until I find the evidence Devin has against him. But Anton also had me plant extra cameras and bugs. I don’t want Anton seeing intimate moments between me and my girl, and I don’t want Deja wondering who I’m texting while we’re together.

“We both have practice tomorrow, but why don’t we go over to Rourke’s Friday afternoon, hang out, and see if you feel comfortable. If you don’t, we strike his place off the list.”

She nods, her expression still tight. I don’t share my backup plan, which is to rent a hotel room. She might jump at it, but we risk someone we know seeing us, plus she’ll want to know where I got the money to afford it. I’ll have to ask Rourke not to mention the dealing in front of her. And here I am again, lying to her by omission. There are so many already, though, what’s one more. All of them are because of Anton, but my attitude about him sending me here is changing. If he hadn’t asked me to spy on Devin, I’d never had gotten this close to Deja. Imagine if I’d missed out on her, on the way she makes me feel? There’s so much I still want to learn about her, so many things I want to do with her, it feels exciting, something to look forward to after Anton has what he needs. Until her, I only imagined a bleak future, waiting for my mother to die. Now things feel different. I have hope.

“I’m starving,” she says, “but one last question.”

“Shoot.”

“How did you find out about this? I mean I knew they had cameras outside the front door and watching the pool, but the ones inside are hidden. And how did you get access to his computer?”

“Sit in the middle of the sofa,” I tell her. “Okay. Now look at Devin’s diploma.” She moves her head an inch or two in either direction before her eyebrows shoot up.

“Wow! The whole screen’s reflected.”

“I was in here listening to him ramble on about responsibility and respect and I noticed I could see the family room. I’d watched him enter his password enough times I had a good idea what it was, so I logged in one afternoon before they got home to check if there was an angle that showed the kitchen door.”

“Cause that’s where you sneak out, right? To smoke.”

“Selfish reasons, yeah. I snuck up here to see what the cameras could see, and I thought it was weird he had so many. And that’s before I realized he was adding more.”

“What is going on?” She shakes her head.