Page 6 of Love to Stay

My stomach sinks.

Chapter Five

MICK

Silence hangs in the air between us like a giant black cloud weighing down the lines until it hits the ground with a thud. Or maybe that’s my stomach dropping between my knees. Either way, I feel like I could puke.

“What happened?” she finally says.

I explain the situation with the new account and then how my dumbass attempted to defend her honor like she’s a helpless maiden and I’m on a white horse charging to her rescue because as great as that image is in my head, it didn’t play out that way.

“Whyyyyyyyyy?”

“Can we move past the ‘Mick’s a bumbling idiot’ to ‘This is how we solve the problem’? Do you know who he is? Like maybe he donated to you and you have his credit card number. You give me his ID and I go wreck him.”

“I can’t do that. There are privacy laws and stuff like that.”

“Not to be that guy, but your safety is at issue here. Do those laws really matter?”

“If I don’t want my one source of income taken away, yes.”

It’s terrible when reasonable answers torpedo my great ideas.

“All right. We can go back to ‘Mick’s a bumbling idiot’ then. What kind of trouble is this going to cause?”

“Can we back all the way up to why didn’t you just message me from your original account?”

There is no good way to explain to her my messed-up thinking about how I was going to cyberstalk her like a tool so that I could assuage my loneliness.

“Josie, Josie, Josie, didn’t we establish long ago that I am the brawn in this relationship? I bring my fists and my pretty face to the party. You bring the brains.” And the hot body and the gorgeous face, but I’m supposed to pretend I don’t see her as a girl so as to continue the fiction that we’re besties. “What are your brains telling you we should do?”

“Not try to hack into the credit card services and obtain private information.”

“Okay, so how about I continue DMing this guy, get his private information, and then go whack him?”

“And then he reports you for assault, you get arrested and then prison time because you already have a record, and your whole dream of becoming a professional boxer is flushed down the toilet.”

“Can you use your brains for scenarios that don’t include me getting arrested?”

“I think we might be at an impasse here.”

The silence we started the call with creeps back in. I hate it. “What are you doing right now?”

“I’m sitting in my robe eating ramen. Thrilling, right?”

Actually, very. I shiver lightly. She probably has nothing on under that robe. My cock starts to rise at the thought. Nearly naked Josie. What a dream. “Do you have your webcam around? Want to video chat? I can show you my fancy place.”

There’s a half a beat of hesitation before Josie says, “Sure. Why not.”

“Don’t sound too enthused. I may get nervous.”

“When have you ever been nervous? You were born with nerves of steel.” Her voice sounds far away. “Do you have a webcam?”

“I don’t know. I think there’s one in the monitor. It’s an all-in-one thing.” I check the box. “It says there’s a 1080p camera.”

“I’m hooked up,” she says, slightly out of breath. My cock goes from half-mast to full bore at the sound of her labored breathing. Like if she was under me and I was driving into her, that’s what she’d sound like—choppy breath, words short. Fuccccck me.

I’m fully hard. I move my face from side to side. Would she be able to tell I’m turned on? I look down at my lap. “Get yourself under control,” I mutter.

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