Page 75 of Overexposed

“You mean you haven’t snuck it into your phone already?” Ollie had. Seven had. But Gem? We’d talked a lot and met elsewhere; he hadn’t come to my apartment. Not yet.

“Might need to up my stalking game,” Gem said, stroking his thumb along the side of my hand. “Or it could be I am savoring the fact that my girl keeps coming back to me and there’s a reward in being the one who is found.”

“Synchronicity?”

“They made a movie about it,” he reminded me with a wink.

Yes, yes they had.

“Right, well, I like cheating—as you might have noticed earlier.”

“I like cheating too,” he told me with a grin and then handed me his phone. It was unlocked and the name of my contact was Slick.

Grinning, I typed the address in with my thumbs and then passed it back. “Tag,” I told him. “You’re it.”

It was in this happy, dopamine-infused bubble that we drove to my place. It was just nice to hold hands, listen to the radio, and enjoy the night driving. Not that we got a lot of open driving, as the traffic grew thicker the closer we got to my place.

Instead of dropping me off, which I expected, he parked and climbed out. After opening my door, he reached a hand out to help me up. Wearing only the pair of pool slides Gem had given me in place of my stilettos when we left his place, I was acutely aware of how tall he was.

“I can walk to the door on my own.” I was more than used to seeing myself inside. The nice thing about my apartment was we had access to garages that were a separate rental fee. Mine wasn’t right next to the apartment, but it did mean that I didn’t have to worry about the Bel Air while out. That or my bike.

“I know,” he said. “Just like the idea of making sure you get in safe and sound. Indulge me?”

I made a big show of thinking about it as he closed the door and slipped an arm around me before settling his hand on my waist. “I suppose,” I said. “But who will walk you back to the car?”

“You could do that,” he said, eyes twinkling as we crossed the lot toward the breezeway to my place. “Then I’d have to make sure you got back to your apartment.”

“Oh no,” I said, exhaling a mighty sigh. “We’ll be forever trapped in a loop unless you stay with me!”

“Or,” he said, stressing the single syllable, “you come back home with me. I have a very big bedroom, and you slept very well the last time you stayed.”

It was near impossible to suppress my smile. Before I could respond though, Gem’s smile fled and his eyes narrowed as he looked ahead. I turned, frowning.

My front door was open.

“Oh, man…” There’d been break-ins a few months earlier, but I thought they’d caught those guys.

“Wait,” Gem said, tightening his arm around me. “Let me go first.” Without waiting for agreement, he tucked me behind him and headed for the door. Once there, he nudged it inward with a booted foot.

Inside it was…just destroyed. The sofa was torn up, every cushion shredded. Stuffing hung from everything. Broken glass decorated the floor. The hard shells of books were open, their pages ripped out and scattered. The television had a huge hole in it.

The smell of cat urine and worse seemed to just waft out of there. Splashes of paint were on the walls, the carpet. The little wooden card table I’d saved from a dumpster in college, then sanded to a new color was in literal pieces.

Everywhere I looked, there was destruction. The photo prints Dad had framed for me when I moved in as a housewarming present were broken, the prints sliced and more. My stomach fell away like I’d just taken a tumble off a cliff.

A scuff of shoe against pavement had me twisting, and Gem with me. Dillon strolled around the corner, his dark eyes alight with a kind of malicious glee that his thin, fake smile couldn’t mask.

“Oh, that looks terrible,” he said, pausing to glance past us into my apartment. His smirk faltered only briefly when he looked at Gem. Dillon definitely wasn’t happy to see him, butthen he turned that unfriendly gaze back my way. “Must have really pissed off the wrong people this time.”

“Why don’t you fuck off?” Gem said, his expression tightening.

“Hey, man,” Dillon said, raising his hands as if in surrender. “Just saying…looks bad. You know what she does for a living right? Your actor boyfriend does know, doesn’t he?”

“I think you misheard,” Gem stated, taking a step forward. “I said fuck off before I make you fuck off.”

“I’m out.” He just kept right on smirking as he backed up and then he turned left.

“You know that asshole?” Gem asked, pulling his phone out as he glanced from me to the door to where Dillon had gone.

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