Page 165 of Ever With Me

Maddie studied her hands. She’d had the same thoughts.Just go to Brooks.

And what?

Ask him to take her back?

He’d left her sobbing on Main Street.

Changed his number.

Made it clear they were done.

Brooks left no room for a relationship with her, now or ever.

“It’s not that easy, unfortunately. And hedidhurt me, Gina. If I had found him today, I couldn’t guarantee we weren’t walking right back into the same situation as before. Besides, I have family obligations here.”

Gina appeared conflicted. She took another sip of water, then said, “Did you know Josh sold information to the paparazzi about your whereabouts? He figured out that you’d come into the storeroom for that security tape, too, so he sold it to someone for a lot of money. Then he was hooked. Kept looking for people to sell more information to about Brooks. I told him not to,” she added quickly. “But he wanted the money.”

Josh?

It was Josh?

This whole time, she’d been furious with Fred Strickland about that tape.

“Your dad didn’t know about the tape?”

Gina shook her head. “Josh didn’t give him a penny from the money he made, either.”

But . . .how? How did Josh figure so much out?

“Did someone tell Josh about the video? And how did he find out about where I was going to be to tip off the paparazzi?”

Guilt flashed in Gina’s face. “No.” She cleared her throat. “Turns out you’d signed into your text message app on his laptop and never signed out. He knew your password anyway. So he’d lurk on your messages, find information, then pass it along.”

Oh my God. No wonder the paparazzi knew where we were all the time.

Gina’s fingertips trembled slightly. “The guy he sold the video footage to, his name was Mike. They had a lot of online meetings. I thought he was a reporter. They didn’t talk in front of me, but I knew his name because I’d ask who he was talking to, and he would just say, ‘Mike.’”

Mike?

As in Kayla’s ex, Mike? It had to be.

Maddie stared at Gina, astonished and sick. The sheer violation of her privacy was overwhelming. She’d sent so many intimate text messages to Brooks. And other things, too—like texts to her sisters about how brokenhearted she’d been about the breakup with Josh. And all the while, he’d been reading her messages?

How mortifying.

It’s so gross.

Fury ignited inside her. “Why are you telling me all this?”

Gina twisted her hands together. “About a month and a half ago, a woman showed up at my apartment to talk to Josh. I don’t know what her name was, but there might be video of her on the Ring camera to my apartment still. I confronted Josh about it because I thought he might be cheating on me with her. He said she was just an actress he’d hired for a job with Mike.”

Oh. My. God.

“She showed up at the apartment the day before your grandfather had his heart attack, Maddie. I’m not sure if it’s the same woman who came after you, but . . . I swear I didn’t know. I didn’t connect the two things at all. I knew nothing, but?—”

Maddie stood bolt upright from her chair. “Fuck,” she breathed, her gut twisting.

Josh and Mike.

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