Page 183 of Secret Shifters Next Door

But it was only two weeks. That was what I kept telling myself. She was only here for a couple weeks. Not enough time to get attached, and plenty of time for her to reject me––which she, of course, would. It wouldn’t be hard since she seemed a little awkward and shy. There was very little chance that she’d try to pursue me. I had to admit that her shyness had been pretty cute, and I immediately cursed myself for that. My brain was already trying to follow the curse.

The guys were going to get a kick out of this. Back in town less than an hour and I’d found my mate. I’d seen what had happened with Steff when he’d tried to force April to reject him. Purposely being a dick didn’t sound appealing to me. The girl seemed sweet, and even though I could be an asshole in the best of situations, I didn’t want to be one to her. Besides, it hadn’t worked out for Steff. Pushing and shoving April away hadn’t stopped the curse in the long run.

Calling my neighbor—my mate—the girlwasn’t ideal. I needed to find out her name, so I grabbed my phone.

“What’s up?” Blayne asked when he answered.

“I need a favor.”

“Already? You got back like five seconds ago.”

“Yes, I know. Can you do it?”

Blayne laughed. “Depends on what it is.”

“I need you to hack into the registry of the apartment complex I live in. I want to know who’s moved in across from me.”

At the long pause, my face went red in embarrassment. I could almost hear the slots in Blayne’s mind falling into place.

“So, you want to know who moved in? This person wouldn’t happen to be?—”

“Bro, can you do it or not? Jesus!”

Blayne chuckled. “Okay, okay. Give me some time. I’ll call you back. If the network security is high, it could take me a day or two to get in. If it’s shit, I might break it in less than an hour.”

“Okay, cool. If it looks like it’ll take a while, text me.”

We hung up, and I walked around the apartment, fidgeting and doing pointless tasks to occupy my mind. Surprisingly, Blayne called me back fifteen minutes later.

I almost dropped my phone from snatching it up so quickly. “What did you find?”

“You need better security at that apartment complex. The network administration password was, I shit you not, one-two-three-four-five-six. I didn’t even need to use my high-end encryption software. All I used was a web-based password guesser. Took, like, three minutes.”

“Okay, good,” I mumbled, not even trying to understand what he was saying. “Did you find her?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I clenched my eyes shut and winced. I hadn’t said anything about it being a woman earlier. Fuck.

Blayne laughed. “I knew it. Oh man, here we go.”

“Stop, okay. Can you check on her background and stuff?”

“Dude, why do you think it took me so long to call back? Already done. Her name is Celina Santos. Twenty-eight. Author.”

“Author? She writes books?”

“No, Miles, she writes billboards.” Sarcasm dripped through the phone. “Yes, she writes books. Award-winning books, it looks like. She’s not Stephen King or anything, but she’s had some damned good sales. I found a screenshot of a cover, and I’m positive I’ve heard of her before. It looked super familiar.”

“Wow, okay. That’s pretty cool,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Yup. Her mom was from Brazil, and her dad had Scottish heritage. She was put into the foster system pretty early on, which means she probably had a pretty shitty childhood. She has almost no social media presence. The two pages I found look to be completely run by a PR company—all for show. She does have a huge fan base. I found, like, five different websites dedicated to her books.”

“Any…” How the hell did I ask this question without being suspicious? “Any…uh, does she have a husband or wife? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”

“Nope. You’re in luck, big guy.”

“Shut up. That’s not what this is.”

“Sure, it’s not.”

Ignoring him, I said, “Email it all to me.”

---