Page 24 of Loved By the Hacker

“Babochka, everything okay?” Oleg called out from the other side, and I took a deep breath.

“Yeah! Umm, just give me a bit,” I answered, hoping he wouldn’t ask if anything was wrong. Oleg was always so in tune with me.

“No worries. I’m going to be downstairs. I’m going to make us breakfast.”

“Okay,” I answered, trying my hardest not to throw up. My stomach was queasy. He was caring, sweet, and so thoughtful. What if he thinks I did this on purpose? To trap him? I swallowed hard and breathed in through my nose.

“Love you, baby.” His words made tears spring to life in my eyes. It was going to be okay. We weren’t just in this for a moment. We were in love. We wanted a future together.

“Love you, too,” I said back, shocked that I hadn’t given away how emotional I was feeling. This wasn’t a fling. He had been more than clear about that. He wanted a relationship. But would he want a baby?

A man his age? Childless and never married. Would he want to start a family now? He didn’t even have a home base but owned multiple properties. Would a forty-something-year-old man without roots want to start growing some now? Sure, you could travel and hop around with a baby, but that wasn’t how I pictured raising my family. I wanted to raise him or her in Moonlit Pines. Let them explore and grow and go off to school when it was time for them to spread their wings and go off to college like I had.

The alarm on my phone went off, and I knew I didn’t have to pick up the stick to know the answer. I stood and looked down at the two pregnancy tests I’d taken. Why hadn’t I done this back at my place? Without the risk of Oleg seeing this before I was ready to tell him? My eyes dropped to the blue and white sticks, and there, in the digital window, it told me everything I needed to know.

Pregnant.

I was pregnant. Expecting the child of a man I’d known for a month.

“Holy shit,” I whispered to myself, suddenly more than slightly panicked. It felt like my life had been shoved into a snow globe and shaken about. What was I going to do?Breathe,a voice in my head whispered.Breathe. Go out and tell Oleg. Everything is going to be okay. Give him a chance.

That was the right thing to do.

The thought of keeping the news to myself had never crossed my mind. Whatever happened, whatever Oleg’s reaction, it would all be okay. My lawyer brain went to the worst-case scenarios. Oleg saying he didn’t want anything to do with me.He won’t say that,my heart whispered. But in case he did, I knew I was more than capable of raising my little gem on my own.My little treasure.

Wrapping the tests up in toilet paper, my head in a fog, I stuffed them back into the box, and instead of tossing them into the trash, I left the box on the vanity. After washing my hands, I headed downstairs but didn’t see Oleg in the kitchen. I assumed he was in his home office, so I headed that way. I stepped inside, took a deep breath., and felt my body start to relax.

I loved the way his space smelled. Like his skin and cologne.Like home.I wasn’t sure when exactly he started to feel like that to me, but I wasn’t going to lie to myself. I might have only just met him, but it felt like we knew one another our whole lives. I was comfortable around him to just be me. There was no worry or pretense about trying to fit some kind of mold.

I walked around his office, something I really hadn’t had a chance to do, and something caught my eye on his desk. I rounded it and sat down, reaching for the frame. It was a picture of me. A profile shot of me smiling. I tried to figure out when that had been taken but wasn’t sure. I took in what I was wearing, but the last time I wore that dress was back in March.Before I met Oleg.

Confused, I couldn’t process what that meant. That’s when I saw it. Something else caught my attention. His laptop was open, and just like that, it felt like all the blood in my body drained down to my feet.

“What the…” I started to say, but any other words died on my tongue.

I blinked and leaned in closer, trying to make sense of the dozen or so windows I was looking at. Some of my bedroom, home office, and kitchen. All places inside my home. Others of my work office, the break room there. Some even of the brewery. My hand covered the mouse as I maximized each screen and then minimized it, only to see one single folder on the desktop namedCoral. I hovered the arrow over it and stopped.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, but even with the eerie feeling I had, I clicked on it. Videos and pictures came tumbling out. Things that dated back to the beginning of the year. I opened one, and my heart stilled. It was a video of Oleg and me. Not just any video, but by the date on it, the first night he spent at my place after bumping into one another once again. But had we bumped into one another, or had he been following me? Setting me up?

And despite finding what could only be considered and obsessive amount of images and videos, I felt myself get wetter at what I was watching.He’s filmed us.Saved it on his computer. And instead of picking up the phone and calling the cops like I should have been, I was turned on.What is wrong with me?My chest rose and fell heavily, my breathing shallow. I pushed back on the chair and bumped a box. A glossy black one with nothing but a butterfly sticker on the side of it.

With shaky hands, I pulled the lid, and the top fell to the ground as I took in what was inside. Picture after picture of me. Most taken from a distance. Printed and cut out so it was only me in them. They filled the box almost to the brim, there were so many. I rifled through it, and my breath got caught in the middle of my throat.

Panties.The ones I’d worn that first night that I’d left behind.

My eyes fluttered shut as I tried to make sense of what was happening. Of what I was seeing. One thought kept coming to mind, but I kept trying to shake it away because there was no way.Has Oleg been stalking me?

No. No, he wouldn’t have. Oleg wasn’t that kind of man.Is he?I knew about his business. Security in all aspects of the word. But had Oleg hacked me? Hacked into my security system and devices?

Was that how he had known to show up when he did with my sisters last week? Just when they were asking me a billion questions about the possibility of our future having a shelf life, he showed up in the nick of time.

I tried to think of other moments in the last month that hadn’t made sense. How he had known which car was mine that very first night without me having to tell him. Why he was always sending food. Not because he worried I hadn’t eaten, but because he knew I hadn’t. He’d known because he had been watching me?

The world felt like it was spinning too fast despite me sitting down. It left me dizzy and a little nauseous. Or was that morning sickness? Was I too early in for that? I had no idea. I didn’t know a thing about pregnancy besides cravings and hormones being all out of whack. Oh god, I wasn’t ready for anything. Not a baby or whatever this was I’d discovered in Oleg’s office.I am in love with a hacker who has been stalking me, and I am going to have his baby!

I heard a sound, and I knew he was there without having to look up. When I glanced up, my heart still skipped a beat at just the sight of him. Even with knowing everything, having the proof literally in front of me, my body still reacted to how handsome he was. My heart still loved him.

Standing in the doorway, still wearing his sleep pants that hung low on his hips, his broad muscular chest on display. My fingers itched to touch the dark smattering of hair across his pecs. To run them through his longish curls that were wild from sleep.

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