Page 40 of Frosting and Flames

“Did you check outside after you got the text?”

“No, I…” I don’t want to admit how off balance it’d made me. Even though it wouldn’t matter at all to Jae. She can be fiercely protective when she wants. “I just wanted to forget about it.”

Her phone chimes, but she doesn’t pay attention, seeming lost in thought about my dilemma.

“Do you need to get that?”

“What?” She looks over at me, distracted. “No, it’s the doorbell alert.”

I glance toward the front door, but no one knocks or rings the bell. A moment later, Josh comes out of his gaming room from down the hall, waving his phone from side to side.

“My new mechanical keyboard came.” He opens the front door and pulls in a package. “It’s been sold out for weeks but was finally in stock—”

“You got the doorbell alert on your phone, right?” Jae interrupts. Thank goodness, because Josh could go on for a while about keyboards if we let him.

“Yeah,” he says, unphased.

“Okay, thanks, babe.” She smiles at him, and not so subtly dismisses him by picking up her phone and navigating to something.

He doesn’t seem to notice and happily carries his package back to his gaming room. Nabi meows once before he closes the door again.

“You have a video doorbell, right?” Jae asks me, still doing something on her phone.

“Yeah.” I rarely use it, though, keeping the alerts off since they annoyed me too much.

“What if—and this is going to sound crazy—but what if Kyle still gets alerts when someone’s at your front door?”

I blink at her, processing her words. “What? No. He moved out almost six months ago.”

“Did he have access to it when you lived together?”

“Yeah, but…” I trail off, not knowing where I’m going with it. The idea is preposterous, though.

“Okay, pull up your app.”

“I don’t have the app. I deleted it.”

Her lips purse. “Oh my God, you’re killing me. Give me that.” She takes my phone and taps away at the screen, but I’m still chewing on my lip, mulling over her suggestion.

Can she actually find proof Kyle is accessing my front door video footage? Why would he even want to? To keep tabs on me? He has Autumn now.

He was weirdly aggressive toward Nick at the pancake breakfast, though. Do they have some kind of beef?

Jae shoves my phone back in my hands. “Put in your email and password.”

I do it, my fingers trembling slightly for some reason, and hand it to her when I’m logged in.

“Okay, control center… shared users…” She pauses and shows me the screen. “He still has access.”

I stare at his name, dumbfounded. I guess it makes sense he’d still be there if I never removed him from the account. I hadn’t even thought about the doorbell when he left. I’d changed the locks, the utilities accounts, our streaming services passwords. Thankfully, we’d never shared a bank account, though he’d been pushing for it.

But not the frigging doorbell.

“That doesn’t mean he’s using it.” I attempt to grab onto any excuse I can for why this isn’t happening right now.

She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “You said he texted you about hanging out with Nick directly after Nick left. Either he’s watching what’s going on at your house through this or he’s physically close enough to see. Would you rather have a virtual stalker or a physical one?”

Stalker? “Oh my God, he’s not stalking me. He’s just… I don’t know. Being crazy.” I hold my head in my hands for a moment, thinking it through. “Well, let’s remove him. Can we do that?”

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