Page 31 of For You & No One Else (Say Everything 3)

Eight

Eliza gasped, grabbed the throw pillow from his couch, and tossed it at him. “We said we weren’t going to talk about the things I said last night…when I was very,veryinebriated.” She pointed toward his computer screen. “Did you see the video? Clearly, I was out of my mind.”

Beckham laughed, catching the pillow before it hit his face. “Don’t worry. Remember, I’m into privacy. I’ll keep your tattoo kink a secret.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “And your younger-man fetish.”

“Oh, you can go to hell, Beckham Carter,” she said, flipping him off. “I’m glad you feel it necessary to make me feel more embarrassed—andold—on a day I’ve already been humiliated. I mean, I’ve already been called boring and crazy. Let’s just add that to the pile.”

He gave her a patient look and tossed the pillow next to her on the couch. “Aww, come on. You know none of that stuff is true. You’re not boring, crazy, or old. And why be embarrassed about what you said? Nothing wrong with harmless flirting. I said stuff back to you, and I was stone-cold sober. It was all in good fun. I knew not to take you seriously—especially when you were that hammered. I’m surprised you even remember you said it.”

“I…” She met his gaze and frowned. “Right.”

“But here I am giving you dating advice again. I’ll stop.” He turned back to his computer, his fingers returning to the keyboard. “Let’s get this fire put out.”

“Yes, please.”

Eliza found herself watching Beckham’s profile again, his sea-glass-colored eyes intense, his teeth scraping over his bottom lip as his hands moved with practiced ease, screen after screen of what she assumed was computer code flickering past. A man on a mission. A guy who definitely knew his way around breaking into places he shouldn’t be—which should’ve been concerning to her but somehow felt thrilling instead. The therapist side of her didn’t want to examinethattoo closely. But still, she couldn’t stop watching.

She didn’t know how much time had passed when Beckham stopped typing and glanced over at her with a satisfied smirk. “I’m in.”

Her heart leapt. “Seriously?”

He looked back to the screen and did some more clicking. “Yeah, that wasn’t even a fun challenge. Their security sucks. Here it is.” He rolled his chair back a bit and turned his monitor so she could see his screen fully. “Behold… Bread Man’s account.”

She bent forward to read the screen, the fresh scent of Beckham’s soap or shampoo hitting her nose as she got closer. “Oh my God. His password is RYisFLY69? I’m embarrassed for him.”

“Such. A. Tool,” Beckham said with an eye roll. “Let’s change this for him. Save him from himself.” He deleted the password and typed inShitForBrains. “That’s better. More accurate.” He went through another screen of code, changing a few more things in Ryan’s account. Then he clicked into another page, her video coming up. “And…delete.”

He hit a button and the video disappeared from the screen. Beckham clicked into some other icon on his computer. He grabbed a file and dumped it into the upload box. A progress bar appeared. Eliza scooted even closer, their arms nearly touching now, but she was fascinated. They were viewing Ryan’s account as if they were him. “What are you doing?”

“Wait for it…” Beckham said, rubbing his palms together with relish.

After a few seconds, the video he’d added loaded and he hit Play. The opening notes of the song “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley started playing.

Eliza pressed her fingers to her mouth, grinning. She’d seen this video before, numerous times when searching up random things on YouTube. “This is amazing.”

“Ry, my friend, you’ve officially been Rickrolled.” Beckham hit Save to make it official and the main screen came back into view. The thread with her video on it was still there, but the eighties pop song had replaced the content. He’d also deleted the text part of the post and disabled comments, making the old comments not visible to the public.

“It’s gone,” Eliza said in wonder.

Beckham spun around in his chair, brushing his knees against hers. “And he won’t be able to get back into his account because I changed his password and the answers to his security questions, so he won’t be able to reset his password. He could start from scratch with a new account, but I’ll monitor the site and do this again if the video shows up.”

Eliza stared at him for a moment, the pressure that had been pushing on her chest all day easing and finally letting her take a full breath. Before she could think too hard about it, she got up from the couch and hugged Beckham. “Thank you…thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He’d gone still for a moment, but after a few seconds he put his arm around her to return the hug. “Happy to help. If you see it pop up anywhere else, just let me know.”

She collapsed back onto the couch, her entire being feeling lighter. “I can’t believe you made it disappear.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. This is like…a superpower. How’d you learn to do that?”

He rocked back in his chair, hooking his ankle over his knee. “Too much time on my hands as a teenager. My parents were…very strict and had all kinds of blocks on our computers. If I wanted to get to anything, I had to learn how to break through, get their passwords, that kind of thing.” He shrugged. “I found I had a knack for it. Got hooked into some hacker groups online and got better. Eventually got good enough to convince a company to help me go to school for it.”

“Wow. Companies do that?” she asked, thinking of the mountain of student loans she was still paying off.

His expression turned slightly chagrined. “I may have broken into their system illegally and then told them if they wanted me to show them how I did it, I wanted a job and some help with school.”

Her brows went up. “So, like, blackmail?”

He tipped his head side to side as if he were weighing the word. “Technically, it’s called gray-hat hacking. Not legal but not meant maliciously—helpful to the company because theydidhave holes in their system—but also self-serving.” He shrugged. “It worked.”

“Damn. I should’ve gone into hacking instead of psychology.” She shook her head. “I would’ve saved a lot of money in student loans.”

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