Casey had returned from the bar but she only barely looked up from her phone as she tapped out her response: John Barleycorn.
Stay there, he responded. I’m on my way.
Emma felt a surge of excitement. He was coming out! She was going to see him—the elusive Mr. X. Now she knew his name, as well. Xavier Pena. She itched to Google him, but Casey was in front of her once more.
“So, tell me about you,” Casey said. “I’ve been talking this whole time. What’s a gorgeous girl like you doing on Nost? You could have any guy at this bar with a snap of your fingers.”
She squirmed at the compliment and felt a bit of guilt. After all, she was not going home with Casey tonight, not if Mr. X, Xavier, was on his way. Xavier Pena. The name suited him. And she’d be Googling him at the first available opportunity. She glanced at the door of the bar and saw the revolving doors swing around. Was Xavier here already?
But then, she saw the telltale red baseball brim. Cardinals hat. He was back. Had he found her before she turned off her location finder on Nost?
Emma crouched down, trying to use Casey as a shield. “Everything okay?” he asked her.
“Uh, just someone I don’t want to see,” Emma said. Casey turned to look at the front of the bar. Emma took the opportunity to reach out and grab Sarah’s elbow and tug her close. “Cardinals Hat is here,” Emma whispered in her friend’s ear. Sarah craned her neck and saw the man working his way through the crowd. Suddenly, the man lifted his head and through the crowd, managed to make eye contact with Emma. She wanted to look away, but she found herself frozen, unable to move. The man’s lip curled up in a cruel smile of recognition. Emma knew in that minute that he had been looking for her, and that his intentions were anything but good. She felt a cold chill run down her spine, all of her instincts telling her to get away from that man.
“Who is that guy?” Casey asked.
“An asshole,” Sarah responded. “Don’t worry. We’ll make sure he doesn’t come near you.”
Emma was thankful for the offer, and yet, despite her presence and the dozens of other people in the bar, she still felt vulnerable, exposed.
“Want another round?” Casey asked her suddenly, but all Emma wanted to do was to get out of the bar, away from the man who now took up a position leaning against a column in her direct line of sight. He wasn’t coming up to her, and she guessed she ought to be grateful for that, but the way he just stood across the bar, staring at her, made her even more uncomfortable. She just wanted to get out of his line of sight. She couldn’t shake the feeling that in his mind, he was plotting terrible things to do to her. She knew that sounded crazy, but she felt that he might become violent and that if he caught her alone she might be in serious danger.
Then Xavier came through the doors. She saw him first, and then their eyes met. Emma felt relief and more seeing his handsome self, clad in a simple black T-shirt, windbreaker and jeans, looking dark and dangerous as his tall and imposing figure cut through the crowd. Emma nodded to her left, toward her stalker, and Xavier saw him at the same time.
“Jimmy!” he shouted, which got the man’s attention. He turned, saw Xavier, and then suddenly bolted for the back, shoving bar-goers out of his way. He pushed one woman to the ground who fell hard, spilling her drink on a group of guys standing next to her.
“Hey!” one of them cried, and then Cardinals Hat had more than one pursuer, as the girl’s boyfriend gave chase.
Stymied by the thick crowd, Xavier couldn’t catch Jimmy. Emma watched as the man disappeared through the back. Xavier followed and Emma, worried about him, bolted for the back as well.
“Where are you...” she heard the blond shout after her, but she was already gone, worried about Xavier. She wiggled through the crowd, and before she knew it, found herself at the back kitchen, where Xavier had stopped by an open alleyway door.
“He’s gone,” he told her, running his hands through his thick hair. “I went out there, and...I don’t know, he’s just gone.”
Emma felt a bit of relief. Xavier was safe, the jerk was gone.
Xavier turned, looking at her with a pained expression. “Emma, that man...he’s got a sexual assault conviction on his record.”
“He...what?” Emma tried to process that information. “But he was certified with a background check.” The noise from the clang of pots and pans in the kitchen and the low rumble of music from the bar made it so Emma had to raise her voice.
Xavier shook his head. “He got past the safeguards somehow, but I’m going to figure out how and stop him. Put in more security. Something. I’m working on it, but, Emma, I’m sorry.”
She wasn’t sure she’d heard right over the noise in the bar.
“Why are you sorry? And what do you mean, ‘working on it’?” Now Emma was beyond confused. What was he talking about?
Xavier hung his head. He glanced around as if he wasn’t sure how to break bad news. Then he caught her eye once more, his own eyes fixed on hers, deliberate and serious.
“You’ll find out with your first Google search, anyway.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I built Nost. I own it.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EMMA FELT LIKE the earth suddenly tilted beneath her feet and she had trouble steadying herself.
“You own Nost?” A million confused questions raced through her mind, none of them good. Had he gamed the system? Had this somehow been just an elaborate joke?
Xavier nodded his head once.
“You use your own app to pick up girls?”
A flash of guilt crossed his face. “What kind of hypocrite would I be if I made the app but didn’t use it?” Xavier was trying to be lighthearted, to joke, but Emma found nothing about this to be funny.
Somehow, it just seemed all wrong that he was using his own app, his own program, to find women, but Emma couldn’t say why. Maybe it was because he’d be able to game the system (he created it, so he’d have to know how to take advantage, right?) or maybe it was because his commitment phobia went far, far deeper than she ever realized.
“You created Nost.” She just couldn’t get over the fact that the man she was falling for had relationship anxiety so deep that he built a company around it. There might never be a cure for him. All of her hopes about them being something more felt like they disintegrated in that moment. Poof, up in fantasy fairy-tale smoke.
“Yes.” Xavier moved closer and she backed away until she was flat against the wall in the corridor between the kitchen and the bathroom. “I told you up front that no strings was what I wanted.”
Yes, he had. He’d been more than up front about that. So why did it bother her so much that he owned Nost?
It was because he was here and he knew the man in the Cardinals hat would be here. He also knew the man was messaging her. But how?
“How did you know that man would be here tonight?” She pointed toward the back door where the jerk had fled.
Now Xavier looked uncomfortable. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I looked at your account,” he admitted.
“You can see the messages?” Now Emma felt shocked. He could hack her account? She felt a jumble of emotions all at once. She took a deep breath. The fact that he cared enough to dig around to find out about her proved her whole point that there was more between them than he ever admitted. Yet, another part of her felt unsteady, uneasy.
Xavier wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Yes,” he admitted. “And since you sent a complaint about him, I followed up. I just wanted to make sure you were safe, and I had a bad feeling about that guy so I checked into him. That’s when I saw he had a criminal history. That’s when I knew I had to warn you.”
Emma blinked fast. That was so much information but she could only focus on one thing.
“You looked in my account.”
First, she felt flattered. He was trying to protect her. Trying to make su
re someone followed up on her complaint. Ensuring that she was safe. That felt good.
At the same time, however, she didn’t like being in the dark and she felt duped. He’d taken pains to make sure she knew nothing about him, when he knew...everything...down to her billing address and credit card number. “I thought you said knowing things about me would make the sex dull.”
Xavier had the decency to look guilty. He raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, Em. I shouldn’t have done that, and I know it. I just... I wanted to make sure you were safe and...”
“And you wanted to find out where I lived. Were you just going to pop by sometime? Here I was not even knowing your name, and you knew everything about me!” The unfairness of it stung. Also, the mistrust. Did he not trust her to know even the littlest thing about him? Yet, he’d gone and found out everything about her. Without her knowing about it.
Xavier shifted uncertainly on one foot. “Wait,” he said, reaching out for her, but she dodged his advance.
“I think you should go home, Xavier,” she said, moving away from him. Emma decided she’d go back to Sarah, back to Casey and his friend. Casey might be bland, but he didn’t sneak around and find out where she lived behind her back, all while telling her information killed a relationship.
“Emma, please. Let me explain.”
“Explain what?” Emma whirled, feeling anger build up in her. “How you lied to me? How you misled me?”
“Let’s talk about this.”
Emma just felt hurt, betrayed and angry. She didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to go home. “I thought you were honest with me. I thought that’s what you said, that strangers could be honest. Be authentic with one another. But you weren’t that. You weren’t that at all.”
That was what hurt the most. Not that he’d snooped, but that he’d kept secrets.
“Emma, if I’d told you the first date that I owned Nost, we wouldn’t have gotten this far,” he said.
“How do you know that?” Emma fired back. “I was honest with you, but you lied to me.”
“I just didn’t tell you the whole truth,” Xavier said, trying to defend himself, raising his voice higher.
“Same thing,” she said. “You know what I think? I think this is all about power for you. You want to be the one with all of it. This isn’t about love or heartbreak or anything else, it’s about you calling all the shots. But that’s not how real love works.” Emma felt the truth of the words as she said them, understanding for the first time that she’d truly been a pawn in his game. “You told me information would kill the passion in a relationship. Well? You know what, you’re right. Knowing this about you. It does kill it.”
“Emma!” Xavier exclaimed, pain on his face as if she’d hit him. She felt a flicker of guilt then, but she couldn’t let it in. She knew she was right.
“You wanted no strings, right? Well, you got your wish,” she said. “There’s nothing holding us together.” Then she left him.
* * *
Xavier watched her go, feeling his gut wrench with guilt and loss. Even worse, he found that she marched right back to her friends, including the decent-looking, but decidedly unremarkable guy who offered her a beer. He felt jealousy well in him, and felt a strong desire to go over there and tell the man to get lost. Who was that? Some other guy on Nost, no doubt. The idea of her with another man made his blood boil. But what claim do I have on her? Everything she told me is true. I lied. I betrayed her trust.
I was just trying to protect her.
Or was he just trying to keep the balance in the relationship unequal? Was he trying to be the one with all the information? Did he like keeping her in the dark? She accused him of just wanting to keep all the power, and maybe she’d been right. Sure, Sasha had hurt him, more than hurt him, nearly killed him with heartbreak, and maybe he thought the way he’d never let that happen again was just to be sure that he held all the cards. She’d seen right through him, and it scared him to his core.
That was why he’d not revealed who he was at the start. That was why he’d kept all his cards close to his vest.
Yet, the attraction between them was real. Even now, he wanted to sweep Emma off her feet and kiss the life out of her. Even angry, he’d never seen a woman look so beautiful. Her blue eyes flashed fire when they glanced at him, and he wanted to do whatever it took to earn her forgiveness. Did trying to save her from a sexual predator count at all? Would it have been better if he’d just let her take her chances?
Xavier shoved his hands deep in his coat pockets. Should he go after her? Explain himself? He badly wanted to. Then his phone rang. His police detective friend, Ian, was on the line.
“X!” he cried. “It’s been too long, buddy.” The two of them had gone to school together on the South Side, but now they ran in slightly different circles.
“I know, man, sorry about that. It’s been busy.”
“Getting all that tail,” Ian said.
“Right. That.” There was only one bit of tail Xavier wanted at that moment, and she wasn’t speaking to him.
“So you got a perp that is getting into your site, huh?” Ian cut right to the chase.
“Anything you can do to help me get him out?” Xavier said. “He’s been hassling a...user.” The noise in the bar almost made it too hard to hear his friend. Xavier decided to step into the alley to finish the conversation. Getting Cardinals Hat out of his system, and hopefully in jail, was his priority at the moment.
“How bad?” Ian asked, and Xavier filled him in on what had happened so far. Ian made a disappointed sound. “I don’t think anything he’s done is technically against the law, but send me the guy’s full name. If he hasn’t checked in with his parole officer in a while, that could be enough to lift him, and if you really think he’s up to no good, maybe I could get one of my guys to check in on him. See if there’s anything to find.”
“Could you?” Xavier said, feeling suddenly hopeful.
“Anything for you, X. You know that.” Xavier felt suddenly grateful to have such loyal friends.
“Thanks, man.”
Something that sounded like a police scanner went off. “We’ll have to grab a beer sometime, but right now, I gotta run. City’s on fire, as usual.”
“Okay, Ian. Thanks, man.”
Ian clicked off and Xavier returned to the bar, determined to go find Emma and explain the situation. But when he turned the corner, he found Emma and her friends were already gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EMMA WENT HOME—alone, after breaking the news to Casey that she wouldn’t be his next Nost fling. Casey had tried to persuade her, but Emma was in no mood. They’d parted ways as she ducked into her own cab and headed home. Sarah, for her part, had called it an evening early as well, without taking anyone home. The whole mood had turned bleak the second Emma found out Xavier had lied to her. Well, not lied, exactly. Omitted the truth. Still, what an omission.
Emma sat on her bed in the tiny one-bedroom condo and glanced out her window, which overlooked Welles Park. Normally the pretty view of the full trees and big metal gazebo comforted her, but today she just felt isolated and alone. The leaves in the park had turned red and brown in the cool fall night, visible beneath the park’s streetlights. Emma sighed, and kicked off her ankle boots, opting to close her shades and then put on a pair of her comfiest flannel pajama bottoms. Emma swept her blond hair up in a messy bun, and grabbed her laptop as she sank into the ruffled pillows on her bed. She felt a storm of different emotions: anger, hurt, but also confusion. She opened up a Word document and did what she always did when she felt this lost: she started to write.
Turns out, the creator of Nost, Xavier Pena, uses it as his own personal playground to pick up unsuspecting women...
Then her fingers froze on the keyboard. Was that fair? Was she being too hard on Xavier? Objectively, what was
wrong with the creator of Nost using it himself?
He has an unfair advantage for one, and for another, he can secretly look up profile information. The part of her that was still bubbling over with indignation wouldn’t be easily appeased.
That was reprehensible, yes, there wasn’t a way around that.
Yet, another part of her argued that he wouldn’t have stalked her if he hadn’t cared. Why else would he come find me? Warn me about Jimmy?
Emma stared at the blinking cursor on her computer screen and bit her lip. Was she angry? Sad? Yes, but she wasn’t willing to let it all go. Not yet. She’d told Xavier they were done, but in her heart, she knew that wasn’t true. And, as much as she hated it, she wasn’t done thinking about Xavier.
As if she could conjure him up with just her thoughts, her phone rang. Xavier’s number popped up. Surprised, she sent it to voice mail. Then, seconds later, a local number she didn’t recognize called. Who was that?
“Hello?”
“It’s me. Xavier.”
Surprised, she was almost speechless. “You have two phones?”
“The first number... it belongs to a burner phone.”
The words hit Emma like a fist. He hadn’t trusted her enough to even give her his real number!
“Unbelievable,” she murmured.
“Emma... I just want to talk to you. Can we talk? Can I try to explain?”
The sound of his voice still sent reverberations through her stomach. Despite all her best intentions to remain distant and cold, the sound of his voice melted away most of her anger. As she struggled with her feelings, he took that as his opening.
“I’m sorry,” he continued, his deep baritone like honey in her ears. Why did even his voice have this effect on her? Why couldn’t she just shut off her feelings for him? “I just wanted you to know that. I’m sorry.” That was a start, she thought. “I should’ve told you, but God. This is impossible on the phone. Can I see you?”
Emma glanced down at her flannel PJs. “Uh, no. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
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