Hack X Love

Episode-2

I went back to the door a few minutes later, still with a haze of red before my eyes. I'd told her to wait and was still furious, but I needed to know why. The door was flung open, and the few minutes I'd left her waiting hadn't lessened my anger in any way. I was still growling at her, eyes like chips of dark ice, jaw a hard line. The only soft-looking parts of me were my hair and my lips. I'd dressed myself and pushed back the thick black hair that had mouth-wateringly been sleep-tousled before. When I twitched my head towards the interior of my apartment in invitation, though, she stood her ground. "I'm not coming in if you're going to be belligerent. We can do this right here."

"If I'm belligerent, I have damn good reason to be."

"Fine, then. All the better that I stay out here."

"Listen, Lila, if you're—"

"I'm not Lila. Lila is in trouble, and I need your help." The words tumble out of her.

I stood there looking her up and down, a black, searing stare that flushed the heat into her cheeks. At least it had silenced her. For about five seconds. Before she could collect herself to tell me the entire strange tale, I had taken two steps closer to her.

"What sort of s**t do you think you're trying to pull on me now?"

"I'm not doing anything—" She retreated to fill the space I'd taken.

"Sure you are. You're a good player." She retreated again until finally I was standing over her, shoving her against the wall in front of my door. In so close a position that I could taste the mint on her breath, feel the cold of it. A tremor ran down her spine. It took all the words from her mouth. "Was I the i***t fool who trusted them, though? Tossed my goddamn life away on you. Left it all in your pretty hands. And what do you do? You screwed me."

I thrust the hard angles of my body into the soft curves of hers, and then took her mouth in a seared rush of mint and fire. Hard, dominant, tiring, until the wall behind her was the only support she could find to keep her upright, my tongue poking and tasting and taking. Her knees weakened. Her world whirled dizzily. My fingers sank deep into the flesh of her biceps to hold her back, to keep her pinned, as I despoiled her senses and shattered them one by one. I kissed out of her head every idea.

Weakened, she slipped her arms around my neck, willing to let me in, willing to be Lila for me and let me take my revenge on her in whatever degraded manner I wanted—

But I stepped back and left her half against the wall, shaken and bruised, her knees slamming into each other. Something hot and threatening flickered in my eyes, but before I'd even seen it, it was gone. My face smoothed out, and then those eyes went frozen cold, hard, empty. Not even my rage was there anymore. A bitter laugh ripped from me.

"Ever since, I wondered if it was worth it," I said. "I kind of held on to the fantasy that it would've been—I let it comfort me when I was lying awake in my bunk at night." I shook my head and turned away. "What an ass slap to have thrown everything away for that."

She somehow pushed aside her funk, tore through the pain, and chased after me a few steps. "But I'm not—"

She was able to prevent my door from being slammed in her face. I never discovered what she did next, and I didn't care. I had no notion that she was alive. And then suddenly one day, poof, she was no longer in class, and the gossipmongers' enthusiastic whispers had been passed on. I had never been so humiliated or embarrassed in my life to go about learning what had happened. Lila had happened. She'd approached me and asked me to hack into the system and change her grade. I'd done it, and in fact, my violation had been so neat, that I would never have been caught. Not until Lila rolled on me.

I didn't know why. She hadn't wanted to know—I'd been so f*****g angry with her that I hadn't spoken to her in almost a year since then. I suppose it was because she knew I liked him, and she wasn't above bartering my boyfriends around to f**k, literally or metaphorically. Even in advance. And someone who would do that, something so cruel and heartless, so unnecessary, wasn't someone I wanted her around.

But our mothers had pleaded and nagged and schemed until the two of us gradually started speaking once more and gradually fell into an imitation of sisterhood.

Now this.

Why? Bile clogged my throat.

I wished to return home and leave my sister to her fate—perhaps she even deserved it. She was a life-destroyer.

But I wouldn't. Something within me knew that whatever Lotus Oden had become, he might be the only one who would be able to help her. She needed him to comprehend. Frustration crawled in my gut. I was never the most talkative person on a good day, but this fellow made me into a quivering pile of mush. Maybe the only way I'd ever be able to make him comprehend was to write it down.

Digging into her handbag, I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. Holding the paper against the wall, I scribbled.

Nati Grant.

I let out a breath, slipped the paper underneath his door.

I didn't bother to include a way for him to get in touch with me.

l would be found.