The Girl Behind His Screen

I'd been ghostwriting somebody else's messages for six months. Every night, the man on the other end called me baby.

Tonight I found out he was the man I'd been splitting rent with for a year. He lived in the room next to mine. Worse: I was ghostwriting for the main character.

For fourteen thousand dollars. The chat threw up a warning. [Yandere male lead, and he's got a thing about it.

Get out before he finds you out!] I hung up so fast I nearly dropped the phone. Then I went out to splash water on my face, like that would fix anything.

Except the voice came through the bathroom door, wrecked and holding itself together. "Baby? Why'd you hang up?" Chapter 1 I froze where I stood.

I was turning back toward my room when he started again behind me. "Was I too much tonight? Did I scare you?" "Baby. Pick up." "You said you'd give me an hour.

We're not at an hour." My phone started buzzing from inside the blankets.

I didn't want Rhett Calloway hearing anybody outside that door, so I went back to my room on the sides of my feet. I dug the phone out of the covers. Incoming voice call.

While I sat there not answering, the chat came through. [Pick UP, girl.] [She's the one who asked him for the call in the first place.] [You can't drop it halfway and leave him hanging like that.] [Okay he WAS a lot tonight though.] [He's never like this.] [She probably went too hard on him today.] I thought back an hour.

I'd gotten out of the shower with nothing to do, so I sent my online boyfriend two messages. [Baby. Quick question.

What do you call the hottest guy in the room?] [Now what do you call the hottest guy on the planet?] The typing bubble came up on his end. Then it went away.

He was quiet for a long time. He'd obviously left the app to go look it up. What came back was a row of dots. […] I was in the middle of my skincare and didn't answer right away.

Somewhere in there, I heard Rhett go into the bathroom. Three minutes later my phone lit up over and over. [Baby.

You're serious?] [Isn't that fast?] [Voice call first?] [You said my voice was your favorite thing.] [Give me an hour tonight. Please?] So I got under the covers and picked up.

He knew what he was doing. That voice, low and unhurried, walking me through a whole ordinary evening like we lived it together. The kind of voice that gets people pregnant.

I curled into a knot under the blanket. And then I saw the chat. That's how I learned the possessive, unhinged man in my ear was the man I split rent with. I couldn't make it fit.

Because the Rhett Calloway I knew was cold and barely spoke. Standing at the far end of a room you'd never be invited into. One year of sharing an apartment.

We didn't clear three sentences a day. In real life I'm the goodgirl type. I finished college and went to work at Halloway Trust. Thin wire frames, quiet, forgettable.

That's not a costume either. That's what I actually am. The whole online romance was me ghostwriting for the branch manager's daughter. Her name is Ava Marchetti.

Her family has money. Six months ago she put fourteen thousand dollars in front of me. And paid me to go make a man fall for her.

Tonight I found out that man lived on the other side of my wall. Chapter 2 She works at the bank the way other people take a gap year. Her desk is next to mine.

Six months ago she hired me. "Mira. I need you to reel somebody in for me." I said no on the spot. "Why me? I'm terrible at this." Ava runs hot.

Every night after work she's out with her girls, and she has never once wanted to be home. "He's paranoid.

I sent two messages and he blocked me." "And I don't have the patience for this. I want things now." "Plus I've got something on every night.

When exactly am I supposed to court a man online?" "I'll set up a new account. You talk to him.

Once he's yours, you hand him over." "Obviously I'm not asking you to do it for free." "You're short on money right now, aren't you?

Seven thousand up front." "Another seven when it's done." I was, in fact, short on money. Ten thousand dollars short, and I knew the number by heart. So I said yes.

She set the account up under her own name and handed me the login. Her profile picture was a shot of her at a bar, taken from the side. Tight camisole.

Denim cut off past all reason. She's leaning back against the bar in a ball cap, chin down, watching her own drink without much interest. You can't see her face.

What you can see, exactly, is the feather tattooed across her shoulder blade. The handle she picked was onefeather. I logged into her account and added the man she wanted.

His handle was stillwater. Ava was specific: use her personality, not mine. Otherwise the day I handed him back, he'd notice. So I packed the good girl away.

I built somebody hot and reckless and put her on like a coat. It took three months before he agreed to be my boyfriend. Three months ago I tried to give the account back.

She said she was busy. Three more months. And in those three months, the man who'd started out untouchable turned clingy. Then possessive.

He found out I have a thing for voices, and one night, without being asked, he sent me a voice note. "Baby.

Do you like how I sound?" Low and a little rough, with something cold and clean running under it. I got under the blankets and hit call. It started out as a normal conversation.

Normal stopped being enough. I asked him to let me hear him breathe. He gave me everything I asked for. If the chat hadn't spoiled it, I would never have made the connection.

Not once. Rhett Calloway's voice is cold. It puts distance between you and him on purpose. The man in my ear was unhinged and would not let go.

I couldn't get the two of them into the same room in my head. Now his call was sitting there on my screen. I waited. Then I answered.

He let out a breath, and it wasn't steady. "Baby. Did you hang up by accident?" My ears went hot. Every one of these calls happened under my blankets.

I pitched my voice up too, all honey, nothing like me. The good girl going for broke. I pushed all of it out of my head, got back under the covers, and did the voice. "Mm.

It was an accident." "Baby, you took forever. I almost fell asleep.

Maybe I should just… go to bed?" The chat: [LOL she knows exactly what she's doing.] [He was so into it.] [You can't leave a man halfway through.] Chapter 3 He negotiated. "Baby.

Twenty more minutes and it's a full hour." I made a small sound that meant yes. Twenty minutes later I hung up right on schedule. And then I started to panic. The plan was simple.

Tomorrow I'd go to work and hand the account back to Ava. She'd take it from there and meet him in person. I'd collect the rest of my money and bury this for the rest of my life.

The plan assumed he was a man I would never encounter in the physical world. The man was on the other side of my wall. That changed the math. A year ago, my lease ran out.

I wanted something close to work, so I went looking for a room at the Kestrel, the nice building a block from Halloway Trust. I showed up with the listing printout in my hand.

The woman renting the room worked in an office nearby. I got off on the wrong floor and rang Rhett Calloway's bell instead. He'd just gotten out of the shower.

He opened the door in a robe with nothing in his face. "Who are you looking for?" Sixthree, built like the men in the ads. Water was still coming off his chest and running down.

I am a good girl and I had never in my life stood that close to anything like that.

My ears went red and I fell over my own sentence. "I— sorry, I'm here about a room, I think I'm on the wrong floor." He didn't say anything. He closed the door.

The woman with the room told me she'd already found someone. I spent days circling that building and turned up nothing. On my own I couldn't touch the rent there.

My old landlord gave me three days to get out. That afternoon I sat on a bench in the courtyard and thought about it the way you think about weather.

When do I get a place that's mine. Where nobody can put me out. Rhett came down with the trash.

He looked at me, hesitated, and said, "Still nothing?" "My landlord wants me out tomorrow. I'll keep looking." I made myself stand up and go do that.

He stopped me. "I've got a room sitting empty. If you don't mind it, I'll give it to you cheap." That's how I ended up renting from Rhett Calloway. Three bedrooms.

The whole place done in something spare and expensive that told you exactly who lived there. He had the primary. One room was an office. The last bedroom came with its own terrace.

I loved it. More to the point, the number he gave me was absurd. Six hundred a month. Understand that in Chicago, in that part of town.

The same layout in the same building lists at three thousand. A normal roommate share would have run me fourteen hundred. Six hundred was not a number. Six hundred was a favor.

I figured out fast that he was old money that didn't announce itself. That apartment was one address out of who knew how many. His clothes came from a small custom label.

Fifteen hundred a piece, floor. Even the body wash sitting in that shower ran three hundred dollars a bottle. Mine cost eight. I used his once. I couldn't help it.

I didn't take much. A little, just to know what it smelled like. That night I went to sleep and the smell followed me all the way down.

Clean and quiet and impossible to stop thinking about. Like falling asleep with his arms around me. If I stayed in that apartment, the ghostwriting was going to surface eventually.

So I'd need to start looking again. I couldn't live here. It took me a minute before I could get back out from under the covers. I opened my door to go to the bathroom.

Halfway open, I stopped. If he walked out of that bathroom right now, what was my face supposed to do? Chapter 4 He walked out of the bathroom.

Bare from the waist up, a towel knotted at his hips. He wore a robe in this apartment. Always. Apparently not tonight.

And up close, the stomach was exactly the stomach from the photo he'd sent. Only the version in front of me had a pulse in it. Maybe because of what he'd just been doing.

There were veins standing up along the muscle that had no business being that visible. The most indifferent woman alive would have had a reaction to that.

I stole one look at the rest of him. His ears were still red at the tips. His face was doing cold. His eyes hadn't caught up. His mouth was flushed dark, like he'd been biting it.

And all I could hear was that voice on the call, holding itself together and losing. My whole face went hot.

I looked somewhere else and said, evenly, "I need the bathroom." "Mm." One syllable, pitched very low, and rough around the edge of it. My face got worse. I started toward the door.

Passing him, my arm brushed his. Barely. It went through me like current. Something clean and cold came off his skin, expensive, the same as him.

We both turned our heads at the same time. There is something in that man's eyes that shouldn't be legal. Deep, and wet somewhere at the bottom.

Like a pool of standing water in a very beautiful place. Vines all around the edge of it, waiting to close on anything that hides in the dark and looks too long.

I lost about four seconds. I saw a line online once. Eye contact is a kiss with no mouth. I didn't get it at the time. I got it in that hallway.

One look and I couldn't breathe, and nothing had touched me. The tension coming off him could have powered the building. If he were my boyfriend I would— I could eat him alive.

The chat: [Could you though?] [Girl. Do you know yourself at all?] [Be fair, when I'm hungry I think I could eat a whole cow and then I'm full after four bites.] Okay. Fine.

I'm not sure either. I said, quietly, "Sorry.

That wasn't on purpose." His voice came lazy. "It's fine." The second the bathroom door shut, I put my back against it and waited for my pulse to come down.

The chat was screaming. [WILL YOU TWO STOP.] [You both like each other. Why is this so hard.] [Nope. He is not into her.] [He's highmaintenance and unhinged.

He's not going to want some good girl.] [A quiet, lowenergy girl like her? She could never keep up with him.] [He wants what Ava is.

Hot, reckless, all teeth.] [And tomorrow she hands the account back anyway.] [He's been dying to meet up in person for weeks.] [They'll take one look at each other, go straight to a hotel, and burn the place down.] [He's never dated anybody.

This is his first one.

He put everything he had into it.] [Run now, while she still hasn't been found out.] [Because when he learns she was wearing Ava's name and playing with him, he is not going to take it well.] [Run, girl.

Men like that are not yours to touch.] Chapter 5 Out of the corner of my eye I saw my slip sitting in the hamper. There were water spots on it.

Probably spray off the shower head while he was in there. But the picture it made was not innocent. It was very easy to read it the wrong way. I had nothing left to resist with.

I ran cold water over my face. Once I could think again, I made a decision. I came out of the bathroom and knocked on his door. "Rhett. Are you asleep?" He opened it.

Those long dark eyes came down on me. "No. What is it?" I kept it reasonable. "It's been exactly a year. I'm thinking I won't renew.

Is that all right?" Something moved across his face. "You're leaving? Going where?" I reached for the first thing available. "I'm seeing someone.

We're moving in together." He was quiet for a second. "Have you talked to him about it?" I didn't even blink. "Not yet. I'm going to." His mouth curved. "All right." The next day.

He went to work. I'd taken the morning off on purpose. I'd gotten rid of a lot last time I moved. So there wasn't much. Two large suitcases held everything I owned.

Once I'd packed, I cleaned my room and the living room until I was sweating through my shirt. There was still time, so I decided to shower before I went.

And use his body wash one more time. He'd been generous about it from the start. "Anything in this apartment, use it.

Don't go buy your own." I'd never been able to make myself do it. Now that I knew he was the man on the other end of that account. Even if it wasn't really me on my end.

Something had closed between us anyway. One more time couldn't hurt. Could it? I took a towel and went in. I put it in my palm, wet my fingers, worked it into lather.

That clean impossible smell came up around me. I listen to music in the shower. My phone chimed with a message. stillwater: [Baby. What are you doing?

Miss me?] onefeather: [In the shower. Yeah.] stillwater: [Baby. Let's meet up. In person.] I was handing the account back that afternoon. She was going to meet him anyway.

So saying yes on her behalf wasn't really out of line. onefeather: [Okay. Let me pick the time and place. I'll tell you when I've figured it out.] stillwater: [Okay.

I can't wait.] [Go finish your shower, baby. Don't get cold.] onefeather: [Mm. mua~] I put the music back on. Something in my chest sank a little.

I wished the man Ava wanted had been anybody else. Then I wouldn't have to move. I've moved a lot over the years. I'm afraid of moving. Nowhere permanent, nothing under my feet.

Always somebody who can decide you're leaving. So I keep throwing things out. That way, when the day comes, I'm not standing in a room full of things I can't carry.

The chat says he's a yandere. You genuinely cannot tell. What's it like, dating someone like that? Is it a rush? Being wanted like that. Would you finally feel safe?

The chat: [Is she INTO the yandere thing?] [Don't say I didn't warn you. You see one, you run.] [She's just curious.

Being wanted like that is not the gift you think it is.] I stared at that line, and something landed. That yes I'd just given him on Ava's behalf.

It was the first time in my life I'd said yes to something I wanted, in somebody else's name. Chapter 6 [Safe, sure.

Also airless.] [And she's spent years turning into someone who can throw anything away.] [With a man like that, once it starts, you don't get to end it.] [He wants the extreme version.

Love that never leaves.] [Preferably the kind that's attached to him twentyfour hours a day.] [So don't get ideas.] [He is not for you.] Whatever had been stirring in me died in the crib.

I finished my shower, took my suitcases, and checked into a hotel near the bank. From my own number I texted him. [Rhett, I've moved out.

Thank you for everything.] He answered instantly. [That fast?] Me: [Yeah. Don't want to keep my boyfriend waiting.] The typing bubble came up.

Then it went away, and what came back was one word. [Okay.] That afternoon I went in to work. I logged out of onefeather and gave the account back to Ava.

She sent the rest of the money without blinking. "Not bad, Mira. Turns out you know how to run a man down." "So where are you two?

Give me the state of things." "I need to know what I'm walking into." I kept it short. "Everything's been covered. He wants to meet in person. Set your own time." "Fine.

Let me pull the history down so I know what you two talk about. I'm not getting caught out in a hotel room." She logged in on her own phone and synced the recent messages.

She scrolled fast, and she was amused. "Huh. Would not have guessed you had it in you." "Okay, that's actually skill.

No wonder he folded." The further she scrolled, the more her smile stiffened on her face. "Mira. Your messages with him are a lot.

What if I told you I'm jealous?" I put it back to her. "Weren't you the one who told me to lose the good girl and go hot