Page 34 of From the Embers
And that was when time stopped all over again.
With the battery charged, the phone had turned on and notifications from a local Atlanta number glowed on the screen. There was no name or a photo programmed in for the contact, but based on the text, Rob was more than familiar with the sender.
I can’t stop thinking about how deep you got last night.
What.
The.
Fuck.
I sank back down into the driver’s seat, leaving the door open. There was no way. No fucking way. Rob and I had been tighter than tight. He’d told me everything. If he had been stepping out on Bree, I would have known about it. At a bare minimum, I would have known he was unhappy.
I scrolled to the next notification.
Same phone number, different jaw-dropping message.
Your lips. Your neck. Your cock. I can’t wait much longer to taste them all again.
With my heart in my throat, I glanced up at the door that led to the house. The pizza should have been there soon, and if I was going to figure out what the hell was on the phone before Bree came out there looking for me, I needed to be quick.
With my jaw clenched, I scrolled to the next message. Hell, maybe it wasn’t even Rob’s phone.
Mr. Winters, promise me you’ll make time in your busy schedule to fuck me today.
Shit. There went that theory.
“What the fuck were you doing?” I seethed at my dead best friend. When I ran out of notifications, I typed in what I hoped was the code to unlock his phone.
The little box on the screen shook my rejection.
In rapid succession, I tried Bree’s birthday, the code to their alarm system, and the kids’ birthdays, and just before getting locked out for sixty seconds, I attempted a combination of all three.
All fucking wrong.
Right. Of course. When having an affair, it was probably best if you didn’t use a code your wife would guess. Not that I would fucking know anything about that. The password on my phone was 1-1-1-1.
I drew in a deep breath, but it did nothing to slow the thundering in my ears. There had to be an explanation. My mind spun in a million different directions. The who, what, when, where, and motherfucking why all remained unanswered. Luna had locked me out of my phone enough times to know that if I got my next guess wrong, I’d have to wait five minutes for it to open again. Then fifteen, an hour, and eventually it would disable it altogether.
Unfortunately, Gino’s Pizza wasn’t that fucking slow. Max, I had two guesses left before Bree came looking for me. And then what?
Did I tell her about the notifications? Could I even get back to them without the passcode? Those texts would have crushed her. Bree was barely surviving the weekend as it was. Did I really want to dump this steaming pile of bullshit at her feet without knowing all the facts?
Had he still been alive, I would have gone straight to Rob. Demanded answers. Best friends or not, the way he lived his life was none of my business. But come on? Cheating on his wife? The mother of his children? Fuck that.
Especially now that said wife was my…well, whatever Bree and I were. An employer of sorts? A friend? Oh, who the hell was I kidding? Bree was family. And this was not shit you kept from your family.
Swallowing hard, I racked my brain. Four dots showed on the screen. I needed a four-digit number Bree wouldn’t guess but Rob could never forget.
My knee bounced at a marathon pace and my fingers hovered over the screen, restlessly waiting for the countdown to run out, all the while terrified of one wrong stroke.
Maybe I didn’t need to know.
Maybe it would be best if I dropped it in the nearest trash can.
Maybe Rob’s secrets should have gone to the grave with him.
She didn’t need to know.
She didn’t—
“Pizza’s here,” Asher said, appearing mere inches away like a damn ninja in the night.
I bumbled, dropping the phone into my lap. “Jesus, Ash.”
He smiled big and toothy, his dark hair sweeping across his forehead. “Ha! Did I scare you?”
“Um, yeah.”
Missing nothing—such was the job of a six-year-old—he glanced down. “Did you get a new phone?”
“No,” I clipped entirely too roughly. Grabbing the digital equivalent of his father’s little black book, I stood up and shoved it into my back pocket.
Asher backed out of my way—nevertheless persistent. “Whose phone is it?”
“Uhh…” I stalled, picking up the small pile of things I’d found in the glovebox and the bucket of cleaning supplies. Great. Now I had to lie too. Rob, you fucking asshole. “It’s just an old one I use to listen to music. Come on. Let’s go eat.” Not having one single fuck left to give about that damn car, I used my heel to kick the door shut.
