If looks could kill, I would have been dead, for real. “I’m going to yell at you when you’ve been getting things like this! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Oh. My. God. I wasn’t in the mood for this shit. Not ever and definitely not then. “I haven’t told you because it’s none of your business!”
“You’re my business! So this is my business!”
“No, it’s not!”
“Yes, it is!”
“No, it isn’t! This has been happening since before we paired up.”
And, I’d fucked up. I’d fucked up like I always did while speaking before thinking. For letting my mouth run away from me as far as it could.
Ivan’s face literally went tomato red. So red, I was genuinely worried for his health. “I’m going to kill you,” his voice dropped instantly. He stared at me, bug eyed. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
I couldn’t even make a joke about it. “Just fucking stop, all right? I’m not in the mood.”
Ivan shook his head and raised his fist, dropping the papers onto my perfectly made bed. “I don’t give a single fuck right now that you’re not in the mood, Jasmine,” he stated, and before I could argue some more, he said in a tone I’d never heard from him, “How long has this been happening?”
I rolled my eyes and shrugged, so angry with myself for being so dumb. I knew better. I knew better. I should have planned for the worst, especially with this unrelenting, stubborn asshole. “Three years,” I mumbled, so mad I could barely talk over the ache in my throat.
He closed those blue eyes and opened his mouth, shaking his head in the process. “Three years,” he repeated the words roughly. “How many of these have you gotten?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
One ice blue eye opened and aimed itself right at me. “Too bad. How many of these have you gotten?”
I groaned, grunted, and tipped my own head back once more in frustration. There was no escaping it. Was there? Shit. “I don’t know—” he started to cut me off, but I didn’t let him. “No, seriously. I don’t know. When I first started getting them, I threw the first few in the trash. My best guess is… twenty? Maybe?” More like thirty, but I sure as fuck wasn’t going to admit that.
He was breathing so hard I almost didn’t want to look at him, but I wasn’t a little bitch. Especially not in this situation. “Does your family know?” he asked in a creepy, calm voice.
Could I have lied? No. This fucker knew my tells too well. “About a few of the ones in the past,” I gritted out.
“What does that mean?” he demanded, still watching me with that one eye.
“They stopped coming in when I deleted my social media pages,” I explained, wishing I didn’t and wasn’t. “They know about a few of the ones I got before that.”
The other blue eye snapped open, and Ivan stared at me. “Are you still getting them?”
I moved my gaze away from him as I shrugged, so damn mad. “I don’t know. I don’t open my mail anymore.”
I didn’t. I didn’t want to get distracted. I didn’t want to overthink my situation.
So, I had decided to play the ignorant game. But I didn’t admit that to him.
I also wasn’t going to bring up the comments and private messages I had gotten.
The thought had barely occurred to me when Ivan’s jaw went tight and he asked, “What about your Picturegram and Facebook? Have you gotten anything on there?”
Fuck me.
My face must have said everything because he dropped his head back and rolled it from side to side, breathing loudly the whole time.
“It’s not—”
“Where’s your phone?”
I blinked. “Why?”
“I want to see what you’ve been sent.”
“It’s none of your—”
It was his turn to blink at me after tilting his head forward. “Don’t finish that sentence,” he told me, slowly. “Let me see your phone. If there’s nothing bad, it shouldn’t be a big deal.”
I hated it when he made a good point.
“Let me see it,” Ivan repeated, using a tone of voice I hadn’t heard from him before.
Damn it. There was no question he wasn’t about to let this shit go. Ugh. “It’s on the other nightstand,” I muttered, pissed off at myself. “Let me see your phone then too.” I don’t know why the hell that sentence came out of my mouth, but it had.
He slid me another killing look before standing up, tossing his phone at me, and then crawling over my bed. “I already unlocked it,” he let me know, angrily.
I shot him the same facial expression back, even though he couldn’t see it. “My password is—”
“I know your password. I’ve seen you put it in,” he muttered as his hand snatched my phone from the other nightstand.
“Fucking stalker.”
He gave me another “I’m going to kill you” face but kept his mouth shut as he sat on the edge of my bed once more and started poking around on the screen.
Even though I was holding his phone in my hands, I watched him instead. Lines appeared on his forehead twice, his left hand went to the back of his head and stayed there. Then he started breathing hard.
Shit.
“What the hell is this shit?” he spat, looking down.
“Dick pics, messages from assholes….”
“This guy is jerking off.”
“I didn’t watch the fucking video, Ivan. Are you done now?” I hissed at him.
He stared at me for a moment then said, “Yes, I’m done.” That pink mouth opened and then closed again. Ivan sputtered. Sputtered. His face went even redder, and then he said, “Get your shit together. You aren’t staying here tonight.”
It was my turn to sputter. “What?”
“You’re not staying here tonight. You pack or I pack for you. Decide now.”
“The hell you will, and the hell I’m going with you. I’m staying here,” I told him.
He blinked. He blinked so steadily, it was kind of scary from how psychotic the movement was. I was pretty sure it reminded me of Hannibal in Silence of the Lambs when he’d had that face mask on that had given Ruby nightmares for months. Sebastian had bought me a similar one for Halloween one year after I’d begged.
“You’re not staying here by yourself,” Ivan claimed, snapping me out of my memory. “You either come with me or you’re going to one of your brothers’ houses. You choose. You were already going to spend the day at my place anyway.”
“You’re not the boss of me. You don’t get to—”
The asshole cut me off. “You come with me or I’m calling your brothers right now and telling them why you aren’t staying here until your mom comes back.”
That time, my mouth really did fall open. Until my mom got back? That was two weeks from then. And I told Ivan exactly that.
What did he do? He shrugged, tightness all over his shoulders and arms through the T-shirt he had on. “Choose, baby. Me or your brothers.”
What in the hell? “No!”
“Yes!” he shouted back.
What the hell was happening? “No!”
He watched me, eerily still, barely breathing if he even was, before shrugging. “Fine.”
And then he held up my phone. By the time I realized what he was doing, it was too late for me to snatch it back. I still rushed toward him anyway.
“Ivan!” I yelled, getting up to my tippy-toes as he stood and held it straight over his head, so tall I wasn’t even close to reaching.
“You got three seconds, you hardheaded ass. Three seconds or I’m calling them, and if you kick me in the balls, I’ll call all of them.”
He would. He definitely would.
Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Fuck.
Gritting my teeth, I held back the yell I really wanted to give him and spat, “Fine. Fine.” Dickhead. Ugh.
“What’s it going to be?” he snapped, sounding maybe even angrier than me, if I thought about it.
But I didn’t.
I held back the middle finger I wanted to give him and groaned, “You, ass. I’ll stay with you.” There was no way I’d stay with either of my brothers if I could help it. And just like that, I got mad all over again. “This is bullshit.”