The Heart Wants Ch. 10-13

I nodded, looking for understanding, "Okay."

"I naturally lean towards women, I mean, way towards women." She turned, her head panning across the restaurant, "Even now, sitting here, holding your hand, the only man I think is even remotely cute, is you. There's like three girls though that I think are hot. Part of it, I'm sure, is that. I just find it harder to find a man attractive. I think most of it though was the one-night thing. I just don't seem wired that way. I think I'd have a problem being with someone just for quick sex."

Fae came back with our food, noticing us holding hands across the table. I watched her eyes flick to Laurel quickly, then over to me. She seemed flustered. "Food! Uh... can I get you two anything else?"

I shook my head, "I'm good. Laurel?"

Laurel smiled at Fae, her usual good humor reappearing. "I'm good."

Fae seemed to be in a hurry to get away from the table, "Well, okay... let me know if you need anything."

She fled.

I smiled at Laurel. "Well, looks like we got no help looking for how you deal with things with Rachel."

She smiled at me, "Well, you could start liking guys, and then I wouldn't have to be jealous."

Picking up my toast and taking a bite, I smiled at her, "Not really an option. We'll just have to figure it out ourselves."

She grimaced, "Sorry."

I shook my head, "Don't sweat it. We'll figure it out."

We sat in silence for a few seconds, eating. I watched her eat her food, just enjoying watching her enjoy something. As the meal progressed, however, I could see her starting to chew on her lip the way she always started to do when she got nervous...

"What's wrong?" I asked her, startling her.

She smiled at me, pushing her hair back behind her ears. "Nothing. It's stupid."

Frowning, I asked, "What? Seriously."

She rolled her eyes, "No. It seriously is stupid, and I'm already being crazy, clingy chic. I don't need to keep piling on the bullshit."

I narrowed my eyes at her, "Just tell me."

Sighing, "I don't want to tell you because I don't want it to hurt your feelings. And it's stupid..."

I smiled at her, "I'll tell you what. You tell me, and I'll work really, really hard not to let it hurt my feelings. Okay?"

She pushed a chunk of omelet around on her plate, nibbling on her lip. "I just, I was just," she shook her head, "I was going to ask if we could keep last night between us, I mean just for a while."

I felt a surge of something at her just asking me... she was right. It did hurt my feelings if even just a bit. I actually needed to take a moment and readjust my thinking...

"See? It does hurt your feelings."

I smiled at her, happy to feel it wasn't forced, "No. Just knee-jerk reaction. Why do you want to keep it quiet?"

She smiled, biting at her lip, "I was just thinking about... the whole jealousy thing. And I just... If I told Rachel she'd be so stoked and she'd push the whole threesome thing, and that would..." she shook her head, "I'm not explaining it right."

"I can be patient. It's not a simple thing. Take your time."

She looked at me, something like panic in her eyes, "See... that's the thing though. It's complicated and I'm sitting here just thinking that if I keep talking I'm just going to put my foot in my mouth and start chewing, and then I'll just make things worse."

A thought occurred to me, "Wait, I think I get it. A threesome would mean seeing me with Rachel, and Rachel with me."

Her eyes got wide, and she took a second to think. "No... wow... it's not..." her face scrunched up as she was obviously thinking about it. "Oh. Okay, definitely not that."

I totally didn't understand what the hell she was talking about...

"That is so hot."

My eyebrows shot up, "What?"

She smiled at me... "The thought of you and her together... wow... request withdrawn."

I held a finger up at her, "We're going to circle back around to that..." I couldn't help the mental image that formed in my mind... me with Rachel and Laurel at the same time... "Why did you ask in the first place?"

She put a bite of food into her mouth, "Doesn't matter. I withdrew my request."

I felt a warning tingle in the back of my mind, "Please, just answer the question, it's important to me."

She shrugged, "Why?"

I took a breath, "Because it was important to you in the first place. Plus, I have a healthy level of paranoia."

She raised an eyebrow, "Why?"

Smiling at her, I told her, "Because, in my experience, that can be a trap. A girl asks if you think someone is attractive and you answer honestly and she gets pissed."

Shaking her head, she told me, "I won't do that. I always want you to be honest with me, and I'm not going to tell you that something is okay when it's not. All doing that does is encourage you to not be honest with me."

I nodded my head, still feeling my gut sink...

Her look grew to one of concern, "Do you not believe me?"

I shook my head, forcing a tired smile onto my face, "I do... I guess... I've just been burned so many times on that..." I nodded my head firmly, "I'm sorry. That's not your fault and I'll try to be better."

She smiled, nodding.

Looking at her I told her, "So, I showed you mine, now you show me yours."

She set her fork down and pushed her hair back behind her ears while she thought. She licked her lips and I could tell she was nervous... "I guess... I guess I just liked being with you. Just me and you, and there was a part of me that just wanted to experience that a little bit more before I shared you..."

Reaching across the table, I took her hand again, "This is going to sound ingenuine, but I'm serious about it, that's all I need. I just want you. I'm okay with just being with you."

"I know. And we'll have plenty of that... I just... I thought of being with Rachel and you together, and it sounded so delicious..."

I nodded, feeling a bit nervous still. Something about the situation still bothered me... "Look... I don't know about the whole threesome thing... it just... it feels weird. Is that okay? At least for now?"

She squeezed my hand, nodding, "Yeah... we'll figure that out together."

Chapter 11

Laurel pulled into my driveway and pulled me in for a delicious kiss. My heart hurt looking at her, knowing that I wasn't going to be able to see her until tomorrow...

I tried to put a brave face on it and smile...

And then I decided that I didn't fucking care if she thought I was brave or not, "Do you want to come in and hang out for a while?"

She smiled her evil little smile, "Are you trying to get laid again?"

I shook my head, looking down, "No. I just wanted to keep hanging out with you."

She smiled at me and my heart soared, "I can't. I have to stream in like an hour... you know... work stuff."

I nodded, the fact that I knew she had to work taking some of the sting out of not being able to hang out with her. "Okay. I get it. I forgot you may have to work. It's cool. I'll see you tomorrow?"

She grabbed my hand, "No. Let me finish. I have to stream in an hour, but if you wanted, you could come over and hang out at my place while I stream, and then afterward we could hang out..." grabbing me she pulled me close, "you could stay the night..." she added, her voice taking on a playful tilt.

I kissed her again, watching as her eyes slid closed...

When we broke it up, she looked at me, "Well?"

I nodded eagerly, "Oh! Yeah. That was a hell yeah!"

She brushed her hands at me, "Go! Go! Go! Get what you need. I need to send out some Tweets and do my social media updates. I'll wait."

I practically ran from the car into the house, like I was scared I'd get back outside and found that she'd changed her mind and left me. I packed a bag full of clothes, night clothes and for tomorrow, my toiletries bag, my books for school tomorrow and grabbed my laptop. For a hot second, I considered grabbing my backup hard drive but figured that might be overkill. Instead, I checked to ensure my network cloud was working correctly and figured if I needed anything off my backup I could remote into it using the IP. With one quick last look, I dashed out the door and back to her car.

We drove down towards the harbor, the neighborhood growing more and more industrial as we proceeded. Eventually, we stopped in front of a big industrial style door in what appeared to be a warehouse. I looked at her, raising an eyebrow. She just smiled at me as she pressed a button on a little box that was clipped to her visor. The door rumbled up ponderously. It moves smoothly, I noted...

The car accelerated into the building, revealing what looked like a big empty warehouse. It wasn't the entirety of the ground floor, there was some sort of dividing wall in the building, but it was still so big that Laurel could drive into the building, do a smart little circle around a bright yellow Mustang convertible that was parked inside and face her car back towards the door. I looked around the warehouse, seeing a pretty empty room that was entirely too big, so big in fact, my entire house would fit inside nicely with room to still park the two cars...

I looked at her, "You know... if you plan on raping and murdering me, we could just skip the whole murder thing, you could have your way with me and I could just keep my mouth shut about it."

She grabbed me and put a quick peck on my cheek, "Stop being a worrywart."

I looked around, "So... you live in a big abandoned warehouse and I'm being a worrywart?"

She smacked me, "No. We don't live in an abandoned warehouse. We live in a loft above the warehouse."

We got out of the car and she pointed to a staircase in the back of the warehouse. It was nice, but still industrial in style, steel, angle iron, and hard metal cylinders. Faded, chipped yellow paint still clung stubbornly to it in places...

I grabbed my bags out of the back really quick and followed her as she walked to the stairs, motioning me to follow her.

I followed her, looking up the steep stairs, "Grocery day must be a bitch..." I mumbled.

She turned, smiling at me, "There's a cargo elevator that works. I just prefer to use the stairs."

I nodded, "Sure... sure... if I get tetanus I'm suing..."

She took the stairs two at a time, throwing over her shoulder, "Stop being a pussy."

When we got upstairs she stopped at a heavy, imposing looking metal door. It looked like something that you would find on a meat locker. Twice as wide as a typical door, with thick slabs of metal on it, heavy rivets lined the edges of the metal. Next, to the medieval looking door there was a little electronic keypad. Laurel turned to me with a smile and held her key up to the keypad and I noticed a little light change from red to green.

Grabbing a heavy looking handle, she pushed the door open, not as I expected, either in or out, but instead to the side, where it recessed into the wall. The apartment beyond was shuttered in darkness. "Come on it."

I followed her in, my trepidation growing with each step. I don't know what I was expecting out of her home, but it sure as hell wasn't this...

I stopped in the darkness, only able to see little shapes here and there... just simple silhouettes in the darkness. As she slid the door closed she punched a little screen on the wall, I'm not sure what she punched into it, but light suddenly started to pour into the room as I heard the noise of what sounded like heavy shutters opening above me. I looked up and was surprised to see enormous skylights in the ceiling being uncovered as shutters rolled back. Sunlight poured in through the windows as they opened, bathing the room in light.

As the room was lit up I felt my breath taken away. The apartment was everything that the warehouse below was not. Everything was sleek and beautiful...

We were standing in what looked like the kitchen. Everywhere I looked there was warm wood. A granite countertop. A beautiful, sleek modern fridge and appliances. The floors in the entirety of the apartment seemed to be some sort of heavy natural wood...

Looking off to my right I saw a little dining area, open to the kitchen area, a beautiful handmade table, made of a thick slab of wood and supported by massive beams of natural raw edge legs...

She pressed a few more buttons on the little tablet on the wall and shutters over the windows beyond the dining room table rolled up, revealing a wonderful view of the harbor beyond...

Looking beyond the kitchen, I saw a seating area, three couches arranged in a semi-circle sat around a wide heavy table that matched the style of the one in the dining area...

Everything screamed that no expense was spared in making this little home...

I turned back to Laurel in surprise, noting the opulence of everything I saw...

She smiled at me. Not a nervous smile. Not an arrogant one, but one that still conveyed the pride of her home, "Do you like it?"

I nodded, surprised at her... "I love it. There's such a juxtaposition of modern with traditional. Everything is so beautiful." I stomped on the floor, "Is this hardwood?"

She shook her head, "No. This building is like a hundred years old. The floors were all made of these stupid thick beams. When we bought the place, we spent weeks sanding them and smoothing them, and then weeks more getting them polished out." She pointed into the kitchen. "And then we picked out all the fixtures," she pointed into the dining room, "and the furniture, and we slowly built everything up."

I looked at her in surprise, "You two built this?"

She smiled, "Well not everything. We had contractors do a bunch of work, but we took this place from an old, broken down warehouse and slowly converted it into a home."

I went to her and put my hands on her shoulders, "I love it. I think it is beautiful."

She hugged me, "I'm glad you like it..." she broke away from our hug, staring into my eyes, "I have to get ready for my stream... can you entertain yourself for a few hours, while I work?"

I nodded at her, "Of course, little one." I raised my bag, "do you mind if I watch?"

She hit me lightly in the chest, "I would love if you watched!"

I followed her into a little sectioned off room deeper in the apartment, surprised to see a whole lot of very expensive computer equipment. The room was absolutely filled with it. Cameras, microphones, even a network station set up in the corner. I was drawn to that, like a moth to the flame. Everything there was state of the art...

Looking at her, I asked, "You put all of this together?"

She was in the process of booting her computer up, checking her equipment, and she looked at me shyly, "No. We had to pay someone. What do you think?"

I looked back over it, checking the connections, how things were set up. Hardware wasn't exactly my thing, I was more of a software guy, but the two went hand in hand in some respects...

"Not how I would have set it up, but that's probably just my anal-retentive nature..." I told her, giving her a smirk.

She smiled at me, looking up from where she was sitting down to her computer, "Look it over tonight and maybe give me some pointers?"

Nodding, I sensed that was a polite dismissal...

Walking to the door, I closed it quietly behind me. Nearly the second I closed the door I could hear her startup... full of life and energy... her voice rising and falling as she jumped into her stream intro.

Wandering the house, I made my way into a living room...

There was a big television, several gaming systems, a big comfy couch, heavy living room table, made in the same style as the other tables I had seen throughout the house. It was a strange room, hidden behind a big sliding steel door that kept it secluded from the kitchen, dining and seating areas I had seen before. Thinking about it, I realized that it was most likely the difference between the public face Rachel and Laurel showed visiting company and the private life that I was now aware that they lived...

This room was casual, intimate. Everything about the front end of the house screamed ultra-modern, suave, sexy. This room screamed comfort. This room was the type of room that screamed that you were at home...

I went out into the kitchen and grabbed my bags and moved them into the living room. Setting up my laptop I went over and looked for the passcode on the bottom of the router and logged onto the wifi, and headed over to Laurel's gaming stream. I watched for about thirty minutes, just enjoying the stream when a book on the table caught my attention.

Book may have been the wrong word for it, as it wasn't bound. Maybe a giant report? It was a really enormous report. Probably six hundred pages of tightly printed lines, covered by a thick, cardboard-like cover. Two metal bands held the entire thing together. I found myself picking it up, turning it in my hands. A part of me really wanted to pry... to open it and start reading...

I managed to resist the urge for all of about two minutes.

Opening the cover, I found what looked like an event log. Tightly packed computer code lined the pages. I let my fingers trace down the pages as I read the event log. About twenty pages in, I figured out what the book really was. It was a network log, detailing what looked like a really two-bit security breach...

"Welcome to fucking amateur hour folks..." I mumbled to myself, looking over the extremely buggy code. The more I read the less I could figure out who was the bigger dipshit in this scenario, the fucktard doing the hacking or whoever put together this joke of a computer security system.

I felt my head shake, "Who the fuck allows a system that allows a user unlimited guesses at their password?"

Stopping, I went back to the front cover, flipping it open to find a memo, addressed to someone at Zackman, Zackman, and Grace, Rachel's firm. It discussed at length how the hackers had accessed the network, stolen and then subsequently leaked a bevy of emails regarding what was being called an intentional cover-up of a new drug at a pharmaceutical company, PharmaCom. Reading through the memo I saw that the information contained in it regarding the hack was completely inaccurate...

The memo was extremely terse and to the point. Whoever wrote it did not seem happy with Rachel's firm...

I went back to reading over the discussion on how the systems were compromised. What was being described in the memo was a keylog attack. Software that was installed on a terminal that logged the user's keystrokes and then somehow transmitted it back to whoever wrote the code. This was a brute force attack. Someone patching in and guessing passwords over and over again. What was done her was a tiny bit more sophisticated than that, they obviously, from the speed with which the login attempts were made, had made some kind of bot to make their guesses into the system.

The whole thing really bugged me, so I picked up the phone and called Rachel...

She picked up on the third ring, sounding really, really tired, "Hey Link..." there was some commotion on the line and I heard her politely excuse herself, "sorry Link. Is everything okay?"

I nodded, though she couldn't see it over the phone, "Yeah. Uh... hey... I'm sorry to bother you, but uh... I was hanging out at your place and I kind of picked up this event log on the table."

Her voice, filled with a musical laugh came over the phone, smooth and sexy, though it sounded forced, "Just a little light reading, huh?"

I chuckled, thinking about it, "Yeah... uh... look, here's the deal, it probably doesn't mean anything, but the memo in the front of that thing is inaccurate," the ridiculousness of what I was saying finally took hold of me and I realized that she probably didn't care one ounce how the information was leaked. Shit, she was in PR, she was probably only onboard to help them deal with the information leak. At this point, nobody really gave a shit how or why the information was leaked...