The Roommate, Kiersten Modglin [best books for 20 year olds .txt] 📗

be more than happy to. I don’t want her to go to Italy. I told you the same thing last night. More than that, I don't want to fight with you, babe. I am changing, and last night was great. It felt like we were getting back to our old selves. Please don’t let this ruin that."

"That's just it, Wes. That’s what I’ve been telling you, and you just don’t seem to get it. I don't want to get back to our old selves. Our old selves haven't worked for me for a long time. You know that."

I crossed over into the next lane, and someone behind me laid on their horn. I looked into the rearview mirror, spotting the black, jacked-up truck and its oversized, angry driver. "That's not what I meant. A better version of our old selves, you know? The people we were when things were good."

"I'm just not sure there's any part of them left. Last night was wishful thinking. I wanted to believe we could fix this, Wes, but we can't. This…this whole situation is a startling reminder of that."

"I don't understand why this is such a big deal. I'm telling you I didn't send the message. I'll deal with Rory. I'll deal with everything. What else do you want me to do, Addy?"

"I want you to stop lying to me!" she cried. "I've spent so long being lied to by you about your late nights and broken promises. There's always an excuse with you. You were stuck in traffic, you had a last minute change of venue, your client had a meltdown, your boss had a meltdown. Always, always an excuse, and…what is it this time? You expect me to believe your phone got hacked?"

Hacked…

Her words reminded me of the situation at work. Was it possible this was somehow related? "Actually, I’m not being facetious, but we just had a hack at work. I access my work email on my phone. It's possible I was hacked. Shit. I didn't even think of that." My breathing quickened. “I’ll have to check and see—”

She scoffed, interrupting me. "Are you serious right now? Do you truly expect me to believe that you were hacked and someone sent a text message through your phone just to screw with us?"

"I'm being serious. It's true. I’m not lying to you right now. We really were hacked. I don’t know that it’s related, but I don’t know that it wasn’t—"

“How would anyone else even know about Italy? Did you tell anyone?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, then how would they know?”

“I agree, it doesn’t make sense. That’s why I think it had to be Rory.”

She groaned. "Ugh, Wes, I can't deal with this right now. I've got to get to work."

"No, wait, Addy, please!" But it was no use. The line was dead and she was gone, and just like that, every bit of happiness I'd had the night before was gone with her.

When I arrived at the office, I checked my phone straight away, anxious to make sure I hadn’t somehow texted her in my sleep, but just as I’d suspected, there was nothing to confirm any of what Addy had said.

Rory had to have crafted the text message herself somehow, but I wanted to check everything out to be sure.

Instead of going to my office, I headed to the back, past the break room and knocked on Oliver’s door.

“Come in,” he said, and I pushed the door open. “Hey, Wes, what’s up?”

“Hey, I wanted to check with you about something.”

“Sure,” Oliver said, turning away from his computer. He folded his hands in front of him, watching me carefully.

“After the hack, Stewart said we should change our passwords on our phones too, just in case they’d gained access to something there through our email or the client portal. So, I did. I changed everything, even Facebook and Instagram, just to be on the safe side.”

“Sure, sure…”

“But this morning my wife said I’d texted my daughter something that I know I didn’t.”

“Okay…” he said, looking up toward his eyebrows in thought.

“So, I guess what I’m asking is, could they have somehow gained access to my text messages?”

“Well, I guess it’s possible,” he said, drawing out the word. “But all signs point to no. We haven’t found any proof that the hacker gained access to anything. Phones aren’t easy to access, especially, what is it you have there, an iPhone…” He clicked his tongue. “Yeah, that would be a doozy. I’ll tell you what, though, if it’ll make you feel better, I can run a few scans on it, do a few tests, and make sure everything looks good.”

“Could you?” I asked. “That would be amazing.”

“Yeah, sure thing. Do you want to leave it with me for an hour or two? I can bring it to you when I’m done.” He held out his hand, and I laid the phone in it.

“Thanks so much, Oliver. I owe you.”

“Consider us even after the other day, man, okay? It’s not a problem at all.”

I patted the desk and departed his office, heading back to my own.

Like he’d promised, a few hours later, Oliver returned with my phone. He waved it in the air. “Good news, bad news.”

“Okay.” I braced myself for the worst.

“Good news, I ran three different antivirus systems through your phone and didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. So, it’s clean. You’re good there. Bad news is that it still doesn’t explain your text message dilemma. Now, I’ve heard of this happening before, it’s rare, but not rare enough, where people have had their phones cloned.”

“Cloned?”

“Hackers basically make a copy of the phone, and they can control it remotely. Like I said, it’s way less common than a virus, but it would explain a text message being sent from your line if you’re sure you didn’t do it.”

“Okay,” I said, trying not to panic. “So, what does that mean? What do I do?”

“Well, you’ve already done some of what I’d