From Secret Desire for My Stepbrother to Reality novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: The Hush Test

I sat down on the stool behind the counter because my legs told me to.

Forty-one thousand.

Forty-one thousand people who had typed a name in the dark and been told, by silence, no.

"Close it," I said.

Kath looked at me.

"Close the laptop, Kath. Right now. Before you're in this any deeper."

"I'm already in it."

"You pulled that off a console you're not supposed to query. If you show it to anyone, he'll call it theft, and he'll be right, and you'll go to prison instead of him."

Kath's mouth went tight.

She closed the laptop.

Jem had put a kettle on the hot plate in the back without being asked.

He came out with three mugs and set them down without a word.

"So how do you prove it?" he said.

"You don't hack anything," I said. "You use it. The way it says to."

I pulled a sales pad off the counter and turned it over.

I drew two stick figures.

"Two people who already know they want each other. Married, engaged, whatever. They pay the fourteen ninety-nine, like any user. They list each other on camera."

"And the app says mutual," Kath said slowly.

"In under a second. I wrote that loop. It's a lookup. It can't take longer than a second."

"Unless it's being held."

"Unless it's being held."

Jem looked at the stick figures.

"That's not illegal," he said.

"It's the most legal thing in the world. It's a product review."

Kath started laughing, the tired kind that turns into hiccups.

"Who's the first couple?" she asked. "Because nobody's going to want to go on camera with their secret crush right after what happened to you."

None of us had an answer.

Kath went to work at seven, still in the taped-over hoodie, to sit at her desk like nothing had happened.

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