It was my fault. I knew he was nosey. I knew he was nosey because I was nosey. But damn it! Those papers had been in there safely for years.

Ivan ignored my question, crushing the sheets in his hand so tightly, they formed partial balls. “Who… who…?” he stuttered, another sign of how furious he was. Ivan never stuttered. Never faltered. And even his neck was going red.

He gave the papers another shake. “Who did this?”

I swallowed.

“Who sent this shit to you?”

“Ivan—”

He shook his head, the hand holding the papers dropping until his fist bumped against his thigh, his head cocked to the side in anger. In so much anger, I could almost taste it. “Don’t ‘Ivan’ me. Where did these come from?”

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

I didn’t even think I could try and play stupid and act like the notes I’d had hidden in my drawer were a joke—because my mom wouldn’t look through my things, we were past that stage in my life. I knew Ivan too well. I knew he wouldn’t drop this crap until I explained every detail.

And I couldn’t say that I blamed him.

If I’d found pictures of naked men with his face taped to the bodies, with hearts glued to them, with arrows pointed at his genitals, connected to words like YUM and YES, I might laugh for a minute… and then worry like hell.

God, god, god, goddammit.

“Jasmine.” He started to get revved up all over again, the red on his face and neck climbing to the tips of his ears. Good lord, I’d never seen him so pissed. I didn’t even think he was capable of being so mad unless he was on the ice and something had gone wrong during a competition.

I held back my sigh, seriously regretting that I’d taken my hiding places for granted and hadn’t shoved them into my underwear drawer… or somewhere else that was harder to find. I’d throw them away, but I wasn’t an idiot, if anything ever happened, I needed proof.

Waving my hands, palms down, I tried to tell him in my softest voice, which probably wasn’t as soft as it needed to be, “Calm down.”

Yeah, that was the worst thing to do. He shook the fucking papers again. “Don’t tell me to calm down!”

Oh fuck me.

“You have a fucking stalker, Jasmine!” he yelled again, making me thankful that my mom and Ben were gone.

I winced, trying to think of what to say and coming up with, “He hasn’t threatened me….”

Ivan tipped his head back and made a noise I wasn’t really sure what it was called. A growl? “What the fuck?”

I finally snapped. “Don’t fucking yell at me!”

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.