"For that old woman!"
"If you love her so much, what are you even doing with me?!"
She whipped around to leave.
Only then did Otis move. He caught her wrist, pulled her onto his lap, and laughed—a low, lazy sound.
"Why would I have feelings for her?"
He leaned back, perfectly at ease.
"Debbie hasn't actually done anything. Those men she's been seeing? They're just props. Tools to get a rise out of me."
"I know her better than she knows herself. She has lines she won't cross."
"The day she actually does something like that, she stops being Debbie."
Laughter rippled through the private room.
Jemima still wasn't convinced.
"Just because you say so doesn't make it true."
"Do you have surveillance or something? How would you even know?!"
Her voice pitched into a petulant whine, and Otis chuckled, amused. He set his phone on the table.
"See for yourself."
On his phone—
Every single chat log. Ten men. Every message I'd ever exchanged with them. And the videos—every date, captured frame by frame, stored in a folder on his device. Not a second missing.
Otis's voice was flat. Almost bored. But the chill of it seeped into my bones.
"Women."