Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 29728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 149(@200wpm)___ 119(@250wpm)___ 99(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 149(@200wpm)___ 119(@250wpm)___ 99(@300wpm)
I grabbed my laptop from the desk and brought it over to the bed, figuring I might as well take care of the problem right away. I typed in the address for my school’s website and waited for it to load. After a few minutes of churning, the page displayed a connection error. The wi-fi was acting up, just like Logan said it probably would. I considered leaving the task for another day, but I was worried about the required classes for my major filling up. Cell service in the area was spotty at best without the internet, so I couldn’t use my phone as a hotspot. There was probably free wi-fi at the library in town.
Then I remembered that Logan’s office computer was hard-wired to the internet. Surely, he wouldn’t mind me using it for something school related.
I padded to his office on the other side of the house in my socks. He’d arranged his desk so that he could look out the window while he worked. I slid into his chair, relieved to find his computer on and still logged in. As I minimized the spreadsheet he’d left open, I saw that the desktop background was an old photo of me, Logan, and Graham.
My chest ached as I studied the faces on the screen. Logan had come to visit us in Eureka over Christmas, just a few months before Graham was sent away. I remembered all the shops and restaurants decorated with white lights and wreaths. We went out for dinner at the Oberon Grill in Old Town, and Graham asked the server if she could take our picture. The three of us squeezed together on one side of the booth with me in the middle and all of us wearing broad grins.
We were happy then.
The desire to be nestled between the two most important men in my life made my throat clench. But it wasn’t going to happen; Graham had made sure of that. I forced myself to click the browser app, covering up the family photo. Logan already had over a dozen saved tabs open. I opened a new one and successfully logged into the school’s website. The course database was laggy and confusing, so I opted to download the course catalog instead. Unlike my laptop, the option to go directly to the Downloads folder didn’t pop up, so I had to go hunting for it.
Opening the file explorer, I scanned the list of recently used files and folders, my gaze catching on a folder labeled “Palo Alto Footage.” Logan often took pictures and videos of the important moments throughout our lives. I recalled him making one last recording of the empty apartment in Palo Alto right before we moved here. A wave of nostalgia pushed me to click on the folder.
I expected to see files labeled after holidays and vacations. Instead, I found more folders organized by month. I clicked on “March” and was surprised to see what looked like hundreds of files with names like “Living room” and “Kitchen” followed by the date. I clicked on one randomly and gasped when an image of me slicing a bell pepper at the kitchen island appeared on the screen.
That was…weird. I knew that Logan had security cameras pointed at the entrances, but this camera was angled to record the interior from somewhere slightly above eye level. I closed the video player and opened another file, and then another, and another. Before I knew it, I’d watched snippets of over a dozen videos, all taken from various places in the apartment. I was in every single one of them, doing random, mundane things.
Backtracking through previous folders, I realized these recent videos were just the tip of the iceberg. The recordings appeared to go back years, as if he’d been secretly filming me ever since I moved in with him.
“Why would you have these?” I whispered, incredulous. My hand trembled around the mouse.
Closing out of a video of me reading on the couch, I clicked into a subfolder labeled with what appeared to be a bunch of random letters and opened the first file.
My breath caught in my chest.
“What the actual fuck?”
The image of me in my old bedroom filled the screen. I stood facing away from the camera, at the foot of my bed, dressed in my underwear and bra. Confusion and disbelief swirled in my belly as I watched myself reach back to unclasp my bra.
Had Logan actually sat at his computer and watched me take off my clothes? He must have. I mean, why else would he record, let alone keep, this footage?
I didn’t think it could get more invasive, but I was wrong.
There were videos of me showering and masturbating at the old apartment and here in this house—all in HD with clear sound. My moans filtered through his high-quality speakers as the oblivious past version of me rubbed her clit and rode her fingers. I’d never taken photos or videos of myself like this. To watch my own face contorting with pleasure as I reached orgasm was so bizarre it almost didn’t seem real.