Page 25 of More, Daddy (Bluebell Bruisers #3)

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

I leave early. I don’t bullshit an excuse. I simply tell Leah that I’m leaving, email Dean that there won’t be any training for his players or the lower-class men, then go.

I can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed being fucked with, but after my marriage shattered into a million Pris-made pieces, this really stings. And with that sting, some shitty memories are rolling right back.

I don’t like being lied to.

I don’t like being someone’s goddamn joke, either.

With my food reheating, I quickly open my laptop but find that Cadence—or whoever the fuck has her computer—is not online. She hasn’t been online since that night, and I don’t know why. Or why whoever is pretending to be Cadence hasn’t been online.

Did they finally ditch the laptop? It makes zero sense for them to use it comfortably for months then all of the sudden toss it.

I scratch at the side of my stubbled jaw, wondering what the fuck is going on. Kicking off my boots and hanging my hat on the rack by the door, I shrug out of my suit jacket and plop down on the couch, my meal cooling on the table nearby.

I glance at the laptop next to me.

CCaine is still not online.

I don’t think that’s gonna change, my gut is telling me, so now I’m lost.

I snap on the TV, landing on a college football rerun flickering across local cable.

Staring at the screen, my eyes trace the players with a numb, detached haze, but every time my mind loops back to how I fell hard for a stranger—only to be deceived by the one I was falling for—a molten mix of rage, pain, and bewilderment surges through me so intense, I can barely keep my ass on the couch.

Digging my phone from my pocket, I decide to open social media in the hopes of distraction.

I know she’s not going to come online—something in my gut is screaming quit fucking waiting , but I keep glancing at the computer, hoping.

Because what else can I do? Whoever DaddysGirl is has me by the fucking nuts, and she knows it.

She has naked photos of me.

She knows who I am.

And I know nothing, not really .

I mean, am I falling in love? How can I know if the love that’s been growing, slowly working to rebuild my soul, is even real if she’s not real?

She’s real.

I mean, she’s someone. She’s not a computer.

But who the fuck is she? And did she truly mean everything she said to me?

Sickness ribbons through my limbs and curls my toes in the carpet through my socks. I can’t think about this right now. I have no plan, which is so unlike me and honestly adding to the emotional self-destruction taking place right now.

While having no plan and feeling like I’m going to be sick, I choose a social media emotional spiral, because why not?

I pick my poison, selecting Instagram first, and tap.

A few new notifications, a few new messages, too.

Clicking messages first, I see that Dean sent me a reel of a man smoking three briskets, and underneath the video, he wrote: should I get a smoker?

The second reel he sent is of Jake Turner at the farmers market, working at his booth.

Beneath that Dean wrote: I took this. He owes me for being his marketing genius, don’t you think?

I quickly type back, and by the time I’ve switched over to my new notifications tab, I don’t even remember what I wrote.

I have a new follow request.

Yes, since I work at a high school, my profile is set to private.

The last thing I need are high schoolers knowing that I drank six beers at the county fair last summer, and I surely don’t need them to see that photo of me shirtless at the lake two years ago when Dean, Jake, Hudson and I decided to rent jet skis .

Clicking my follow request folder, my mouth falls open and my brows pull together. My chest rises and falls in silence as I blink at the screen.

CCaine27 wants to follow you.

It’s not the name of the account trying to follow me that has my jaw in my lap. It’s not the fact that someone pretending to be Cadence continues to play me that has me absolutely motionless and not blinking as I stare at the screen, eyes burning.

It’s what’s beneath her request.

Three little words that have me absolutely fucked up.

From your contacts.

Thanks to Leah, I now inadvertently know that DaddysGirl is not Cadence. But had I not stopped off in her office today and been nosy, this right here would tell me.

Because I do not have Cadence Caine’s phone number. No way, no how.

Whoever sent this friend request, whoever is pretending to be Cadence, they either have no clue that their number is programmed into my phone or they don’t know that the app tells me who is already in my contacts.

My shaken state is stirred to reality when an idea comes to me.

Quickly, I navigate to the Follow and Invite Friends tab in my settings menu. After giving Instagram access to my contacts, I sync my phone to the app and scroll through the list of friends in my phonebook who I do not already follow.

I don’t have an overwhelming amount of people programmed into my phone. But, as the list completes and I sift through, I realize the app doesn’t tell me each person’s phone number, only their account handle and their profile name .

CCaine27 pops up, since she’s in my contacts but we aren’t mutuals. Beneath her handle is her name, Cadence Caine .

Without being able to see which account is tied to which phone number, the only way I’ll be able to figure it out is through the process of elimination.

I’ll have to go contact by contact, deleting one at a time, resyncing Instagram and checking who they predict.

If I delete someone from my phonebook, then the app should no longer predict them in the follow your contacts list. When I finally do delete the person who is posing as Cadence, the CCaine27 profile will disappear from my follow your contacts list.

I will know exactly who has been messing with me.

Lying to me.

Hurting me while pretending to understand me.

How fucked up is that?

Cadence found me on Veiled , or, whoever the fuck this is. They messaged me first. How did they know I was on Veiled ?

My stomach drops. This entire thing is growing more complex by the second.

My fingers tremble, and my nerves cause my knee to bounce, but nonetheless, I start to work on my plan. Knowing who is behind this, finally figuring out who is fucking with me, being able to confront them and ask them why, how fucking with a man’s heart and head is okay to them .

Demanding to delete the photos of me, that’s the next thing I’ll do.

Quickly, I back my phone up to the cloud so I can restore all the numbers I delete, then I get started.

Leaving all the innocent folks untouched (pretty sure Riley Turner isn’t sending me nudes, and I am positive Hudson would die before he’d let anyone see his wife naked), I realize that basically the only contacts left in my phonebook are the junior coaches and team captains.

My phone crashes to the floor as I get to my feet and start pacing, making long, aggressive strides along my living room while pulling hard at the ends of my hair.

Oh my god.

Oh god I think I’ll be sick.

The junior coaches and team captains are goddamn kids still, the captains especially.

The captains are still in fucking high school.

Oh Jesus, oh lord.

Did I send a picture of my cum to a high school girl?

Cold sweat suddenly blankets my skin, slick and abundant as the edges of my vision get staticky. I make it to the toilet just in time to be sick, and when I think about it all one more time—that photo I sent of my hard-on with my precum stain exposed—I get sick again.

There is no way on God’s green earth that it’s appropriate or acceptable for any of the team captains or junior coaches to be receiving messages like that. Fuck me, they shouldn’t even see that. Not from me at least.

Rinsing my mouth and washing my hands, I only look at my sweaty, sick reflection for a second before I flick off the light and make my way back to the couch.

The TV plays, the football game still flickering, my meal now cold, laptop still open. The room is the same but I am completely fucking different.

If this turns out to be a junior coach—the lesser and legal of the two evils—and not a student, I am going to fall to my knees and thank God.

Then, I’m going to fucking make whoever this is pay.

Majorly .

With shaking hands, I manage to find the first junior coach in my contact list.

Dallas Ray.

I don’t think Dallas is into me, and I can’t see him going about it this way if he were. But regardless of his sexual orientation, I delete his number and let the resync process in the social media app.

I’m no longer giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, or a free pass.

When I open Instagram and navigate to where my contacts are waiting, Dallas’s little circle is gone.

I’m relieved but not totally unsurprised, because I never thought it was Dallas.

Onto the next.

In the next ten minutes I make the happy discovery that “Cadence” is not any of the team captains. And with that discovery, I’m able to breathe, just a little more than before.

It isn’t a student.

Thank fuck that it isn’t a student.

I don’t relish the idea of it being a 20-something, either, but at least now we’re in legal territory. I can be a creep, but I can’t be a felon for what’s transpired, and that brings me some much-needed peace.

There are only a handful of names left to check, since not every team has a junior coach due to low enrollment.

Each of them come back clear, their profile disappearing from my app after I sync. With just three names remaining, I delete, hit resync, and realize—I won’t have to test the last two.

The last number I deleted from my phone removed CCaine27 from my from your contacts list.

Holy fuck.

Holy fucking shit .

No way.

I get to my feet, unsure what to do next, and immediately sit back down.

The last contact deleted was…

Her?

It’s her? It’s her.

My process of elimination worked. And now I know…