MasukShare
Chapter 31 -Makayla
Terakhir Diperbarui:
2025-04-15 18:29:23
BryantWell that was certainly a big F-U to Stacey, even rubbing in that she's with Lilac.
Bab terkait
Troubled Heart Chapter 32 - Lilac
I hadn’t gone back to sleep when Makayla left. I’d sat there worried about her while Pockets snoozed. Every time I heard someone in the hallway, I sat up, heart in my throat, as I watched the door, waiting for when it would be her. Of course, footsteps always carried past the door. Finally, they stopped at her door, and I heard the lock disengage. I was sitting cross-legged on the bed in her oversized hoodie, the sleeves swallowing my hands. This was not a women’s hoodie. I design clothes, and I know the difference between something intended for a woman and something designed for a man. This was a man’s hoodie. Maybe Makayla just liked it enough to buy it from the men’s side of a store since I at least knew it didn’t belong to an ex-boyfriend. The fabric still smelled like her skin—warm and electric, edged with cedar and storm—and I’d clung to it like a lifeline while she was gone. Pockets stirred from his spot beside me, ears twitching, tail giving one hopeful thump as the door open
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-16Troubled Heart Chapter 33 - Makayla
The screen went dark with a final, satisfying click. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding—long, slow, and shaky. The kind of breath that doesn’t just leave your lungs but peels back something deeper. The war room we’d built from this hotel desk was finally silent. The strategy had been laid, the files synced, and the timeline mapped. There were no more questions. Just the storm we were about to unleash. But for once, I didn’t want to be in front of a screen. “C’mon,” I murmured, gently nudging Lilac where she sat beside me, cross-legged and curled in my hoodie. “We need a reset.” She blinked up at me. “You mean sleep?” I shook my head. “Air. Fresh, cold, not-cyber-coded air.” Lilac grinned softly and stood, grabbing the blanket from the foot of the bed. “Alright, hacker girl. Let’s go breathe.” We bundled up—she wore my hoodie, I threw on my coat, and Pockets gave a thrilled little huff when I clipped on his leash. He bounded to the door like we were about to take
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-17Troubled Heart Chapter 34 - Lilac
The hotel room was quiet, wrapped in a soft hush that made every sound more intimate. Outside the window, snow fell slowly, drifting spirals, catching the light like dust in a cathedral. The only glow came from Makayla’s laptop on the table and the muted blue screen of my phone in my lap. Pockets was asleep near the heater, his little body rising and falling in time with the radiator’s sighs. Makayla sat curled beside me on the bed, one hand loosely tangled in mine, her other hand idly scrolling through encrypted feeds on her laptop. The war room was technically still open, but we weren’t warriors tonight. We were… just us. I tapped open the app almost without thinking. Old muscle memory guided me to my handle: @GreenFlare. I wasn't sure what to expect when I checked it. I had used it recently to gather information before I came to find Makayla. Still I hadn't expected much activity. What I got instead was fire. Hundreds—no, thousands—of notifications pinged in bursts like tiny di
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-18Troubled Heart Chapter 35 - Makayla
The alert sliced through the stillness just after 6 a.m., a secure ping that buzzed insistently from Reese’s private line: Emergency injunction filed. She’s coming for the data. Check your vaults. I didn’t bother replying to Reese. Instead, I quietly slipped out of bed to not disturb Lilac beside me. I moved silently barefoot across the carpeted floor to my laptop. I quickly opened it and booted it up, ready to go to war, even half awake. I caught a glimpse of Pockets, the always-watchful pup, stirring in his place. He didn’t get up, but I felt his body stiffening; he had a way of knowing to be alert whenever everything wasn’t quite right. I logged in, my fingers dancing over the keys as I navigated through three layers of encryption, bypassing my default startup shell and accessing the server logs. Sure enough, I found evidence of attempted breaches: accesses were blocked, and nodes glowed a fierce red, a warning beacon in the pre-dawn darkness. “She’s trying to freeze our dropbox
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-19Troubled Heart Chapter 36 - Lilac
We'd gone into town for lunch to have lunch with Makayla’s cousins. Or at least the ones still in town. Her cousins Darius and Elijah had taken earlier flights home to Boston, which left Reese, Clay, and Forrest behind. Given the triplets and their wife, I'm still wrapping my head around that poly reverse harem marriage, four young kids it made sense that two of them would head back to help her. The café was warm, filled with rosemary and fresh bread scents, creating a cozy atmosphere. Before we arrived, they combined two large tables in the back to fit us all—Clay took up nearly an entire side, cradling a small cider in his bulky hands. Reese sat next to him with her laptop open and a grain bowl, looked polished, and genuinely happy to see us. “Took you long enough. I was about to order for you both.” She greeted Clay grinned and nodded to two mugs. “House-made ciders with cinnamon sticks. You’re welcome.” Makayla slipped in beside me, sandwiching me between her and Forrest, who
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-21Troubled Heart Chapter 37 - Makayla
I should’ve been sleeping. Lilac was already curled up beneath the hotel blanket, one arm draped over Pockets like she’d always belonged there, like she was woven into the quiet of this room. The folder her father had given her—the deed to their cabin, to the land that started everything—rested on the nightstand beside the laptop, where the screen glowed faintly in the dark. But I couldn’t close it yet. Not until I was sure there wasn’t one more trap waiting to be sprung. A paranoid instinct had kept me alive in systems most people never even realized they were walking into. And that instinct now told me something didn’t add up. The financial patterns in Stacey’s shell companies were too clean. Too rehearsed. And nothing about Stacey Sherbourn was ever that tidy—unless she wanted it to be seen. So, I went digging. Again. I tunneled back into the encrypted backups I’d mirrored weeks ago—deep code packets stored from a corrupted cloud system linked to a Sherbourn asset overseas. Be
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-22Troubled Heart Chapter 38 - Pockets
The humans smelled different this morning.Not scared. Not sharp with adrenaline like they’d been the last few days. There was still tension—always was, when Makayla paced or typed or made her voice extra serious—but now it hummed lower. Deeper. Like thunder far away.I stretched on the hotel bed, paws splayed, tail flicking once before curling tighter beside Lilac’s thigh. She was warm, still in Makayla’s hoodie, sipping coffee from the white mug. I don't understand why humans like that. It has such a bitter smell. Yet it makes them smile.Makayla stood by the television, remote in hand, eyes on the screen. I didn’t understand all the words, but I understood other things, like looks of anger and relief, words like justice, and I recognized handcuffs. I'm 3 months old. I probably shouldn't know what those are. It did confuse me to see them being used on the news. I had only seen them when I was little, okay I'm still little, and I still lived with my parents and their humans. I had h
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-23Troubled Heart Chapter 39 - Makayla
I didn’t cry when I booked the ticket, I sure the FUCK wasn’t driving back. I thought maybe I would that it might come with some cinematic swell of relief or catharsis. I felt relief, felt like I could breathe easy again. To breathe in a way I hadn’t since before the blizzard. Before the betrayal.Outside the hotel window, Aspen was no longer blanketed in threat. The snow had softened to slush at the curb. The streets weren’t hostile anymore. The mountains didn’t loom. Everything felt like an exhale.We were going home.I rolled the word around in my head again: home. Not D.C., with its sterile buildings and buried truths. Not the political chessboard I’d grown up on, where every move was either weapon or weakness.No. I meant New York to my penthouse in Manhattan near Central Park.Not perfect. Never soft. But honest.It had been the first place I carved out for myself—where I built something not wrapped in the Hopkins name or the Frost legacy. It was my pulse, my grit, my skyline of
Terakhir Diperbarui : 2025-04-24
Bab terbaru
Troubled Heart Chapter 39 - Makayla
I didn’t cry when I booked the ticket, I sure the FUCK wasn’t driving back. I thought maybe I would that it might come with some cinematic swell of relief or catharsis. I felt relief, felt like I could breathe easy again. To breathe in a way I hadn’t since before the blizzard. Before the betrayal.Outside the hotel window, Aspen was no longer blanketed in threat. The snow had softened to slush at the curb. The streets weren’t hostile anymore. The mountains didn’t loom. Everything felt like an exhale.We were going home.I rolled the word around in my head again: home. Not D.C., with its sterile buildings and buried truths. Not the political chessboard I’d grown up on, where every move was either weapon or weakness.No. I meant New York to my penthouse in Manhattan near Central Park.Not perfect. Never soft. But honest.It had been the first place I carved out for myself—where I built something not wrapped in the Hopkins name or the Frost legacy. It was my pulse, my grit, my skyline of
Troubled Heart Chapter 38 - Pockets
The humans smelled different this morning.Not scared. Not sharp with adrenaline like they’d been the last few days. There was still tension—always was, when Makayla paced or typed or made her voice extra serious—but now it hummed lower. Deeper. Like thunder far away.I stretched on the hotel bed, paws splayed, tail flicking once before curling tighter beside Lilac’s thigh. She was warm, still in Makayla’s hoodie, sipping coffee from the white mug. I don't understand why humans like that. It has such a bitter smell. Yet it makes them smile.Makayla stood by the television, remote in hand, eyes on the screen. I didn’t understand all the words, but I understood other things, like looks of anger and relief, words like justice, and I recognized handcuffs. I'm 3 months old. I probably shouldn't know what those are. It did confuse me to see them being used on the news. I had only seen them when I was little, okay I'm still little, and I still lived with my parents and their humans. I had h
Troubled Heart Chapter 37 - Makayla
I should’ve been sleeping. Lilac was already curled up beneath the hotel blanket, one arm draped over Pockets like she’d always belonged there, like she was woven into the quiet of this room. The folder her father had given her—the deed to their cabin, to the land that started everything—rested on the nightstand beside the laptop, where the screen glowed faintly in the dark. But I couldn’t close it yet. Not until I was sure there wasn’t one more trap waiting to be sprung. A paranoid instinct had kept me alive in systems most people never even realized they were walking into. And that instinct now told me something didn’t add up. The financial patterns in Stacey’s shell companies were too clean. Too rehearsed. And nothing about Stacey Sherbourn was ever that tidy—unless she wanted it to be seen. So, I went digging. Again. I tunneled back into the encrypted backups I’d mirrored weeks ago—deep code packets stored from a corrupted cloud system linked to a Sherbourn asset overseas. Be
Troubled Heart Chapter 36 - Lilac
We'd gone into town for lunch to have lunch with Makayla’s cousins. Or at least the ones still in town. Her cousins Darius and Elijah had taken earlier flights home to Boston, which left Reese, Clay, and Forrest behind. Given the triplets and their wife, I'm still wrapping my head around that poly reverse harem marriage, four young kids it made sense that two of them would head back to help her. The café was warm, filled with rosemary and fresh bread scents, creating a cozy atmosphere. Before we arrived, they combined two large tables in the back to fit us all—Clay took up nearly an entire side, cradling a small cider in his bulky hands. Reese sat next to him with her laptop open and a grain bowl, looked polished, and genuinely happy to see us. “Took you long enough. I was about to order for you both.” She greeted Clay grinned and nodded to two mugs. “House-made ciders with cinnamon sticks. You’re welcome.” Makayla slipped in beside me, sandwiching me between her and Forrest, who
Troubled Heart Chapter 35 - Makayla
The alert sliced through the stillness just after 6 a.m., a secure ping that buzzed insistently from Reese’s private line: Emergency injunction filed. She’s coming for the data. Check your vaults. I didn’t bother replying to Reese. Instead, I quietly slipped out of bed to not disturb Lilac beside me. I moved silently barefoot across the carpeted floor to my laptop. I quickly opened it and booted it up, ready to go to war, even half awake. I caught a glimpse of Pockets, the always-watchful pup, stirring in his place. He didn’t get up, but I felt his body stiffening; he had a way of knowing to be alert whenever everything wasn’t quite right. I logged in, my fingers dancing over the keys as I navigated through three layers of encryption, bypassing my default startup shell and accessing the server logs. Sure enough, I found evidence of attempted breaches: accesses were blocked, and nodes glowed a fierce red, a warning beacon in the pre-dawn darkness. “She’s trying to freeze our dropbox
Troubled Heart Chapter 34 - Lilac
The hotel room was quiet, wrapped in a soft hush that made every sound more intimate. Outside the window, snow fell slowly, drifting spirals, catching the light like dust in a cathedral. The only glow came from Makayla’s laptop on the table and the muted blue screen of my phone in my lap. Pockets was asleep near the heater, his little body rising and falling in time with the radiator’s sighs. Makayla sat curled beside me on the bed, one hand loosely tangled in mine, her other hand idly scrolling through encrypted feeds on her laptop. The war room was technically still open, but we weren’t warriors tonight. We were… just us. I tapped open the app almost without thinking. Old muscle memory guided me to my handle: @GreenFlare. I wasn't sure what to expect when I checked it. I had used it recently to gather information before I came to find Makayla. Still I hadn't expected much activity. What I got instead was fire. Hundreds—no, thousands—of notifications pinged in bursts like tiny di
Troubled Heart Chapter 33 - Makayla
The screen went dark with a final, satisfying click. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding—long, slow, and shaky. The kind of breath that doesn’t just leave your lungs but peels back something deeper. The war room we’d built from this hotel desk was finally silent. The strategy had been laid, the files synced, and the timeline mapped. There were no more questions. Just the storm we were about to unleash. But for once, I didn’t want to be in front of a screen. “C’mon,” I murmured, gently nudging Lilac where she sat beside me, cross-legged and curled in my hoodie. “We need a reset.” She blinked up at me. “You mean sleep?” I shook my head. “Air. Fresh, cold, not-cyber-coded air.” Lilac grinned softly and stood, grabbing the blanket from the foot of the bed. “Alright, hacker girl. Let’s go breathe.” We bundled up—she wore my hoodie, I threw on my coat, and Pockets gave a thrilled little huff when I clipped on his leash. He bounded to the door like we were about to take
Troubled Heart Chapter 32 - Lilac
I hadn’t gone back to sleep when Makayla left. I’d sat there worried about her while Pockets snoozed. Every time I heard someone in the hallway, I sat up, heart in my throat, as I watched the door, waiting for when it would be her. Of course, footsteps always carried past the door. Finally, they stopped at her door, and I heard the lock disengage. I was sitting cross-legged on the bed in her oversized hoodie, the sleeves swallowing my hands. This was not a women’s hoodie. I design clothes, and I know the difference between something intended for a woman and something designed for a man. This was a man’s hoodie. Maybe Makayla just liked it enough to buy it from the men’s side of a store since I at least knew it didn’t belong to an ex-boyfriend. The fabric still smelled like her skin—warm and electric, edged with cedar and storm—and I’d clung to it like a lifeline while she was gone. Pockets stirred from his spot beside me, ears twitching, tail giving one hopeful thump as the door open
Troubled Heart Chapter 31 -Makayla
The morning light crept through the hotel curtains in fractured gold, spilling across the bed in quiet stripes. The room smelled faintly of snow, lavender soap, and the lingering embers of what we’d done last night. Lilac lay beside me, tangled in the sheets, her dark curls spread across the pillow like a crown. Her breathing was slow, steady—a peaceful rhythm. One hand rested over Pockets’ back, his tiny body curled against her side like a living shield. He stirred slightly as I slid out of bed, but didn’t move. Pockets would never sleep in the bed when Stacey was in it. It shows I should’ve trusted my dog’s opinion all along. He knew the right sister from the wrong. He didn’t take any convincing to trust Lilac like I did. He just instinctively knew she was the good sister and the one I should be with. I pulled on my hoodie and padded barefoot across the room, careful not to wake either of them. The glow from my laptop was a harsh contrast to the softness behind me. I blinked agai
