“He walked me home, and I said good night on my street a little way from my apartment. (I never tell dates where I live.) That’s when the problem started. I told him I didn’t want him to come up, that I was tired, but that I had a nice time. He tried to convince me that all he wanted was a drink. But when I still said no, he got pissed. He said that because he had paid for dinner, I owed him something, and that I was—at the very least—going to give him a blowjob before he left. That’s when I punched him in the face.”

—Rock Bottom Caroline

I slept for a while and woke up to Chance teasing me with his fingers, which led to two more of my ten promised orgasms and had me climbing on top of him for a third before telling him that I was so hungry that I was going to leave him if we didn’t get some food.

After a delicious dinner of delivery pizza, Chance proved that he knows how to keep things spicy, fucking me senseless while using a vibrator. I went well over ten orgasms. Now, as I wake up from my second nap of the day, it’s dark outside, even though the clock tells me it’s nine o’clock.

Chance is asleep beside me, and I take the opportunity to sneak out of bed. I retrieve my phone from my bag and head to the bathroom so I can check my messages and freshen up. I should also tell Alice that I’m probably not coming home tonight so that she doesn’t worry—although she’s going to want to know who I’m staying with.

I slip on my underwear and bra before I go to the bathroom because I feel weird walking around Chance’s apartment entirely naked. I spend some time splashing water on my face before I decide to grow a pair and just tell Alice the truth. But when I click on my phone, the stream of notifications on my home screen is longer than I’ve seen it in forever. The top ones are from Alice.

Caroline, where are you?

Have you seen this?

What on earth is going on?

I don’t know where you are but you need to look at the Heart Makers site RIGHT NOW.

What the hell? I open up my web browser and navigate to the site, and I almost drop my phone. The site is covered in pictures of me. Only they’re not really pictures of me. My face—from the Heart Makers site pictures and my blog and some I don’t even remember where—photoshopped onto porn. In the photos ‘I’m’ being fucked my multiple men at once. Some are pictures of just my face, with cartoon dicks drawn on it like they’re coming all over me. Some have my eyes scratched out with the words ‘Cunt,’ and ‘Bitch’ scrawled over my mouth.

I feel like my entire body has gone numb, and dread sinks through me. Who could have done this? The answer is already in my mind. It is probably the anonymous poster from this morning, the one who called me a fake bitch. I should have listened to my instincts when I felt something was oddly personal about it. Fuck, what am I going to do?

I open my email, and it’s filled with panicked emails from Heart Makers PR people, and friends asking what the hell is going on. But there’s one that stands out: with the subject line ‘Hey Bitch.’ I have to hold my breath as I open it.

Dear Caroline,

By now you’ve seen what I can do. This is what you get for being a selfish cunt. Delete Rock Bottom Caroline, and quit that ridiculous job you have thinking you can tell people how to date, or these pictures will go national. Do it by Monday, or you’ll be viral—I guarantee it.

I barely make it to the toilet in time before I’m dry heaving into it. Oh God. What do I do? This is the other shoe dropping. I knew things couldn’t be perfect, but this? Chance is going to have to fire me. He’ll never be able to keep me on staff after I managed to turn his matchmaking company into a porn site. And he doesn’t even know yet. I have to tell him.

I go back into the bedroom, and to my horror he’s awake, and looking at his phone. He’s pulled on sweatpants and is sitting on the bed, frowning at the screen.

“Chance,” I say.

“I know.” He doesn’t sound mad, but he doesn’t sound…anything. “Do you know who did this?”

I shake my head. “My best guess is the guy who commented this morning. I don’t know who he is.”

His phone vibrates in his hand. “It’s the chairman of my board.” He swipes the phone call on. “Hi, John. Yes, I’ve seen it.” He listens for a minute and I can hear the frantic voices on the other end of the line.

“Chance,” I say, “Can you call them back? I want to talk to you—”

He holds up a hand, telling me to wait, and he stands and goes to the window, still listening to the phone. My stomach drops to my feet. He is mad. Every line in his body is taut, and he won’t even look at me. They’re going to tell him to fire me, that he should never have hired me in the first place, and that it’s a PR disaster. All of those things are true, and I don’t think I have the strength to hear them in the same place as I just had the most amazing night of my life.

Chance’s back is still turned, and I jump into my clothes, slipping out of the room before he can notice. I don’t want to see him angry, and I don’t want to see the regret and disappointment on his face when he realizes that I just wrecked everything.

I stop for a second in the hall outside his apartment. I just wrecked everything. I can’t stop the tears that start to fall as the elevators doors close.

* * *

When I wake up I’m surrounded by tissues. I think I’ve used a whole box now. Alice was out of her mind with worry when I came home a crying mess, and sat with me while I cried and told her everything. She was at once shocked and unsurprised when I told her about me and Chance, and she was so great as I pretty much ruined the shirt she was wearing by crying on it. Even Noodle was sweet, laying his head in my lap and licking my hand.

Now my head hurts, and I feel swollen from all the crying that I did. But all I want to do is cry more. I had a perfect week, and then it all fell to pieces. Never trust something that looks too good to be true. It always is too good to be true. Always.

My phone was buzzing when I woke, with Chance’s name on the screen. I can’t talk to him yet. Even if it’s inevitable, I need to hang onto the dream of what I had a little while longer before it’s final. It’s late in the morning—I slept for longer than I have in a while. I think Alice is still asleep since it’s Saturday and she stayed up late with me.

I pull my laptop off the coffee table and put it on my lap. I guess I should get to work on taking down the blog. As bad as the pictures are, I don’t want naked photos of me to be the top news story in the country. If this guy is good enough to do everything he’s done so far, I’d be stupid to call his bluff.

Checking the Heart Makers site quickly, I see that they’ve taken down all the photos. Thankfully. I flip to Rock Bottom Caroline, glancing through the posts and reading some of my favorites. The thought of leaving the blog behind doesn’t make me as sad as I thought it would, but deleting it because I’m being blackmailed leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I get to the more recent posts, and I go completely still. I’d practically blocked this guy from my memory, the fucking asshole that thought he could force me into having sex because he bought me dinner—the whole reason I quit dating for months. He wouldn’t have known that I had a blog talking about my dates anonymously. But if Heart Makers pushed my blog posts out to the dating sites, he would have seen my picture, and then looked at the blog, and…oh God. It has to be him.

I didn’t know that he was a hacker or that he had the ability to do something like this. And even though I didn’t give him my address, he knows what street I live on. If he’s a hacker, it won’t be hard for him to figure out my real address, and if I don’t delete the blog…

There’s a knock at the door and I jump. Noodle barks in response. It can’t be him, right? That’s too coincidental, and it’s not Monday yet. Even so, I grab the baseball bat Alice keeps behind the door and peak through the hole. My body relaxes immediately because it’s not that guy—who’s name I barely remember—it’s Chance. How the hell? I lean against the door. I filled out paperwork for the company. Of course he has my address.

I unlock the chain and let the door swing open. “What are you doing here?”

He glances at the bat in my hand. “You disappeared last night and you weren’t answering your phone. I was worried…”

We stand there looking at each other for second before he asks, “Is it all right if I come in or am I going to get beaten with the bat.”

I put the bat down again, “Yeah, sorry. I’m just…on edge.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

I shake my head, and he catches me by the shoulders. “You know more about what happened than you’re telling me, Caroline.”

I didn’t really think that I had any more tears to shed, but they spring to my eyes, and I can’t stop crying again. I tell him everything. About the asshole and punching him in the face and my very small revenge on him by writing about him on the blog, and Chance nods because he’d read that post too. I tell him about the email and the ultimatum and then I’m telling him I’m sorry because it’s all my fault.

We’re on the couch now, and Chance has me cradled in his arms. “Hold up a second,” he says. “None of this is your fault.”

“Of course it is,” I say. “I didn’t have to write about him. I didn’t have to have a blog at all. I could have taken it down when I got hired—”

Chance’s voice is stern. “That asshole got what was coming to him. You had every right to tell people what happened, and it’s important that you do. The fact that this man is so insecure and so angry that someone wouldn’t have sex with him, that he’d stoop to this level has absolutely nothing to do with you.”

I lean my head on his shoulder. “Alice spent all last night telling me that, but it still feels that way. And I still have to do what he says or else everyone in the world is going to have those pictures.”

Chance kisses me softly. “Of course you don’t.”

“What?”

He smiles gently. “I own a web company. I have a few hacker friends of my own, and I already know who this guy is, where he lives, and as we speak my lawyer is speaking to a judge about pressing charges. I expect that he’ll be arrested in a couple of hours.” He shifts so he can get his phone out of his pocket. “Is this the guy that you went on a date with?”

The picture pops up and I recoil. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“Turns out he was also the guy staring at us that day at the restaurant. I had a feeling, and I asked my friends to look for some security footage, and it was a match.”

“So that could have tipped him off too. This is so messed up.”

“It is, and entirely not your fault. But I want to know why you left last night?”

I look down at the floor, “I thought you would be angry, and I thought that the board was going to tell you to fire me. I just…I couldn’t face it.”

“I’m not angry at you, obviously,” he says, smiling. “And even if the board did tell me to fire you, I wouldn’t. It’s my company. I can do what I like. And all I wanted to do last night was to kill the piece of shit who thought he could make you feel less than what you are.”

“You’d do that for me?” I ask, still sniffling.

“I’d do anything for the people I love.”

We both freeze, the admission shocking and unexpected. Then warmth fills me and I’m smiling and happy crying. “Me too.”

He kisses me and I can’t stop laughing even though he’s kissing me and Noodle is trying to sit between us, tail wagging and wanting to know why we’re so happy.

“Please come home with me,” he says. “I missed you last night and I wasn’t nearly finished—”

“Before you finish that sentence,” I say, putting a finger to his lips. “Alice, you can come out now.”

She emerges from her bedroom with a sheepish look on her face. “Sorry, I heard all the noise. It’s nice to meet you,” she waves. “Now get the hell out of here and go have fun. I don’t have any doubts that I’m going to see you again, Chance.” She gives him a wink even as he’s pulling me up off the couch and toward the door.

“It’s nice to meet you too,” he says with a giant grin on his face. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to have a lot of sex.”

Alice snorts, “Better at your place than on my couch.”

“Love you!” I shout as the door closes behind us. “Now,” I say, turning to Chance, “you can finish your sentence.”