Can’t Escape Love by Alyssa Cole Page 0,1

the best geek site the internet had ever seen, because if she didn’t . . . She thought of all the people who followed her, so excited to have a safe, diverse community where their race, sexual orientation, or disability was respected as a matter of course. She thought of her staff, all from marginalized backgrounds that usually didn’t have this opportunity.

She couldn’t fail. She needed to sleep or the business she’d spent the last few years building up might come crashing down. She’d beg this guy for his help if she had to, though she’d rather scoot down glass-covered stairs than beg anyone for anything.

But she was desperate, and this was a simple matter of problem solving.

The email was fine, technically. There were no typos—the latest update to the speech recognition drivers and her own proofreading had fixed that—but there was one major problem: despite her stating otherwise, it was creepy.

Dear Mr. Kendoku,

I hope this email finds you well. You may not remember me, but three years ago I used to tune in to your Streamlive.com channel, The Puzzle Zone. We chatted quite a bit over the course of three months, or rather I sent messages in the live stream chat function and you responded.

I’m writing with what I’ll admit is an unconventional proposition. I’d like to request approximately ten hours of audio recordings of you speaking. I’m willing to pay a more than reasonable amount for this product, and will have a contract drawn up specifying that it is for my personal (noncreepy) use, protecting you from any unlawful dissemination of said product. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Sincerely,

@26InchRims

There. Nice and formal and businesslike, so there was no reason for him to think she really needed his voice, even if she did. But maybe it wasn’t the right tone? They’d spent every night together for three months after all—that was longer than any of her relationships had lasted. They’d kind of been friends.

Not enough for him to want to keep in contact, though.

Kakuro Kendoku’s email address had been unearthed by Reggie’s twin sister, Portia, Jill-of-all-trades and amateur internet detective. Portia, who was off on some kind of Eat, Pray, Swords journey of self-discovery in Scotland, had accidentally found out her boss was the secret love child of a duke using those same skills. Reggie was not in royal watchers fandom, but even she was intrigued, and the hits to Portia’s blog posts on GirlsWithGlasses were a bonus.

Reggie was certain she’d weirded her sister out by asking for anything from her, let alone information on a guy, since they usually didn’t talk about dating and personal stuff like some twins did. She’d let Portia think whatever she wanted because the reason she needed Kakuro was embarrassing.

His voice was the only thing that could help her sleep when her insomnia got this bad. She’d discovered that over the course of their short online friendship, a friendship in which neither knew the other’s real name, age, or location—their knowledge of each other was limited to what they’d revealed in the privacy of a totally public online live stream. The thing was, it had been private, since no one else had ever tuned in.

Whenever she couldn’t sleep, she’d revisit the stream’s archives; it’d still been up six months ago when she’d had her last battle with a recalcitrant Sandman. But it was gone now, deleted, and though she’d hoped that she wouldn’t need his soothing voice for a good long while, she needed her auditory Ambien now.

It pissed her off—she shouldn’t have to rely on a stranger like this, though he wasn’t exactly a stranger at this point. She didn’t know what he looked like, had never seen higher than his chin and mouth because his camera had been set up to focus on his hands, creating a kind of reverse Kakashi-sensei situation, but they’d “talked” almost every night after a couple of weeks of her lurking on his stream. She’d stumbled across it while looking for stuff to post on her fledgling website; his voice helped her focus as she worked late at night, searching for content and writing articles, figuring out how to turn her hobby into a hustle.

She had a great memory, but she hadn’t really known him then. It was her repeated bedtime listening sessions of his archived videos had led to her inadvertently absorbing things about him and his life. His relationship with his younger brother, who would sometimes walk around in the background of