My Online Boyfriend Lives In The Next Room Chapter 01

My Online Boyfriend Lives In The Next Room Chapter 01

My online boyfriend had the kind of voice that should come with a warning label.

Every night, I burrowed under my covers and called him. He never said no to anything I asked, and the way he talked—low, slow, and deliberate—did things to me I couldn’t say out loud.

My roommate was right down the hall, so I whispered into the receiver for him to keep his voice down.

That’s when the comments flooded my vision.

[The side character is SO clueless. She has zero idea her online boyfriend is the obsessive ML living right down the hall.]

[She literally provoked him. This girl’s going to have so many reasons to cry later.]

[But she’s only ghostwriting texts for the female lead. She needs to run before he finds out who she really is. If she waits too long…]

I panicked and slammed the End Call button.

I slipped out of my room and crept toward the bathroom. I just needed to splash water on my face and get a grip.

But through the closed bathroom door, I heard it—a man’s voice, low and strained, barely holding it together. “Baby, why’d you hang up on me?”

…

I couldn’t move.

I was about to bolt back to my room when Alistair Mercer’s voice came again, tight and raw.

“Did I scare you today?”

“Baby, pick up. Please.”

“You promised me an hour tonight. We’re not done yet.”

From back in my room, my phone buzzed under the covers. Then again. And again.

I held my breath and tiptoed back before he realized someone was outside the bathroom door.

I fished my phone out from under the blankets.

Alistair was calling again.

I sat there, frozen, as the comments lit up again.

[Girl, ANSWER HIM.]

[She’s the one who asked the obsessive ML to call her in the first place.]

[You can’t just leave him hanging mid-call?]

[Okay but the ML did get a little too intense today.]

[He’s not usually like this.]

[Maybe she wound him up too much.]

My mind flashed back to an hour ago.

I’d just gotten out of the shower with nothing to do, so I’d sent him a couple of texts.

[Baby, pop quiz. If the hottest guy in school is the campus heartthrob…]

[…then what do you call the hottest guy in the whole world?]

The chat showed him typing.

Then, he deleted it. The chat went quiet for a long time.

He’d obviously left the app to look up the punchline.

All I got back was: […]

I’d been in the middle of my skincare routine and didn’t reply right away.

Somewhere in the quiet, I had heard Alistair go into the bathroom.

Three minutes later, my phone lit up.

[Baby, do you really want to take it there?]

[Isn’t it too soon?]

[How about we start with a call?]

[You love my voice, right?]

[Stay on the phone with me for an hour tonight. Okay?]

So I had crawled under the covers and picked up.

He knew exactly what he was doing: that low, deliberate voice winding me up word by word.

Walking me through every dirty little thing a couple would say and do.

The kind of voice that shut your brain off completely.

I was a mess under those blankets.

I hadn’t known the truth until the comments told me.

The possessive, obsessive boyfriend on the other end of that call was the same man living down the hall.