MY BOYFRIEND KEPT A SECOND PHONE LOCKED INSIDE A SHOEBOX
I found the small black box tucked beneath a pile of old sweaters in the back of his closet.
The old shoebox was heavy, taped shut with industrial packing tape I didn’t recognize from our apartment. My hands were shaking slightly as I peeled back the stubborn adhesive, the dusty smell of years-old cardboard filling my nose. Inside, beneath a layer of bubble wrap, was a cheap, burner-style cell phone. It was switched off.
Turning it on felt completely wrong, like opening someone’s diary without permission, but the chilling curiosity was overwhelming. The bright, cheap screen flickered to life after an agonizing pause, showing an endless stream of recent messages from unsaved numbers. My fingers felt numb tracing the cold glass of the screen, scrolling through texts that were urgent, coded, and definitely not about work or friends.
He walked in as I scrolled, the familiar scent of his cologne suddenly making me feel physically sick to my stomach. His eyes went wide, then hard, colder than I’d ever seen them. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his voice low and utterly dangerous. I couldn’t speak, just held up the phone, the bright screen illuminating my horrified, disbelieving face.
He lunged forward, but I twisted away, clutching the cheap plastic device like my life depended on it. The messages blurred on the screen, but one name stood out clearly, repeated over and over in the last few threads. His face was pale, his usual kind smile completely gone, replaced by a calculating mask I didn’t recognize at all staring back at me.
The last message received just said one word: “Run.”
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*”Run? Run from what? From you?” I managed to choke out, my voice trembling. The adrenaline coursing through me gave me a false sense of courage, masking the fear that threatened to consume me.
He didn’t answer immediately, his gaze fixed on the phone in my hand. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, broken only by the frantic beating of my own heart. Finally, he sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of the world.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, his voice softer now, but still laced with an edge I didn’t trust.
“Oh really? Then enlighten me. Because it looks an awful lot like you’re living a double life,” I snapped, holding the phone tighter. “Who is this person? What is all this coded nonsense?”
He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture I knew so well, but now it seemed foreign, practiced. “Look, can we just talk about this?”
“No! We’re talking about it right now. You have five seconds. Start explaining.”
He hesitated for another moment, then finally seemed to deflate, the fight leaving him. “Okay, okay. This… it’s complicated.” He took a deep breath. “I work for a security company. A private one. We handle sensitive cases, disappearances, witness protection… stuff like that. The phone is a secure line. Those messages… they’re from a client.”
I stared at him, unconvinced. “A client who tells you to run? What kind of witness protection requires you to hide a phone in a shoebox under a pile of sweaters?”
“It’s a precaution. Some of our clients are… dangerous. We have to maintain absolute discretion. This phone is untraceable. If anything were to happen, if I was compromised, it’s a lifeline.”
He stepped closer, reaching for my hand. “Please, believe me. I know how this looks, but I swear, it’s for work. It’s to protect you too, in a way. If they were to find out about you…” He trailed off, his eyes pleading.
I wanted to believe him. Part of me desperately yearned to go back to the way things were, to trust his smile, his touch. But the cold, calculating expression I’d seen moments ago lingered in my mind.
“Prove it,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Prove to me that this isn’t some elaborate lie.”
He seemed relieved. “Okay. Okay, I will. I can’t tell you everything, for obvious reasons, but I can show you some things. I can introduce you to my contact. You can ask them yourself.”
He spent the next few hours explaining, showing me snippets of encrypted emails, redacted case files. It was a confusing web of jargon and half-truths, but slowly, painstakingly, a picture began to emerge. He really did work for a security company. The second phone was a necessary tool. The cryptic messages were related to a high-profile case, a client who was being hunted.
The “Run” message, he explained, was a contingency plan, in case the client’s location was compromised. He was supposed to extract them, disappear them again.
I still wasn’t entirely sure I believed everything, but the fear began to subside, replaced by a weary acceptance. He was still hiding things, I could feel it, but not in the way I had initially feared. He wasn’t cheating, he wasn’t living a double life in the romantic sense. He was protecting me, in his own, secretive way.
“I need time to process this,” I said finally, exhaustion weighing me down.
He nodded, understanding. “I know. And I’m sorry for keeping this from you. I just… I didn’t want to worry you.”
The truth, I realized, was probably somewhere in between. He hadn’t wanted to worry me, but he also hadn’t wanted to risk revealing too much, exposing me to the dangerous world he navigated.
We rebuilt our trust, slowly, brick by brick. He told me more, showed me more, within the confines of what he was allowed. I learned to live with the secret, the knowledge that a part of his life would always be closed off to me.
One evening, months later, he received another message on the burner phone. It was short, just a single word: “Safe.” He deleted it immediately, his expression unreadable.
He looked at me, a flicker of something I couldn’t quite decipher in his eyes. Then, he smiled, the familiar, reassuring smile I had come to trust again. “Everything’s okay,” he said. “It’s all over now.”
And for the first time in a long time, I believed him. Perhaps, I thought, some secrets are better left buried, as long as the love is real.