38. Stetson
THIRTY-EIGHT
STETSON
April 27th, 2024
The memory replays in my mind like a broken record. He was here, ten years ago, standing in the street like a dark, fallen angel—like the devil in flesh—and I had run into him. Not another soul on the streets that night, and I had found him . Almost gave up running away for the chance to get to know him more.
How is this fucking possible?
I stare at the ceiling, my chest clammy with the warm Texas morning air, and the heat of anger. There are just so many questions when it comes to Gus.
Where the fuck did he come from and why is he here, now, after all this time? How has he popped up so many times in my life without me realizing it? First in Denver at the stock show where I saw him ride, then the morning at the coffee shop, then the night I fled Moztecha. And now here, or rather, at the bar and then at the feed store.
Is it divine intervention or something more? Something by his own design?
Could he be my stalker?
I swat the idea away, the thought far too scary—and real—for this early in the morning. Surely not.
I sit up, too unsettled by my questions to lie here a second longer. The only way I’m going to get answers is to face the man who can give them to me. Which is an idea I hate, but I also loathe uncertainty—I hate not having control. And not having answers is beginning to feel more like loss of control than blissful ignorance.
I quickly dress, desperation fueling my need to get answers, and stumble from my room. But instead of feeling angry as I descend the stairs, I have the overwhelming sense I should run. Answers wait below, and I have a feeling I won’t like what I find.
May 4th, 2024
“He dropped the charges.”
I stare at Gus, his words pelting against me and bouncing off like marbles against tin. They ping, rattling around in my brain but don’t sink in.
He dropped the charges. What? Why? How?
“Stetson, did you hear me?” Gus looks exasperated, his hair disheveled and beard untrimmed from his six days in lockup. He was in jail this morning, and now you’re telling me he’s not going back?
“How?” I finally squeak, the questions piling into a painful weight on my chest.
“Doesn’t matter how. What matters is, it’s over. I won’t be going to jail. I won’t be leaving you.” His eyes scour my face, and I silently wonder what he sees there. What he’s looking for there.
I literally have no idea what I’m feeling, much less how to compose my face at this moment. “But Gus, I?—”
He sighs, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and runs a hand irritatedly through his greasy locks. “Can you just trust me?”
Can I trust him? I’m not even convinced I know anything about him. Not anything real, anyway. Not anything that matters.
Like why is he always there—just around the corner, or behind the door when I need help with something? Why is he always looking at me when I find his eyes—what is he looking for? Why is he so protective of me? Why is he protective of me, but knows me well enough to let me fight my own battles?
It’s like he knows me better than I know myself sometimes, and that thought is terrifying. How can he? Why would he?
And can I trust him? Logically, not a fucking chance in hell. But instinctually? There’s no one I trust more. Which makes zero fucking sense.
It’s like my body and mind know him and trust his intentions. But again, how? Why?
“There’s practically smoke coming out of your ears with all that overthinking.”
I continue to stare at him because I don’t trust myself with words anymore. He sighs, defeated, and turns away from the kitchen, walking toward his room. Before he gets there, he pauses, saying over his shoulder, “Someday, you’re going to have to share all those secret thoughts with me, Stetson.”
I still don’t speak. Because if I open my mouth now, I’m going to ask him about all his secrets. And I have a sinking feeling there’s more there than just how he made Nathan drop the charges.
May 10th, 202 4
It’s late and Gus has been gone for hours—on another one of his late night drives that I’m too chicken to ask him about.
What if he’s going to meet a woman ? Even as I think it, I know it’s untrue. He’s far too invested in my life to be with another woman, even if he pretends there is someone else. I’m aware enough to know it was a ploy to make me jealous.
And fuck if it didn’t work.
The house is silent around me, not even a breeze tapping against the windows, and I shiver. I hate when it’s this quiet—leaves too much space for my screaming thoughts to filter in. And filter in they do—ripping and tearing at my last shred of doubt about Gus.
About Gus being my stalker.
Something he’s brought up more than once is how much of a monster he is. And I couldn’t agree more. But it’s not so much the sentiment that bothers me, but rather, the way he has said it.
The first day he worked for me, he said, “What can I say, I’m a monster,” and even if I want to deny it, I can’t. Because that statement sounds eerily similar to the one my masked man made all those years ago… “Call me Beast or Monster. Because that is what I am.”
They’re eerily similar, because they are the same. I know it in my bones. And I hate it.
I sit up, my stomach tied into painful knots at the realization. Gus is my monster from all those years ago.
And if he was my masked man, and monster, then how far off can it really be that he’s my stalker?
Has he really been in my life for ten years? Is that possible?
I race for the door, bolting it shut. Because yes, it’s not only possible, but as the thought forms, I know it to be true.
Gus has been everywhere, and everything, in my life, and I didn’t know. I was blind—first by ignorance, and then by fear.
But I see now. I know.
And fuck, what terrifies me more is that I don’t hate him for it. How many nights did I want my stalker and my monster to be the same man? To need me so desperately that they would go to any lengths to have me?
And they did. He did.
And I cannot hate him for it.
But I can make him work for it. I can see his wicked, depraved plan unfold, because I deserve that much. I deserve to see how far he will truly go to have me. I deserve to feel the full weight of his desire— his obsession —upon me. I need it.
And if I have to make him crawl to me, I will.