Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
brITTANY
“ C oming!” Brittany yelled, hearing the door knock from the bedroom. She was already running behind from her day because of Gus and his bedroom antics. She’d had to cut her live stream short, which was annoying, so she already felt off when Gus’s boss texted saying she was sending Curtis over to her while she was meeting with Gus. Now Curtis was knocking on her door. She was nowhere near ready for her busy day, and Gus wasn’t back yet. Hoping Curtis being there meant she could head to the convention center so she wasn’t late for her panel, Brittany rushed to the door. She stopped to look out the peephole, but the guy she saw was leaner and taller than Curtis, with a ball cap pulled down his head, a large bulky jacket covering his body. With that said, she couldn’t deny there was something familiar about him.
“Can I help you?” she yelled through the door. The guy had heard her moving around already, so she couldn’t really pretend the condo was empty.
“I was sent by your security team.” His voice was deep but a little garbled, like he was trying to make it sound deeper than it was. Still…
“What’s your name?”
“Curtis Davis.”
Brittany froze at the blatant lie. The guy she could see through the peephole was definitely not Curtis, and if he was here saying otherwise, then she was in deep, deep trouble.
“You’re not Curtis,” she told him. “I’ve met him, and you are not him.”
As Brittany watched through the peephole, the guy seemed to hesitate, the hat still pulled down over his eyes, angling himself from the peephole. But she still caught a glimpse of the side of his face finally, and realized…
“Kyle?”
As if he was dropping a mask, the man outside stood up straight, no longer bothering to hide his face. As she watched, Kyle raised his hand, one that Brittany hadn’t been able to see through the hole, revealing he was carrying a hammer—which he slammed into the doorknob.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” she screamed through the door. He didn’t answer, but Brittany sure wasn’t sticking around. She sprinted for the bedroom where she had left her phone, grabbing it to call 9-1-1—only to find she wasn’t getting a signal. Weird, since Gus’s place usually had five bars, but she there was no time to troubleshoot it. Instead, she put her phone in the pocket of her shorts and locked the bedroom door. The banging on the front door continued as Brittany fought with the heavy dresser to push it against the door as a barricade. She got it in place just as she heard the front door bang open.
And then silence.
She took the time to look around the room, searching for anything that could be used as a weapon, but didn’t find anything. The room had windows, but no balcony, no fire escape.
Trapped.
Kyle’s voice came through the door, sounding familiar now that he wasn’t trying to disguise it.
“I didn’t want it to happen like this. You have to know that.”
If Brittany wasn’t so terrified, she would’ve laughed.
“Get the fuck out of my house.”
“This isn’t your house. This is his house.” There was bitterness in his voice at that, deep and righteous anger, and Brittany knew if he got that door open, she was in real trouble.
“I’m on the phone with the cops right now, asshole,” she lied. “Get the fuck out while you can before they arrest you.”
“You’re not calling anyone. I jammed the signal.”
Fuck, okay. So there was no calling the cops, and no escape unless Brittany felt like jumping out of a four-story window. And, doing the rough math in her head of her chances of survival, she decided that would fall into the ‘stupid’ category.
Brittany went to the closet, searching… and then gasped in relief. A baseball bat. Gus kept a baseball bat in his closet, and she was going to go to so many of his games to thank the universe for this gift.
She just had to survive first.
Brittany peeked out of the closet toward the door. Kyle hadn’t made a peep since he announced he had a jammer. Which was suspicious considering how much her stalker liked to ramble in his notes. Whenever she had thought about a future confrontation, she had always assumed he would be giving some lame villain speech about being misunderstood, but now he was silent as a cemetery.
As Brittany strained to listen at the door, she glanced down in time to see the doorknob jiggle. He was testing it.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Kyle yelled through the door. “Just apologize and open the door. I’ll forgive you. We can move on from here.”
“You’re out of your mind. I’m not apologizing for shit. Get the fuck out of here.”
“You won’t apologize? After all the gifts I sent you. The love notes. The poems. They really mean so little to you? Hell, I even offered you my hotel room to stay for the weekend. And here you are, completely ungrateful.”
Brittany felt her blood run cold. She had always known Kyle was handsy, and he constantly hit on her, but she had assumed he did that with every woman. She should’ve known, really. She blamed the adrenaline that had been coursing through her since she realized he was lying, that she hadn’t had time to put two and two together. But this was her stalker, the guy who had been sending her all the fucked-up things for over a year. The one the police had said they couldn’t do anything about unless he actually tried to hurt her. The one that her mother had hired security to protect her from.
And here she was. Unprotected. Alone. Fucked.
Brittany tried to remember how long ago Gus had left, but she couldn’t. She had been in a post-orgasmic haze and hadn’t looked at the clock. But he would be back eventually. She just had to survive until then. So Brittany gripped Gus’s bat and planted her feet.
She called through the door. “My boyfriend’s on his way back. He’s going to fucking murder you.”
“You’re not understanding, sweetheart. I’m your boyfriend. And if that fucking meathead you’ve been screwing behind my back shows up, I’m going to put an entire round of bullets into his fucking head.”
Well, that wasn’t going to happen as far as Brittany was concerned. She’d leave with Kyle if it meant Gus was unharmed.
As she watched, the doorknob jiggled again… and then the lock turned. The fucker had found the stupid flimsy key, which meant the only thing standing between Brittany and him was the dresser and her backswing.
The door started thumping as Kyle threw himself against it, slamming the dresser away from the door inch by inch. Brittany gripped the bat, trying to remember all the things her eighth-grade softball coach told her, never realizing how it would actually transfer into the real world.
Brittany ducked into the closet. There was nothing to keep Kyle from getting in there, not if he had the interior door key, and there wasn’t more furniture to use to block. The bed was too large for her to move, and the dresser was already on duty. If she survived this, she was going to talk to Gus about living a more maximalist lifestyle.
A shattering noise had Brittany ducking into the closet, gripping her bat tighter as the asshole managed to destroy the lock on the door, leaving only the dresser standing in between him and Brittany.
“You’re making this very difficult on yourself, Brittany.”
“Kyle, you’re a fucking psychopath. You need to have your head examined.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
“Well, it wasn’t nice to send me a bunch of weird paintings you whacked off on, so consider this karma coming back to you.”
There was more banging, and Brittany knew he was making progress on moving the dresser.
“I wish you could understand that we’re meant to be together.”
“You’re meant to be in prison, Kyle.”
“We’ll see about that.”
After a few more shoves, it was suddenly silent in the bedroom, which was somehow even worse.
“It’s better for you if you just come out,” he said. “I won’t have to punish you. We could just move on from this and finally start our lives together.”
Brittany closed her eyes, fighting the nausea that the dread brought. She didn’t dare speak to reveal her location, but Kyle wouldn’t have to search for her long.
“But if this is really how you want to play it, then fine. I can teach you a lesson in what real love is.”
His footsteps were soft on the rug, but she could still make them out if she held her breath. She forced herself to wait, knowing Kyle was probably planning some move, something to catch her off guard, and Brittany couldn’t let that happen. Another step, another…
And then she stepped out, already swinging the bat and catching Kyle as hard as she could in his shoulder. Fuck, she had been aiming for his head. But still, it pushed him to the side, and she took the moment of distraction to attempt to sprint past him, still holding the bat as she raced to the door. But just as she got back into the living room, her hair was yanked back, pulling her along with it.
“Fuck fuck fuck—”
He pulled her to him, and she felt the heat of him and his breath near her ear and had to swallow back the bile that rose in her throat. His arm clamped around her waist, holding her still, but she struggled as much as she could, doing her best to ignore the stinging pain in her scalp.
“You feel so good in my arms. We can finally be together, Brittany. I’ve waited for you for so long.”
Brittany thought about playing along but knew she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t strong enough to pretend like that. Instead, she struggled, trying to get an angle to kick him, but Kyle anticipated her move.
“Let go of me, you sick fuck.”
He pulled harder on her hair, her eyes watering with the pain.
“You’ll change your tune shortly. Just have to teach you a lesson first.”
“Fuck your lesson.”
Kyle’s hand rose, cupping her chin, digging into her face and cheeks in a way that Brittany knew would leave a bruise.
“Lesson one: bitches don’t get to talk to their master that way.”
Kyle shoved her then, knocking her off her feet and onto the ground, and she instinctively dropped the bat to catch herself on the ground. Which was a big mistake since he immediately kicked it away. She scrambled to stand, but before she could he kicked her, hard, right in her side in a way that she figured her ribs were gonna have words about later. He flipped her over, kneeling while straddling her body, and her whole body fought and fought, scratching and swinging and kicking and bucking to get Kyle off of her.
“Stop fighting me.”
“Fuck you.”
His hands came around her throat, cutting off her air supply, and she grabbed his wrists, trying to ease the iron grip he had on her, struggling for breath. He leaned over her, in her face, his eyes alight with manic energy, and she knew this was the last thing she was going to see before she died.
“We could’ve been something. You finally ditched that loser and we were going to be together. I had been so patient, so kind, everything a woman wanted.”
He leaned closer, his grip even tighter, and Brittany’s vision started to go dark.
“And then you fucked his brother like the whore you are. How could you do that? Have you no self-respect?”
It took everything in her to drive her knee up into his groin, but Kyle shifted at the last minute and she hit his thigh. His chuckle was wet in her ear.
“I’m an idiot for loving you. You know that, right? I could’ve had any girl, but I thought you were special. But you’re not. You’re just like every other woman. You use men and spit them out. Well, that ends here. Hopefully you’ll serve as a lesson to women as what happens when they—”
Whatever garbage he had been about to spout was cut off as he was grabbed and thrown off of Brittany. She gasped for air, turning over on her side as she took in gulp after gulp, not sure what happened but grateful for the second chance she had been given. Spying the bat in the corner of her eye, she lunged for it, grabbing it before staggering to her feet… only to stop dead in her tracks.
Gus was there, broad and strong and angry as fuck, judging by the flush of his skin and the way his powerful fist drove into the stalker’s face over and over again. Brittany watched, her body still tense as she gripped the bat, just in case the guy made a move against Gus.
Finally, Gus dropped the guy to the ground, a crumple of clothes and blood where a man used to be. He turned, finding Brittany immediately and going to her. Gus pulled her tight against him, and that’s when she heard him muttering to himself, his words barely above a whisper.
“You’re okay, you’re okay, tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” she croaked, wincing at the sound, her throat already hurting. “Are you okay?”
She felt him nod against her.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“Don’t let me go.”
“Baby, I’m never letting you go again.”