Chapter 22 Ledger
LEDGER
Outside, the dimming sky swallows the treetops, shadows stretching long enough to bury me in plain sight.
I traced the edges of her neighborhood until every street was etched into my mind. Studied her movements—how she always takes the same route home, sometimes stopping at the little café near her school where she works. She should’ve been home by now.
So why isn’t she?
Fear seizes me by the throat, its claws sinking in until my breath comes heavy and ragged. What if something happened to her?
Fuck, I should’ve waited. Should’ve stayed parked across the street like I always do. Tracked her the second she stepped out of that damn school.
That’s what I’ve done the first few weeks after I dropped her off, always lurking in the shadows, memorizing her habits. Then I grew comfortable.
I’ll regret that today.
She’s never spent a night out before. Where could she be?
My mind cycles through every grim, unspoken possibility, but I rein it in. It’s probably just a spontaneous outing. The weather’s warming up, and she’s young. No reason to expect the worst.
In a second I’ll dial her number—the one I’d stolen from the backroom schedule at the coffee shop she works at. Getting in hadn’t even been a challenge. The idiot working the counter was glued to his phone, too busy sneaking out back for a cigarette to notice me slip in.
Then comes a quiet thought. It reverberates in my head, low and implacable, until my body locks up—stiff as a metal rod.
What if she’s with a boy?
Jealousy simmers in my chest, coating my insides with something thick and volatile, just waiting to spark. I refuse to imagine anybody besides me having a claim over her. The thought alone is enough to strike a nerve.
I knew it would happen at some point. She isn’t mine.
Will never be mine.
I’m not any good for her. It all circles back to why I shouldn’t be here in the first place.
That incessant thought grinds into me, but I shove it down, pulling my hoodie up as I slip around the side of the house.
I keep low as I advance toward the back fence, planting a boot on a low, splintered slat and lifting myself over, the wood giving a thin creak beneath my weight.
I’m not too worried about getting caught.
The few neighboring houses are spaced far enough apart, and the yard stretches wide, the grass wild and unkempt, left to slither up the siding like garden snakes drawn to the warmth glowing through her bedroom window.
There’s a maple tree near the edge of the house, its aging trunk angled toward the faded vinyl siding like it’s meant to be scaled like a ladder. I grab the lowest branch and hoist myself up, just as I have many times before, reaching the top in seconds.
Her window is cracked slightly open, as usual. I wedge a hand past the mesh screen, fingers curling along the edges until it pops free from its frame. Once the gap is wide enough, I haul myself through it without glancing back.
It feels just as invasive as the first time.
Inside, her room is pristine. Everything’s neatly tucked away, aside from a pair of pale lavender panties hanging over the rim of a laundry basket tucked into the corner.
My eyes snag on the dainty fabric as I drift closer, the space dimly lit by a faint line of string lights wrapped around her headboard.
It gives her room not just warmth, but a kind of life that the rest of the house lacks.
I stop in front of the basket. The panties sit there, waiting to be plucked off the woven edge and thrown into the pile of clothes inside.
I reach for it against my better judgment, bringing it close. My eyes screw shut as I breathe it in, slow and deep. Her scent is intoxicating, heady enough to fog my thoughts and send a rush of heat into my cock. My knuckles tighten around the soft fabric. I shouldn’t be here. I know I shouldn’t.
My other hand shoots up into my hair, fingers curling into the tufts at my scalp, tension yanking them forward.
Every day, I swear it’ll be the last time.
Just to make sure she’s okay. See if the cops come back again—which, thank fuck, they haven’t—but even that isn’t enough to reassure me.
The hours, days, and weeks all start to blur together, each one piling onto the next, dragging me back to the same desperate place, tethered to a sick need I don’t understand. Can’t cut off.
It sounds fucked up…but I’m all she has.
I realized it only moments after she’d gotten back. Nobody ever showed up at her doorstep; aside from those two officers, she was always alone. At home, walking to school, leaving work.
What if some creep tries to exploit that? Takes notice of her walking alone at night and follows her home? She has no one to make sure she’s safe.
Nobody to check her locks.
Nobody to sit with her when it gets dark or shut her windows before bed. She keeps them open all day, for fuck's sake.
I can’t just leave her like that. Vulnerable. Exposed. The world is too cruel. Too scary. I’d know.
I’m part of what had harmed her. The reason her head still whips back anytime a car speeds past her on the road. It all feeds the self-contempt I already feel, the guilt, the pressure, all racked up and weighing me down.
I can’t just leave. But I also can’t be part of her life, either.
So where does that take us? Besides me slipping through her house when it’s unoccupied or watching her from a careful distance?
I’ve screwed up so much before, in so many different ways, and I deal with it the only way I know how—by disconnecting. Locking up the feelings and shoving them deep down.
Aria’s the exception to that.
I can’t act right when it comes to her. These unruly feelings always resurface, pulling me back in.
If I were even a little superstitious, I’d say she bewitched me the day I first saw her, tying our fates together in a way that’s impossible to break, try as I might.
I’ll ultimately have to learn to sever that tie.
It’s what’s best for her.
She wouldn’t want me here, standing in her room, touching her things, spamming her phone with calls that usually go to voicemail.
I head over to her bed, sit on the edge, and tap her number from my call history. The mattress dips beneath me, her pink duvet soft but uneven, faded from too many washes and frayed at the corner, a quiet contradiction to the version of her I built in my head from our time in the woods.
It rings, slow and drawn out, my jaw stiff as I brace myself for the familiar beep I’ve become accustomed to, but she answers on the fourth ring.
My grip tightens over my phone, but I don’t move as her voice comes through the speaker. Even my breath is held back, afraid it’ll give me away.
“Hello?” she says, her sweet voice floating into my ear, low and hesitant.
My airways narrow to a stifling pinpoint, spine straightening, each heavy thump in my chest growing louder the longer she stays on the line. Don’t hang up.
“Hello?” she says again. “Anyone there?”
I part my lips. The urge to respond scrapes my throat, but nothing comes out besides air, trailing from me like bubbles above a sinking ship.
“Aria, come pick out a movie,” another girl calls out nearby.
Instantly, my shoulders relax. The tension that infiltrated my muscles and joints eases away. She’s just spending the night at a friend’s. See? She’s fine.
That’s all I ever wanted for her to be. Fine.
So why aren’t I hanging up yet?
“Aria,” the other girl calls out again, louder this time. She says something back, but it’s warped into static before the line goes dead. The room’s silence takes over.
I lower the phone between my legs, watching the screen slowly dim to black.
This should be the part where I get up to leave, now that the mystery’s resolved. Only something still holds me back, like an unsent text left to rot on my phone.
My attention snaps back to the bed, on how out of place I look sitting here, my clothes stark and heavy against the pink softness of her bedding, like a moldy spot that needs to be scrubbed out.
She’s slowly getting better day by day. This is proof of that.
With time, I’ll become nothing but a faded memory, hazy, half-formed, not something she’ll recognize as real, but as a fragment from a distant dream.
I want that for her. She deserves at least that from me.
That’s why I’ve sworn I’ll stay away, only keeping an eye out on her from afar until she’s secure enough to be on her own.
Pushing off the bed, I realize the panties remain bundled in my grasp. I swallow hard, my thumb grazing the soft fabric as I cast a quick glance at the laundry basket. But I don’t toss it in like I should.
My fingers stall before I slip it into my pocket alongside my phone, telling myself it isn’t a big deal. That it means nothing. It’s as close to her as I can get, just enough to appease the beast inside me without causing any harm.
Nothing wrong with that. It’s not crossing the line.
I repeat it to myself, like that’ll make it true, but the twist in my gut says otherwise. If I’m not careful, it’ll grow, expand large enough to breach the point where I can’t reel it back.
I slip out of her room the same way I came in, pausing only to fix the mesh screen on my way down.
Just like that, I’m gone. Almost like I was never here.