Branded

Chapter Thirty-Five

IT’S BEEN A week, and he’s still living his life.

If following me around is what you call life, and apparently, he does.

He stands outside my window every night and doesn’t leave until I turn out my lights.

Every morning as I leave for work, I once again find him standing under my favorite tree, waiting for me.

And then he walks me all the way to the abused-women’s shelter where I’m volunteering for the summer.

He disappears after that to God knows where and then comes back around when it’s lunchtime.

So he can follow me to a café nearby—not the one where we first met; I steer clear of that one on purpose—and watch me order my tea and my strawberry crumb muffin.

I realize it’s not really lunch, but that’s all the appetite I have these days.

Anyway, once I have my lunch, he walks me back—from a distance—to the shelter and comes back to do the same when the day’s over and I need to go back.

Not once during this whole one-week period has he approached me or tried to talk to me.

Well, except for the first day when he left a note at my door.

I saw it when I came back from work. It said: You need to eat lunch.

Because he must have seen me ordering my muffin and didn’t like it.

I’m not going to lie, it pissed me off a little bit.

So much so that I took off the note taped to my door, unlocked it, and went to the window.

As always, he was there under the tree, waiting for my lights to come on so he’d know I was home safe.

As if some danger could befall me while climbing up two flights of stairs from the front door of the building to my apartment on the third floor.

I stared at him through the space, made a big show of holding the note up, and then crushed it in my hand and threw it into the trash can I held in my other hand.

I will admit that my anger lasted for only about fifteen minutes.

At which point I went back to the can, fished his note out, and stored it in the desk drawer with all his other letters and notes.

And then wrote him a note and went outside to attach it to the tree.

I am eating lunch. PS: You need to stop following me.—R

To which he responded with:

Strawberry crumb muffin is not lunch. PS: I can’t.—A

It is, if I want it to be. PS: Yes, you can.—R

If you don’t start eating properly, I’m going to have to tell Haven. And she’s already worried about you. PS: No.—A

Are you threatening to tell on me? PS: People at my work think you’re a creep.—R

Yes, I am because again, you need to eat. PS: I don’t care about other people.—A

You’re an asshole. I’ll eat what I want. PS: What if someone calls the cops? You’re still on parole.—R

I called Haven today. She said she’s going to send food with Ax. You can freeze it until you’re ready to eat. PS: Again, I don’t care about other people.—A

He did call Haven, and she called me the next day, worried.

I told her I was fine and that I missed her.

She said I should come visit soon. I agreed because I didn’t want to seem rude, but we both knew I was lying.

And then I cried for hours—I seem to do that every night, actually—because I can’t believe he told on me and that my freezer is now overflowing with Haven’s delicious cooking.

I can’t believe that for the past week, we’ve been passing notes like we’re in grade school and he still won’t leave.

So today, on day eight, I’ve decided to take the matter into my own hands.

When I see him standing at the tree as I’m leaving for work, instead of ignoring him and going on my way, I head to him.

I watch him stand up straight as he notices me crossing the street to him, and then I watch him watch me.

Take in my pink-colored lacy dress—it’s one of the dresses he bought me—and my Mary Janes.

He looks at my braid hanging over my shoulder, and for a few seconds his eyes become glued to the swishing end, his fists clenching at his sides as if he’s imagining touching it, my hair.

Just as I reach him, he looks up, and I say, “What happened to your hand?”

This wasn’t the question I planned on asking him. So I’m surprised it came out, but it makes sense because there’s a bandage around his right palm and it looks similar to the one he had the night he rescued me. And he’s had it for two weeks now and shouldn’t it be healed?

“Cut my hand,” he says, his eyes never moving from mine.

“Again?”

“Yeah.”

“At the same spot?”

“At the same spot.”

“How’s that…” I take a deep breath and let it go before asking, “Where do you live?”

He shifts on his feet. “In the bunkhouse.”

“What bunkhouse?”

“The ranch where I work.”

I frown. “You’re working here?”

His lips twitch a little, and I swear to God, he looks like the Arsen back at Rawhide, all cocky and arrogant with his Stetson, his dark T-shirt and washed out jeans.

His stubble-beard is back to being stubble, but his hair’s growing longer; I can see the strands curling at the nape of his neck.

The look is only for a moment, though, and then he’s back to being a contradiction.

Exhausted to the bone but oh so alive, like his life hasn’t ever been better. “What else would I be doin’?”

“I don’t know, going back to Black Rock? Working on your ranch. Breaking horses, thinking about your future. Any number of those things.”

“Can’t leave.”

I curl and uncurl my fingers. “How long are you going to keep this up?”

“Keep what up?” he asks almost cheerfully, like sparring with me first thing in the morning is putting him in good spirits.

“This. Following me around, watching me, standing under my window, writing notes to me.”

He pauses a beat to take me in. “You askin’ when I’m gonna die, darlin’? Because it won’t stop. Not until the last breath leaves my body.”

“Don’t call me that,” I say, my chest tight, my belly fluttering.

For a second it looks like he’s going to say something in retort, and God, I wait for it. Despite everything, I wait for him to give me a chance to sass him back. But a few seconds of scrutiny later, his chest swells with a breath. “You’re gettin’ late for work. And so am I.”

He tips his chin at me, asking me without words to get going, but I don’t move. Instead, I say, “You’re torturing yourself.”

He clenches his jaw then because he knows I’m right. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” I insist, my tone urgent. “At first, I thought it was just the café but you live in a bunkhouse, Arsen. With God knows how many cowboys. You need to stop. You need to go back.”

You need help.

I don’t say it, but I know he gets my meaning.

Because I’m right. He does need help, help with navigating on the outside.

Especially navigating in crowded places, restaurants, bunkhouses.

Every time I see him around lunch, his demeanor is different.

He’s on edge and intense, his frame tighter.

To the outside world, he probably looks threatening and dangerous with his clenched jaw and pitch-black eyes, but to me, he appears to be struggling.

The first time he showed up during lunch, I finally connected the dots from the very beginning. When we met at that café. Why he looked so intense and alert. It was his PTSD, among other things. And now every time he comes around, I want to go to him and shake some sense into him.

“I can handle myself,” he grunts, his jaw moving and back forth.

I don’t know how I do it, but I manage to keep myself from punching him in the face for being such a stubborn asshole. All I do is glare and ask, “You want to watch me then?”

“Never wanna stop watchin’ you.”

His tone makes my heart race, but I focus only on my anger, as I have been this past week. “Fine. Go ahead and watch me.”

This is diabolical, what I am doing, but it needs to be done.

He’s given me no other choice. I’ve tried everything, glaring at him on my way to work, freezing him out on my way back, repeatedly writing notes that tell him to leave. But he won’t listen. He won’t leave, and I want him to leave.

I need him to.

He was right that night. I do not deserve a man like him.

A man who breaks my heart over and over again.

A man who strips me bare, also over and over again.

Who lies and cheats and then comes all the way here to thank me for saving his life like I’m some kind of a hero instead of a pathetic girl in love who has trouble holding on to her justified anger at him.

Oh, and then he proceeds to torture himself on a daily basis.

It doesn’t matter if he loves me back, because it’s too late. We have too much history and misery between us.

So this is the only way to send him away, even though I want to throw up. Especially when the guy sitting in front of me reaches out and grabs my hand on the table with a smile that makes my insides crawl. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I pictured going on a date with another man.

He works at the shelter and has always been nice to me, smiling at me when I come in for work, waving good night to me at the end of the day.

Most of all, he’s not a cowboy. His parents do own a ranch, but he wasn’t ever interested in things like that.

His degree is in political science and psychology.

So he seemed like a perfect candidate to ask out to dinner.

Although I will say, I didn’t tell him this was a date.

All I said was I’d love to grab dinner with him tonight and catch up on things because I’m new here.

So this is a date only for pretend purposes.

For the purposes of my stalker who won’t leave me alone.

I figured if he wanted to watch, I should give him something to watch.