20. Wrenley
I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.
The days blur together, bleeding into the weekend without so much as a flicker of acknowledgment from the woman I’m dangerously close to falling for. Things return to how they were—work rivals at each other’s throats—except now, I’m also getting the silent treatment.
On Wednesday, I wait outside her office for her to finish a call. It drags on longer than it should, and I have to abandon my attempt at a white flag or risk standing up a source for a piece I’m working on. Thursday, I take her last yogurt in full view of our coworkers, waiting for her to storm over and berate me for stealing her snacks. But she never does. Today, she ignores me completely when I step into her office and ask if we can have dinner .
No ghost of a smile. No smartass quip about me caving first. Just silence. Dove stares at her computer screen, her pink sparkly nails catching the light as her fingers tap steadily on her keyboard as if I’m not even there.
I let my gaze drift across the space, moving toward where she keeps her things. She’s focused enough not to notice when I lean against the ledge where her small purse sits, slipping a tracking device onto the back of a pink Zippo she hasn’t used since we became serious—because she knows how I feel about her smoking.
The point of writing about the Doll was to get close to her. I wanted her attention, her time. I crossed the country in hopes that my public praise would get her to notice me.
I wanted a relationship with her—to get an exclusive look into her beautifully fucked-up mind and convince her to bare her soul to a lowly man who could only hope to hold her interest beyond one lucky evening.
To my absolute, utter luck, I got more than that. At least, I’m ninety-nine point nine percent sure I did.
And I really don’t want to fuck that up.
“Are you seriously not going to speak to me?” I turn back around, but her attention remains fixed, her posture indifferent.
I did call her a bitch. I suppose I deserve this.
I’ll get on my knees and beg for forgiveness if she lets me.
“Dove,” I sigh, moving to stand beside her. “I’m sorry.”
The clicking of the keys falters. Encouraged, I push forward. “You were right. I shouldn’t have barged in and expected anything to be handed to me. Hell, I shouldn’t have even assumed I’d get the opportunity to write about the Doll. It was presumptuous. Sexist. And I’m sorry. I understand where you’re coming from, and I don’t want to fight with you.”
“We aren’t fighting, Songbird.” She resumes typing, her voice light, airy—completely devoid of anger or concession. “We just aren’t fucking.”
I don’t point out that we haven’t actually fucked yet.
We’ve done a lot of things. But anytime we get close to the actual act, Dove pulls away like a not-so-virginal virgin convinced God will smite her if she puts a P in her V before marriage.
Reaching out, I twirl a lock of bubblegum-and-vanilla hair around my finger. “What do I have to do to make it up to you?”
From my angle, I see her eyes flicker away from the screen. But instead of relaxing into my touch, she stiffens, edging away. “I’m trying to work, Wren.”
Still pissed.
Point taken.
Or maybe she’s pushing you away because you hurt her.
But Dove said some things that weren’t exactly kind, either. Calling me an emotional woman when I was just trying to explain the unfairness of her making me think I had a chance at publishing a Doll article? Yeah. Not my favorite moment.
Still. I get it. She’s clawed her way to success in a male-dominated field.
“Okay.” I lean down, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, inhaling the sugary scent of her shampoo. “I’m here. When you’re ready to talk.”
She hums noncommittally, and it spears through my chest like the tip of her dagger—if she is the Doll.
Back in my office, I pull up the tracker app to confirm it’s working and pray to God she doesn’t smoke before Monday. I need to know if she’s telling the truth about her mother. Or if there’s a more nefarious reason she’s lying.
One that involves babydoll nighties and a mask that haunts my dreams.
Well. She’s definitely lying about her mom.
Saturday evening, I follow Dove to an isolated area between Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park. I spend the long drive convincing myself that maybe she’s meeting her mother somewhere outside the city. Or that she’s working over the weekend, hunting a lead.
But when her rented black sedan parks outside the seediest motel I’ve ever seen—the kind with metal keys instead of keycards—I know she’s not here for a family visit.
A slow, crawling anticipation settles over me as I watch her haul a sizable black duffel into a room, surveying her surroundings like she’s mapping easy exit strategies should things take a turn and she needs to flee quickly.
With every passing second that brings me closer to the truth, I become more certain.
I’m watching the girl of my dreams set up for a murder.
Inky black darkness settles over the sky, the stars winking to life one by one, like glittering diamonds as the night grows longer. Parked in the vacant lot of a run-down store next to the hotel, I watch through binoculars.
I nearly text her and ask how things are going with her mom, but she’s not talking to me anyway, so I know it won’t matter even if I do. My phone sits abandoned in the cup holder, the screen lighting up now and then with messages from Hunter checking in. He’s staking out Bunny’s newest date and apparently, this one actually has him worried. I feel slightly bad I’m not there. But he thinks I’m chasing a lead upstate.
Which… technically, I am.
Technically, this is a type of lead. It didn’t seem like there was much in Dove’s bag, though. Is her costume in there? Her weapons? Whatever it is she paints on her skin to avoid leaving DNA all over the place?
At this point, I know she doesn’t film every encounter, and there’s no way professional film equipment would fit in the bag with everything else. So, unless she’s recording on her phone, I don’t think tonight is the type of confrontation she documents.
My thoughts shift to my ever-present question of why she sends videos to the police. Yes, they have the victim’s personal information, but what is the point of the show? So they can see that she catches more pedophiles than they could ever hope to? Or does she just enjoy the song and dance—pun intended.
An older-model silver Tacoma with a black bed cap pulls up beside Dove’s sedan, interrupting my rambling thoughts as I try to deconstruct her purpose for doing things the way she does.
The beast inside me roars to life when I see a man step out, dressed in black, with a baseball cap pulled low. Even through the binoculars, I have to squint to see his face .
Is that…?
No.
“No. She wouldn’t do that to me,” I say out loud, trying to convince myself that what I’m looking at is a trick of the light and not cruel reality staring me in the face.
Fucking Ryan.
Hunter said Ryan was suspended after what he pulled at the bar. Even if I deserved a punch, shoving Dove sealed his fate. That’s what ultimately landed him in the most trouble.
So why the hell is she meeting him in secret all the way out here?
My stomach drops, acid rising in my throat. I told her everything he’d said. How could she? Why would she?
It feels like my heart has cannonballed into my stomach, splashing bile back up into my esophagus.
Ryan pulls his hat down, further obscuring his face as he knocks on the door, glancing over his shoulder as he waits.
If they were meeting like this on purpose, wouldn’t she expect him to just walk in?
The door opens. A sliver of peachy light appears on the dirty, cracked concrete walkway outside the room. I shift, trying to see Dove with what little room Ryan leaves as the hulking dickwad takes up most of the doorway.
She’s… surprised?
Dove’s light brown brows shoot into her hairline as she stares up at him, frozen with one hand on the door and the other on the frame. My knuckles whiten as I grip the binoculars tighter when I see she’s wearing a pink and red babydoll, her hair pulled up in pigtails.
Just like the Doll sometimes does.
But the look on her face isn’t one of a stone-cold killer. No, she looks scared. And that pisses me off.
Ryan surges forward. One second, he’s standing still. The next, his hands are around her throat, shoving her backward, kicking the door shut behind him.
What the fuck?
I’m out of my car before I realize I’ve moved, charging toward the room—until a sick thought claws its way into my brain.
What if it’s all a scene?
What if she needs this?
I slow, doubt creeping in like poison.
She’s dressed like an adult version of a little kid. She was abused as a child. What if this is her way of coping with it? What if that’s why they were even—are even?—a thing. He’s an asshole, but maybe he gives her what she needs to deal with her past .
I know it’s a rational, and even potentially therapeutic, way to deal with trauma. Sometimes, it takes returning to the bad place to face it head-on.
But I can’t even face my own trauma. I stayed in the same state as my abuser for years because I don’t know how to confront her or heal from what she’s done. She’s like a sticky substance I can’t scrub from my skin—the shadows deep in the recesses of my mind I can never escape.
How the fuck can I be that for Dove if I can’t even help myself?
I hear no sounds coming from the building.
No struggles. No cries for help.
What if that’s why she’s been avoiding me? She basically called me weak when we fought, and I am. I really fucking am.
I don’t know if I’m equipped to help her with her trauma if this is how she deals with it. I know it’s unfair—I haven’t been honest with her about my past.
What if she needs this and I can’t give it to her?
Lowering to a squat, I thread my fingers over my head as turmoil creeps through my body like a thick, noxious gas.
I thought I was coming to confirm her alter ego as the Doll.
Dove looked scared, though. Genuinely surprised to see Ryan .
“Arrghh!” I growl, pushing forward.
If they’re fucking, I’ll quit. I’ll go back to California and pretend none of this ever happened. If she’s been playing me—using me—this whole time, even if it’s a way for her to cope, I’ll never be able to forgive her.
But there’s still a tiny part of me that wonders if she’s truly in trouble.
“They’re probably laughing about how pathetic and stupid you are,” I mumble as I approach the dilapidated building, letting my intrusive thoughts tear her to pieces as my mind gears up to protect me from what I’m about to see.
But what if…
What if I’m wrong?