Chapter Twenty-Six
Sailor
The next couple of months are a complete blur. School keeps me so busy I have no time for anything else—not even talking to Shadow, who consistently checks up on me and is entirely too understanding of my schedule.
We’ve had phone sex a couple times, mostly him talking me through it, with lots of picture sending, but mostly I’m too tired to do anything.
Classes are long and the homework is challenging.
All I want to do when I have free time is sleep.
But of course I squeeze in time for Amelia.
We have weekly girl nights now since our lunches didn’t stick.
She comes over, we order out, watch a movie, sometimes have a drink or two, and she always sleeps over.
Tonight we’re getting tacos, and since they tend to take forever to be delivered, I’ve already put in the order while waiting for Amelia to show up.
I’m just finishing up my last editing run through on my essay and then I’ll be all caught up on my homework.
Girls night has rules, and Rule #1 is no homework. Rule #2 is no talking about school—at least no more than ten minutes total.
Sometimes that’s difficult because some of my teachers are jerks and I want to rant, but in the end, it’s nice to forget about my biggest stress and spend time with my best friend.
Amelia should be here in about a half hour, and hopefully the food will be here before that so we can eat as soon as she gets in—I’m starving since it’s closing in on eight. I haven’t eaten since 12:30, and it was hardly anything of substance.
I close my laptop, put it away, then quickly change into a pair of fleece pants and a T-shirt.
There is a knock on the door the moment I toss my dirty clothes into the laundry basket, and I hurry over, my mouth watering.
I pull the door open with a huge smile on my face—that quickly falls the moment I see who is standing on the other side.
“Wh—what are you—I don’t understand—”
“Can I come in, please?”
I can’t pull my eyes away from the man standing on the other side of the door. As badly as I want to look away and slam the door in his face, I am frozen still. Why the hell is Sam here?
“Sailor, please,” he whispers before glancing over his shoulder. “I don’t know if it’s safe.”
Those words have me snapping out of it.
“Safe?” I say.
“Sailor, look… I know things got really crazy and I was acting weird, but I have an explanation. I need you to please let me in so we can talk.”
Something about his tone, about the look on his face, has me moving aside.
When I was living with Sam, he looked like hell. I remember thinking he’d been possessed. Right now, he looks so much like the Sam I remember, only a little tired.
Letting him in may not be a good idea; this could all be a huge mistake, but… that look in his eyes says otherwise.
I close the door but I don’t lock it—just in case.
Turning to face Sam, I find him pacing and running a hand through his hair.
“I need you to explain as soon as possible.”
“Of course,” he says firmly. “But first I need you to tell me if you know someone named Jaxon Voss?”
The room around me spins, and before I know what’s happening, arms are around me and everything is going black. I’m placed on something soft as everything comes back into focus.
“Sailor, are you okay?” I blink my eyes, and Sam comes into view. I’m on the couch, and he’s kneeling in front of me. “I think you passed out for a few seconds.”
“Did you say Jaxon Voss?”
I’ve never been told Jaxon’s last name, but that feels right. It just… feels right.
“I take it you know him?”
Without blinking, I nod slowly. It has to be him.
“How do you know him?” he asks.
I’m so confused by what is going on right now…
“How do you know him?” I ask.
Fear hits my chest again, and I worry that letting Sam in here was a mistake. What if he became obsessed after I left and found out that I was dating someone else? What if he’s angry, and he’s here to hurt me over it?
“Did he hurt you?”
“No,” I say quickly. “No, of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sam, what is going on? How do you know Jaxon?”
I sit up slowly.
With a heavy breath, he drops beside me on the couch.
“After you left, I started to feel different. Better. I hadn’t realized how messed up I was while you were there, until you left. I could not figure out what was going on and why I felt so foggy while you were around and why I hardly remembered anything at all.”
He runs his hands through his hair and leans back on the couch.
“A couple of days ago,” he continues. “There was a knock on my door a few minutes after I got home. I—”
There is a knock on my door that has both of us whipping our heads in that direction. My heart skips a beat, but then I remember I’m waiting for someone…
“Shit,” I mutter as I get up and go to the door.
I pull it open to find the delivery man standing there. I give him a quick smile and take the bags of food he offers, just as a car pulls up in front of the driveway and Amelia gets out.
“Thank you so much,” I say to the driver.
Amelia comes up with a huge smile on her face, until she gets closer. It falls the moment she notices something wrong.
“Everything okay?” she asks as she steps in.
Her attention goes to Sam and she frowns as she looks back at me.
“This is Sam,” I say, gesturing to him.
“Sam as in…”
“Yeah.” I lock the door. “Sam, this is Amelia.”
“Hey,” he says, giving her a little wave.
I put the food on the counter then go back to the couch. Amelia is still standing by the door looking at us like we’ve grown second heads.
“Amelia knows everything, if you’re okay talking about this in front of her, but we did have plans so I don’t want to tell her to go.”
Sam nods. “As long as you’re okay with it?”
“Absolutely.”
Amelia’s brow raises as she shrugs off her jacket and sits cross legged on the floor in front of the couch, facing me and Sam.
“Okay, so, one of my neighbors was at my door. I’d seen the guy around a few times, but never really talked to him.
He asked to come in because he had something serious to tell me.
What he told me was… crazy. And then things got even crazier.
” He pauses, taking a deep breath and letting it out.
“He told me that he saw a guy breaking into my apartment.”
“What?” Amelia and I both blurt at the same time.
“Many times,” he adds. “I guess he set up a camera on the peephole of his door. He didn’t check the feed often because he works so much, but then he heard a weird story from one of the guys upstairs.
His mother had a weird run in with someone claiming to work with the landlord, so he went searching for the video and found so much more.
Someone was breaking in pretty consistently. ”
I can’t breathe.
I already know where this is going before he explains it.
“The guy came by when we both weren’t there, which meant he had cameras inside the house to see when we were gone. I found them—a lot of them. And they all had miniSD cards so I was able to watch the feed. It’s…”
I hold my breath as I wait for him to answer, hoping like hell he didn’t see what I did… If there were cameras in the house, set up by Jaxon, and Sam watched them? He’ll know what I did with Shadow. And not only that… that means Jaxon knows too.
“Let’s just say I wasn’t able to watch all of it, but the good thing is it doesn’t seem he was ever there while we were there.”
The breath releases from my lungs.
“But I saw him—“ He grits his jaw, eyes closing. “I saw him switch my meds.”
“What?” Once again, Amelia and I blurt this at the same time.
“Sleeping pills. He switched my vitamins and put in sleeping pills—which explains why I was a walking fucking zombie.”
“Oh my god…”
“Sailor, if you know this guy, he’s dangerous and you need to get a restraining order.”
I glance at Amelia who is watching us both carefully, her face giving away nothing.
“I… have the situation under control,” I say carefully.
The room falls silent, until Sam speaks again.
“He’s the reason you came to me, isn’t it?”
I look at him from the corner of my eye, and I don’t have to say anything for him to know the answer.
“He’s dangerous, Sailor.”
“I know that,” I answer.
“So, what are you doing? Has he been here? Is he following you? What if he’s breaking in here?”
“He isn’t,” I say firmly.
“How do you know that?”
“Sam, you just have to trust me, okay?”
He stares at me, blinking. “Sailor—”
“I promise I’m safe. Just trust me,” I plead.
He doesn’t look like he believes me, but he doesn’t say anything else. I can’t explain all of this to him. He’ll never understand…
“How—” I begin, but stop and lick my lips. “How did you get his name?”
“The information on the cards leads back to him. He didn’t hide his tracks very well,” he says with a roll of his eyes.
That’s surprising… Jaxon doesn’t seem like the type who would make such a stupid mistake.
“How are you feeling?” Amelia asks.
“Yes, please tell me you’re okay,” I add.
“Yeah, I am. I started to feel better a couple weeks after you left, and I’ve been wanting to call and apologize but I didn’t know what to say or how to say it… but now that I know what happened, I had to come here.”
“I appreciate it, Sam. Seriously.”
“I’m sorry about everything that happened—especially the way I was acting. I was not in my right mind. Taking sleeping pills with my normal meds… God, it’s so bad.”
I take his hand. “It’s okay. I understand.”
The room falls silent again. This time it’s Amelia that breaks it.
“If you want to stick around, you can eat with us?” she offers.
“Yeah, that would be nice. As long as you’re okay with it?” he asks me.
“Sure, yeah, that’s fine.”
The three of us get up and work together to get the food out and onto plates.
We sit at the table and eat dinner, making small talk about school and work.
It’s nice, so nice, to have this with Sam.
I didn’t realize how messed up I was over this situation until just now, when it’s all laid out in front of me.
I offer for Sam to stay because it’s late, but he says he got a hotel because he didn’t know how the night would go and didn’t plan to drive back.
He pushes for me to tell him more, but I tell him it’s best if I don’t, and once again explain that he just needs to trust me.
We hug before he leaves, and he says goodbye to Amelia on his way out.
I lock up the door, and press my back against.
“What the fuck have you gotten mixed up in?” Amelia asks, crossing her arms over her chest.
I groan, and slide down to the floor.
I have no damn idea.