2. Maura
MAURA
Yes.
The word sits between us like evidence. Like a confession he didn't try to soften or explain away.
My stalker stepfather just told me he's been watching me, and I'm standing here in my apartment that apparently has cameras I can't even see, and the first clear thought that surfaces through the static in my brain is that he looks even better up close than he did at the wedding.
Which is DEEPLY not the priority right now.
Heat crawls up my neck before I can stop it. The kind of flush that starts low and spreads everywhere, turning my fair skin into a roadmap of inconvenient attraction.
I hate that I'm noticing this. I hate that my body is choosing this moment — broken pump on the floor, surveillance confession hanging in the air, pain radiating through my chest — to remind me that Mark Callahan is the only man who's ever made me feel anything physical.
But he is. God help me, he is.
At the wedding, I kept to the edges of the reception because every time I looked at him across the room, something in my stomach went tight and warm.
Now he's three feet away in my studio apartment, and the scale of him is overwhelming in a way that has nothing to do with the cameras. His shoulders make my apartment look like a dollhouse. His head almost reaches the ceiling.
His forearms are exposed where his sleeves are rolled back, tattoo ink disappearing under white fabric, and I can see the muscles underneath shift when he moves his hands.
Those hands. Christ. They're enormous.
My apartment smells different with him in it. Something clean and warm that doesn't belong in a building that reeks of other people's cooking. Something that makes me want to breathe deeper even though my ribs protest the movement.
The silence stretches. He's watching me process, and I can feel the weight of his attention like a physical thing. Gray eyes that don't look away, don't give me space to hide.
The intensity of his focus should be unsettling. It is unsettling. It's also the first time in months that someone has looked at me like I'm worth watching.
The contradiction sits in my chest like something sharp.
Pain spikes through my left breast, a reminder that I have more immediate problems than my body's spectacularly bad timing. I wince before I can hide it, and his eyes track the movement.
"Well," I say, because the silence is getting too heavy and when things get too intense, I deflect. "Cameras, seriously? Not even a trench coat and binoculars? I'm a little disappointed in your method."
Something shifts in his expression — not shock, exactly, but surprise. Like he expected tears or screaming or running, and got sarcasm instead. The corner of his mouth doesn't move, but something around his eyes changes. Softer, maybe. Or just different.
"You're handling this better than most people would."
"Most people probably have better options than I do."
The words slip out before I can catch them, honest in a way that makes me want to take them back. But they're true, and he knows they're true, and there's no point pretending otherwise.
I grip the arm of the couch behind me — not for support, just for something solid to hold onto while my world reorganizes itself around the fact that my stepfather has been watching me sleep.
"Have you been following me today?"
The question surprises him. His eyebrows pull together, just slightly, and his head tilts. Physical confusion I can read even from across the room.
"No. I was in meetings all day. Why?"
Relief and unease tangle in my stomach. Relief because I believe him — the confusion on his face is too immediate to be fake. Unease because if it wasn't him, then someone else was watching me on campus today.
Someone else's eyes following me between buildings, sitting heavy on my shoulders during the seminar, making my skin crawl in a way I couldn't shake.
I shake my head when he starts to ask more. Don't want to get into it. Don't want to think about other watchers when I'm still processing the one standing in my living room.
Another spike of pain shoots through my chest, sharper this time. My hand flies to my breast before I can stop it, and I bite back the sound that wants to escape.
The engorgement is getting worse. It's been over an hour since I was supposed to pump, and my body is making its displeasure known in increasingly violent ways.
"Let me help."
His voice is quieter now. Not gentle — I don't think gentle is in his vocabulary — but direct. Matter-of-fact. Like help is something he offers and not something I have to beg for.
I stare at him. This man who just confessed to installing cameras in my apartment. This man who's been watching me pump milk from my breasts like some kind of perverted nature documentary. This man who is offering to solve a problem I've been handling alone for months.
I know this is wrong. I know accepting help from your stalker stepfather is not in any self-help book ever written. I know the correct response is to tell him to leave, call the police, change my locks, and probably move to a different state.
But I am so tired.
Not just tonight tired.
Bone-deep, years-long exhaustion that sits in my chest like a weight I can't shift. The kind of tired that comes from being twenty-one and handling everything alone since I can remember. Bills I'm behind on — my phone, the electricity, the textbook for next semester.
Shifts at the coffee shop that run long because I can't afford to say no, and tips that never add up to enough. The smile I paste on for eight hours of strangers who think their latte emergency is the most important thing in the world.
Coming home to an empty apartment where the only sound is the radiator clanking and the neighbors fighting through thin walls.
The galactorrhea. The pills, the pump schedule, the constant management of a condition that shouldn't be mine to manage alone. The looks I get when I have to excuse myself to pump, like I'm doing something shameful instead of something medical.
The pain when I'm late, the exhaustion of pretending everything is fine when my body feels like it's betraying me daily.
My mother's last text. When was it? Five months ago? Seven? Eight? Some meaningless emoji-filled message about her new apartment or her new job or her new whatever-the-hell-she-was-doing that didn't include asking how I was doing.
I can't even remember the exact date because it was that insignificant.
I can't remember the last time someone offered to help without wanting something in return. Can't remember the last time someone saw that I needed help without me having to ask.
Mark is offering. Yes, he's a stalker. Yes, he installed cameras in my apartment. Yes, this is wrong in ways I can't even begin to catalog. But he's the first person who noticed I was in pain and came to my door instead of scrolling past.
There must be something broken in me. First the spontaneous lactation, now this. My body is broken and my judgment is broken and I'm too tired to care about either.
"How much do you know about me?"
"A lot."
Direct answer. No hedging, no false modesty about his invasion of my privacy. Just acknowledgment of what we both know is true.
"So you know I'm a virgin too?"
His eyes widen — not much, just a fraction, but enough that I notice. His throat moves as he swallows, hard, the muscles in his neck working visibly.
For a second, his gaze drops before snapping back to my face, and something tightens in his expression that I can feel from three feet away.
I smirk. Small, brief, the first real expression of myself I've shown him. "Guess you don't really know that much."
The shock clears from his face like clouds moving away from the sun. What replaces it makes my stomach clench in ways that have nothing to do with hunger.
His eyes narrow slightly, his jaw relaxes, and the way he looks at me changes — sharper, more focused, like he's recalibrating everything he thought he knew. "I intend to find out more."
The words land on me like a weight. Heat floods my face and spreads down my neck, pools low in my belly, between my thighs.
I look away first, which tells me something about myself I don't want to examine. My hands twist in the hem of my sweater, and the movement makes me wince as the fabric brushes against my swollen chest.
"This is wrong." The words come out quieter than I meant them to. "You're my stepfather."
He looks at me — really looks, like he's memorizing my face — and his voice drops. Not softer. Just more direct.
"We're not related by blood, Maura. And I've already crossed lines when it comes to you. What's one more?"
The logic is terrible and irrefutable and I know it.
The practical part of my brain is screaming that this is insane, that I should run, that normal people don't let their stepfather solve their medical emergencies. But the pain is blinding and his hands are right there and I have no other options.
And underneath all the practical reasons — buried beneath the exhaustion and the desperation and the simple mathematics of having nowhere else to turn — is something I won't admit. Not yet. Not out loud.
I want to know what his hands feel like.
"Okay," I whisper.
The agreement feels like stepping off a cliff. Free fall with no idea where I'm going to land.
Mark moves toward me, and even that small action changes the entire atmosphere of the room. He's careful — deliberately slow, telegraphing his movements like he's approaching something that might bolt. But there's nothing uncertain in his posture.
This is a man who makes decisions and follows through. "Take off your sweater."
Command, not request. The tone should bother me. Should make me bristle or argue or remind him that he doesn't get to tell me what to do.
Instead, something in my stomach clenches tight and warm, and I hate myself for the way my body responds to being told what to do.