Thirty-Five
THIRTY-FIVE
VANESSA
“Thanks for the ride.” I reach for the door on Theresa’s truck and stall. “Are you sure me taking this week off isn’t an issue?”
She leans back against the bench seat, twisting to face me better. “You’re seriously asking me that.”
My fingers curl around the lever. I could give it a tug and bolt, tell her to forget about it, and figure things out when I get back. But the past weeks have been strange in a way. Nobody has changed—I have. The people around me love and support me the way they always have.
It’s me that’s let down their guard. Started seeing what was there all along.
“Do you think I’m doing the wrong thing by going?”
She draws a deep breath, letting it go slowly. “Do I think it’s wise given the threat to your safety? No. But do I think it’s the right thing to do? Of course.” She rolls her eyes toward me. “You’ve got to close this chapter to move on. It’s the least you deserve after what he’s put you through.”
“I need answers more.” My fist flexes around the handle. “Like, why did Gage leave? How did my stepfather find me?”
“Gage?” She frowns.
Fuck. I’m losing track of who knows what. This is why it was easier to say nothing at all. “My brother.”
“Sweetheart…”
“It’ll be okay, Theresa. It’s one day. Twenty-four hours, and I’m back on a plane out of there.”
Will I be, though? Silence hangs between us, the question thick in the stifling air of her cab.
“Thanks.” I jerk on the handle and scramble from the high vehicle, avoiding looking directly at her when I turn to shut the door. “I’ll give you a call when I get back.”
“Call me when you get there ,” she demands. “I want to know you’re safe, Ness.”
“As safe as I can ever be.” Especially when he’s proved his spindly fingers can reach me, even here in Temperance. “Have a good night. I appreciate you letting me sit it out this afternoon.”
“Any time, sugar.”
I close the door and take two steps back, waving her off when she slowly turns on the narrow road and leaves.
My gaze drifts to the dark farmhouse standing sentient in the distance.
How long until bikes tear up and down this road? How long until the peace is broken?
Until Chaos is nothing but a few hundred yards of overgrown field away?
He’s been nothing more than a distraction. A complication I can’t allow when I prepare to step back into the fire.
Eighteen years, I’ve escaped my stepfather. For eighteen years, I’ve avoided his face, name, and as much to do with him as humanly possible.
Eighteen years, she aged without speaking a single word to me.
I draw a staggered breath and turn toward the cottage. Wait—I swear I put him out this morning. Murphy watches from my bedroom window, tail swishing against the glass, his body smooshed against the pane.
My limbs ache as I take the porch steps, fingers fumbling my keychain for the one to unlock the front door. I let myself in and immediately drop to the hall floor as Murphy approaches, legs folded beneath me.
“Hey, buddy.”
He rubs against my knee, a couple of yips his hello.
I sink my hand into his fur, focusing on the silky lengths as they move between my fingers. Nostrils flaring, I fight the urge to let go—to melt to the hard floorboards and never get up—to wait until my body rots and turns to dust, blown away on a summer breeze.
One more nightmare. I only have to face him this one last time. You’ve done it before. You can do it again. I didn’t get this far in life to quit.
I can’t control what he did to me or undo the lost years with my mother and brother. What I can control is what happens now. Focusing on the loss only brings more sadness. Despair. A pervasive sense of hopelessness that weighs an anchor in my chest.
But the future? That’s mine.
What would you tell your ten-year-old self? A question I snorted at the first time a therapist brought it up. But the more I thought about the proposition, the more I realized the reason I avoided it was because I didn’t want to process the deep grief and sadness that came with the answer.
That little girl deserved the world.
That little girl still lives inside of me.
I still deserve the world.
I can’t change the past, but I can sure as fuck do everything in my ability to give that little girl the future she dreamed of. Love. Safety. Peace.
Who doesn’t want a happily ever after?
“Guess I should pack a bag before I talk myself out of it, hey?” I run my knuckle along Murphy’s skull, pressing harder when he leans into the touch. “What do you think? Do I pack black? Or black?”
He pulls back at my unhinged chuckle and saunters into my bedroom, alighting himself onto the end of the bed. Something rolls with the movement, tumbling across the comforter. The hell? I drag myself off the floor and investigate, hand to my throat as I stare at the small device. It can’t be. A note sits beneath, written in my favorite purple pen. I lift the torn page, thumb caressing the slope of his words.
I didn’t decide to watch you from a place of perversion. I wanted to know if you were okay.
I kept my eye on you to calm my anxiety. To feed my curiosity.
You said I need a new obsession. But I don’t think that would fix this sickness inside of me.
What else can this full-body ache be when you’re not around but an illness? A fever?
His words grow messier as the note goes on, as though he struggled to get them out fast enough. I glance at the device, dropping my hand and realizing more writing is on the back.
This is one of the two cameras in your house. I’ve written the details of the app and the login below in case you don’t believe me. You can watch the footage—new and old—for yourself.
The other camera is with me.
I figure if I ask you to keep this one recording to ease my mind, it’s only fair that you can see me, too.
I’m sorry I made things worse, Vanessa. I wanted to help you find your way through the dark, but I guess I was the one standing in front of the light.
My ass hits the bed, the note clutched in my shaking hand. I stare down at the tiny camera, at its glossy dark lens. Can he see me now? Abandoning it, I dash across to where I left my phone on the hall floor and hurriedly swipe it open.
It takes fuck all time to download the app and log in. Even less for my breathing to become shallow as I scroll and scroll through the hundreds of clips from my house. Did he watch them all? Every single time I tripped the motion sensor? Who says that’s how they’re set up? Are they recording constantly?
I lift my trembling thumb, hovering it over the Live Feed tab.
Murphy swats at the note, sending it tumbling to the floor.
“Don’t judge me, asshole.”
I tap on the words before I can chicken out and perch myself on the end of the bed again, chewing on my bottom lip as the feed loads.
Sure enough, my bedroom is displayed on a skewed angle, half obscured by the bedding.
The camera is named Enigma.
My focus tracks down to the next title: Chaos. A little pencil icon sits to the right, indicating I can change his moniker. I tap on it, bringing up a small text box and the device keyboard. My thumb moves in quick strokes to rename his feed.
Paradox.
The top edge of his image shows before the picture cuts off below the screen. Just do it. All I have to do is scroll, but I’m fucking frozen as though expecting a goddamn jump scare if I do.
“Stop letting fear rule,” I murmur, eliciting a yip from Murphy.
I scroll up, breath frozen in my lungs. He’s not there. The camera is set up in what I assume must be his bedroom. Unless he plays a prank on you. Is he? Do I stare at another biker’s room, tangling myself up in the delusion that this is Chaos’s space?
I pinch and spread my fingers, tap on the image, and double-tap, attempting to zoom in, but nothing happens.
“You’re fucking messed up, woman.”
I throw the phone aside, intending to figure out what the fuck to make for dinner but freeze. The goddamn picture enlarged. All I had to do was rotate the screen. Fucking idiot. The feed’s back in my palm before I take my next breath. Of course. I take a screenshot and switch to the photo album. Now I can fucking zoom.
His walls are painted a dark gray, perhaps even black. Heavy drapes frame a window to the right. But it’s his bed that takes up two-thirds of the frame. Covered in blood-red sheets, they lay rumpled over the mattress, clothing piled at the foot. Two pillows are at odds, top and tailing the mess.
I move the slightly unfocused image around my screen, attempting to make out what the artworks on the lefthand wall are, but the picture quality at this level of zoom makes it hard to be sure.
He doesn’t have a nightstand. No other furniture than whatever the camera sits on. A leather jacket hangs on the wall to the right. No wardrobe in sight. Two well-worn boots are tucked beneath the foot of the bed.
I flick back to the security app to find the feed hasn’t changed.
He’s not even home. Damn it. My shoulders drop, and I set the phone aside before my heart clenches with a violent realization. If he’s not home… I dash to the window.
“Fuck’s sake, Vanessa.”
Nobody’s there. No sign of Chaos. No glint of Circus. The roadside is still save for the slight sway of the grass seedheads in the light breeze.
I told him to stop interfering, and he did as I wished. Why does that gut me so much?
I’m officially gone . Head over heels for the source of trouble set to make his home across the road from mine.
Turning back to the room, I stand with my hands hanging at my sides and stall. Eating doesn’t seem so important anymore. Fuck—nothing does. I’m in a state of suspension until this fucking reading is over and done with. Stuck on pause, mind on the task ahead, unable to start anything new.
My upper back aches, muscles in my chest tight from the constant panic attacks.
I’d forgotten how shit this feels. How oppressive. It’s only temporary. Nothing lasts forever.
Not my fucked up nervous system.
Not him .
Everything has a season, and this is merely the winter of discontent.
I heave a sigh to get my fucking body moving and cross to the bed, lifting the tiny device in my hand. Do I let him continue to watch me? Chaos gave me an out. A chance to end this madness like I wanted.
He showed me the door and opened the exit, waiting to see if I’d cross through.
I guess this is his version of asking if I’d like to leave.
I rub the heel of my free hand to my closed eye and groan.
He stalked me. Let himself in my house and watched me. Fucking sat across the road to keep tabs on me like some animal in a zoo. Showed up at my goddamn workplace after assaulting the doctor.
I could make a fucking quilt out of the red flags he provided. And yet… And yet.
He’s the first person to throw the rule book out the window when it comes to keeping me safe.
Marianna cares about me. Theresa is kind.
But Chaos loves me.
Me.
As I am. Fucked up and mentally twisted from the upbringing I had at his hand.
I could argue that it’s not a reason to continue this madness. Having a man want me for me isn’t a valid excuse for his behavior. But I know what has my chest ache. What makes my hand shake as I study the small camera, wondering how I turn it off.
Chaos showed me who he was from the start. He never hid his odd behavior or masked his intentions.
He gave me the raw and ugly truth from the outset, and for that, I fell hard.
I fell headfirst for the sum of everything wrong in my life, and I’m still falling as I set the camera atop my dresser, angled so he has a clear view of my bed, same as I do his.
If I were to reject him based on his flaws, then what else would that make me but a hypocrite?
Nobody is perfect. But we all deserve love.
In all its twisted forms.