Chapter 5 Angelina
five
Angelina
The pigeon man.
Chesca's sleepy voice echoes in my head as I descend the stairs, each step deliberate and controlled, like I can hold myself together through sheer force of will.
He sits on the bench by my school. The pigeons are really fat now. Like little balloons with feet.
She'd said it innocently. Delighted. Like she had recognized a friend.
And Cole had stood in the hallway waiting for me, expression unreadable, like he knew this moment was coming.
Seven years. He said seven years. The words keep circling, refusing to land anywhere that makes sense.
The thermostat catches my eye on the landing. Sixty-eight degrees. My nighttime setting, the one I change after Chesca falls asleep, because she runs hot and I run cold.
I haven't touched it yet tonight. My stomach drops.
He shouldn't know any of this.
He's waiting in the living room when I reach the bottom. The living room feels smaller with him in it.
Cole stands near the window, backlit by the streetlamp outside, giving me space I didn't ask for but desperately need. My bare feet are cold against the hardwood. The house settles around us, and the sighs I usually find comforting now sound like whispers I can't quite hear.
"The thermostat." I gesture toward the landing, needing to understand the scope of this. All of it. "Sixty-eight degrees. You knew that before you ever stepped inside this house."
"Yes."
"The coffee this morning. One sugar, cream until it's caramel. The blue mug with the chip." Each detail another violation, another brick in a wall I didn't know existed. "Chesca's purple. The exact shade. You knew all of it."
"Yes."
"The bench." My voice cracks on the word, and I hate myself for it. "By her school. Feeding pigeons like some—like you belonged there. You were watching her walk inside. She's eight years old, Cole. She's eight."
Something shifts in his expression. Not guilt. He looks like a man stating facts he's long since made peace with. Like this confession costs him nothing because he already paid the price years ago.
"I know her teachers' names. Her friends.
Every parent who picks up or drops off." He takes a step towards me and I take one back, maintaining the distance between us like it matters.
"I know when you have nightmares. When you can't sleep.
When you sit at the kitchen table at 3 AM holding your father's medal and crying. "
"Cameras?" I change my mind and move closer, my bare feet slapping against hardwood. His scent hits me. "Where?"
"Exterior. Entry points. Driveway, front porch, back patio." Each location delivered like coordinates on a map. "Nothing inside. I watched through windows. The cameras or when I was parked outside. Saw what I could see."
"You were parked outside my house?"
"Sometimes. When I couldn't stay away." He takes a deep breath. "I know you, Angelina. Every detail. Every habit. Every exit you've mapped from every room in this house."
"That's stalking." I take a step towards him, holding my hands at my side to stop them from shaking.
"That's protection."
"You should have stayed away entirely." I take another step towards him.
He shakes his head. "I couldn't."
"You don't get to decide—"
"You're mine." The words come out low and confident. Like he's stating a law of physics rather than staking a claim. "You were always mine. Even when I couldn't be with you. Even when I had to watch from a distance. You. Were. Mine."
Bastardo.
The absolute certainty in his voice, the complete and unshakeable conviction, cracks something inside me.
Twelve years. He left me twelve years ago. Walked away "for my own good" without giving me a choice, and now he stands in my kitchen claiming ownership like the intervening decade didn't happen? Like I've just been waiting for him to come back?
My hand moves before thought catches up.
The crack of my palm against his face echoes through the quiet house. Hard enough that his head snaps to the side. Hard enough to split the corner of his lip.
Cazzo. I hit him. I actually hit him.
We both freeze.
Blood wells at the corner of his mouth. It's a dark bead against his skin. He straightens slowly, hand coming up to touch his lip. His fingers come away red.
His eyes find mine.
And he smiles.
Not a smirk. Not mockery. Something darker. Something that looks almost like satisfaction. Like I've finally done something he's been waiting for.
His tongue flicks out, licking the blood. Deliberate. Slow. Eyes never leaving mine.
"Feel better?"
Oh god.
Heat blooms low in my belly and between my thighs. It's immediate, undeniable and completely, horrifyingly inappropriate.
No. No, no, no.
I'm wet.
From hitting him. From the blood on his mouth, and the way he's looking at me like I just gave him exactly what he wanted.
Eight years. Eight years of nothing. Dates that felt like auditions for a role I didn't want.
Vibrators gathering dust in my nightstand.
My own hands giving up because what was the point?
Therapy homework completed in the dark, crying with frustration, convinced that part of me was simply broken beyond repair.
And now this. Now him.
My body decided before my mind could object. The horror of that realization crashes into the heat still spreading through me, the ache building between my thighs despite everything. Despite the surveillance, the lies, the absolute insanity of what he just admitted.
"Get. Out." My voice shakes.
That smile stretches wider. He knows. Of course he knows. He's been watching me for seven years. He probably knows my body better than I do, can probably read every micro-expression, every hitch in my breathing.
"No."
"I'm calling the police."
"And telling them what?" He doesn't move. Doesn't step back. The blood is still wet at the corner of his mouth. "That you have a security specialist in your home while you are being threatened? That your uncle sent protection and you want him removed?"
"I'll tell them you've been stalking me for seven years."
"I have been." No denial. No flinch. "And I'll tell them about the three threats I eliminated before they reached you.
The man who followed you home from the grocery store six years ago.
The online stalker who found your address four years ago.
The process server who was actually casing your security three months ago. "
His voice stays level, almost conversational. "I wonder which story they'll find more interesting."
My hands shake at my sides. "You're insane."
"Probably."
"You think any of that justifies—"
"I do not need justification." He takes a step closer, and I hold my ground this time, refusing to retreat again. "I need you alive. Everything else is negotiable."
"My privacy isn't negotiable."
"It is when someone might be threatening you."
We stare at each other. My chest heaves. His breathing is perfectly controlled, and somehow that makes me want to hit him again just to see if I can crack him.
Stop it. Stop thinking about hitting him.
"I want you out of my house."
"No."
"This isn't a negotiation—"
"You are right. It is not." He crosses his arms, feet planted like he's prepared to stand there until sunrise. "I am not leaving you unprotected because you are angry I kept you safe."
"Safe?" The word comes out strangled. "You violated my privacy for seven years and you call that keeping me safe?"
"Yes."
Just that. Again, no justification. No excuse.
The honesty of it, the complete lack of shame, sends something dark and hot crawling through me. Makes me want to scream. Makes me want to cry.
Makes me want to hit him again until he shows some fucking remorse.
Makes me want to hit him again just to see if he'll smile like that.
What is wrong with me?
"You're a stalker." My voice comes out rough. "You're a psychopath."
"Yes." No hesitation. "And yes."
He admits it like it costs him nothing. Like he's long since accepted what he is and decided the price was worth paying.
I'm too exhausted for this. The adrenaline is crashing, leaving bone-deep weariness in its wake. My hand still stings from hitting him. My body still hums with something I refuse to name. And he's standing there, immovable, waiting me out like he has all the time in the world.
He probably thinks he does. He's been waiting seven years already.
The sedan. Chesca saying "pigeon man" like he's a friend. I have no good options. Just this one and worse ones.
"Fine." The word tears out of me, "Guest room. Right wing, end of the hall. Stay away from our side of the house."
His chin dips. Acknowledgment. "I know where it is."
"Of course you do." I'm already moving toward the stairs, desperate for distance. "You've been watching this house for seven years."
I make it three steps before spinning back, finger pointed at his chest.
"Tomorrow. You're going to show me everything. Every camera. Every feed. All of it. And then we're going to have a very long conversation about boundaries."
"Understood."
I stomp up the stairs like a teenager, hating myself for the dramatics, hating him more.
At the top, I pause.
He hasn't moved. He's still standing in the living room entrance, blood drying at the corner of his mouth, watching me with those dark eyes that see too much.
You're mine. You were always mine.
I disappear into my room without another word.
The shower doesn't help.
I stand under water hot enough to redden my skin, trying to scrub the feeling away. The heat between my thighs. The memory of his smile. The sound my palm made against his face.
Feel better?
I turn the water hotter. It doesn't help and the steam just makes me more aware of my own skin. Every nerve ending is awake and demanding in a way I'd forgotten was possible.
Clean pajamas don't help. Neither does brushing my teeth until my gums ache. Lying in bed staring at the ceiling makes everything worse.
The guest room is at the end of the hall. I can hear him moving. Water running. A door closing. Normal sounds.
A stalker is sleeping in my house, twenty feet from my daughter, and I can't stop thinking about—
Stop it.
I punch my pillow into a different shape and close my eyes.
Behind my eyelids I see the blood on his mouth. His tongue. That smirk.
You're mine.
Heat pulses between my thighs and I press them together, trying to will it away. This is wrong. Wrong on every level. He watched me for seven years. Watched my daughter. Admitted to it without a shred of remorse. I hit him hard enough to draw blood.
And Cole liked it.
Memories overwhelm me. He was the one who hit, and I was always the one who flinched. But I hit Cole and he—
My hand slides down my stomach.
Don't.
But my fingers find the wetness anyway. Soaked. I'm soaked. I have been since the moment his tongue touched that blood.
Eight years. Eight years of nothing. My body a stranger, unresponsive, broken. Sensate focus exercises that made me cry from frustration, not pleasure. Romance novels that made other women squirm left me cold.
I stopped trying.
And now, lying in the dark with a stalker across the landing, my body has decided to wake the fuck up.
Stop. Pull your hand away. Roll over and force yourself to sleep.
I don't stop.
Eight years of nothing. My body a stranger, unresponsive, broken. And now, lying in the dark with a stalker down the hall, everything has decided to wake the fuck up.
Stop. Roll over. Force yourself to sleep.
I don't stop.
My fingers slide through slick heat and—oh. The sensation shoots straight though my body, sharper than I remember, more urgent. Eight years of nothing and now everything at once.
I circle my clit slowly, testing, and my hips roll into the pressure unbidden. More. I need more.
Behind my closed eyes I see his face when I hit him. The way his head snapped to the side. Blood at the corner of his mouth and that smile—
I want to hit him again.
The thought sends arousal through me so intense my thighs clench. I push two fingers inside myself and the stretch makes me gasp into my pillow.
What is wrong with me?
I don't know. Right now, I don't care. I fuck myself harder, my palm grinding against my clit and chasing something I'd forgotten my body could feel. The pleasure builds with every image I shouldn't be thinking about. His mouth, his blood, his voice saying you're mine like it was fact, not threat.
The orgasm crashes through me without warning.
I bite into my pillow to muffle the sound, body shaking, fingers working through every wave. It goes on and on, more intense than anything I remember.
As I lie there trembling, tears leak from the corners of my eyes. Not sadness, not exactly. Something closer to shock. My body still pulses with aftershocks, oversensitive, alive in a way it hasn't been in eight years.
He's down the hall. Maybe awake. Maybe thinking about me.
Probably is. He's been thinking about you for seven years.
I fall asleep with tears drying on my temples, and his voice in my head.
You're mine. You were always mine.
And the terrible, thrilling knowledge that when I hit him, and when he smiled, some part of me became exactly that.