5. Kelly
5
KELLY
S eeing Jerome stabbing a Petrov man in the alley wasn’t the last that I’d ever see of him.
He popped up everywhere on campus, alarming me to the possibility that he would stick around for longer than what I was comfortable with.
I wasn’t uneasy about his being near just because he was a lousy reminder of the past I wanted to never go back to. I was worried because no matter what his business was on campus, it would be trouble.
Jerome Parson was a deviant. A delinquent. A troublemaker who precisely fit the profile of all the misconceptions foster kids had to deal with. If he hadn’t been dealing and doing drugs as a thirteen-year-old, he was drinking and trying to skip school from being too hungover. If he wasn’t picking fights and bullying the other kids in the foster home, he was trying to seduce the neighbors or prey upon her daughters to take their virginity.
Jerome was bad news. And if I had to guess at his presence on campus, it was to sell drugs. It seemed that he hadn’t really moved up in the world, doing the same old, but then again, I hadn’t exactly moved up, either.
I had yet to earn my degree. I had no career to feel superior about.
But I was trying. I was not the same girl he would’ve remembered from years ago.
“Hey, I think that guy’s trying to get your attention,” a girl said at the library. She’d nudged me to whisper it, and I frowned at her message. I had no clue who she was, just another student who happened to choose the seat next to me. When I made eye contact, she tipped her chin up to indicate someone across the library from us.
When I looked up, nervous and hoping it wasn’t so obvious that I was stressed, I saw Jerome’s back. He’d just gotten up and walked away.
Fuck.
“He was watching you,” the girl next to me said as she packed up her laptop and things.
I shook my head, ready to stay in the comfort zone of denial. “No, I don’t think he could’ve been. I have no clue who he is.”
“It seemed like he knew who you are.” She shrugged, leaving the table.
Yeah, Jerome Parson knew me. He knew who I used to be. And his attention on me at the library was one more reason I worried he was stalking me.
Having Jerome after me was a scary situation. The man was capable of danger and prone to anger.
But, again, there was nothing I could do about it.
Going to the college security would invoke too many questions to answer, and digging too far or deep into my past was definitely not something I wanted to do.
Calling Eva for advice and help would result in her wanting to know why I was scared too, and that was what I wanted to avoid while giving her space for her to enjoy her happily ever after with Lev.
“Just avoid him,” I whispered to myself as I tried to focus on studying again. I’d spent all day in classes, then some time at the admin building for my student-worker obligations. With the couple of hours I had until I’d need to go into the bar tonight, I had to read, take notes, cram, and somehow get ready for this exam coming up soon.
Avoiding Jerome was easier said than done, though. Every time I felt the burn of someone watching me, I’d look up and scan my surroundings. Certain that he was still spying on me, I failed at shutting him out of my mind.
Words began to blur as I read. Seated so close to the radiator heaters along the wall on this floor of the library, I slid lower and lower in my chair. The hard wood was unforgiving and stiff. This position was not friendly on my exhausted body, but the relative quiet and peace of this huge museum of books lulled me into a false sense of security. I lowered my guard more and more, all the way until I fell asleep.
I only wanted to close my eyes for a moment. I just wanted to refresh them so I could read clearer and stay on task.
One moment turned to several, and with intermittent jerks of slipping in and out of consciousness, I napped. It was such a deep sleep that I dreamed, too. Instead of studying, I was suspended in a fantasy.
No longer here in the library or even on campus, I was in bed with Rurik. The hard muscles of his arms pressed against me as he hugged me close. Warmth from his body kept me in place, and it didn’t matter how many times I tried to turn around and face him, the rock-hard wall of his chest remained in place behind me.
Being spooned by the security guard who’d been placed on campus for Eva felt so wrong. It had always felt like a crime to lust for him. He was older, so stern and lethal-looking as a Mafia man with dark tendencies and a serious, somber attitude.
“Please,” I begged of him in my dreamscape.
I just wanted to roll around and see him. I only wished to turn around and know that it was really him wanting me close, to see with my own eyes that it was him holding me so secure as though he’d never let any danger touch me again.
“I know I’m not worthy,” I said in my dream. Halfway lucid, I was aware of the movement of my lips. I was nearly awake, strangely suspended between reality and slumber. It was too tempting to stay here, though, with Rurik’s chest flush against my back. I didn’t want to lose a second of his hot embrace, with his hard body in full contact with mine.
While it wasn’t erotic, it was almost comforting.
“Please, let me see you,” I begged again, trying and failing to turn around and see his ruggedly handsome face so close to mine. “I don’t deserve you…”
No. That’s not true. I’m worthy. I’m good.
The stigma of my past crimes still clung to me. Ever since that fateful day on the streets eleven years ago, I’d struggled with the stain of what I’d been forced to do, the crime I was beholden to commit, the violence I couldn’t have escaped. I would never be worthy of anyone’s love when I’d acted in the most deplorable hatred that could exist in a person’s soul. That darkness I acted on couldn’t be forgiven or explained away.
But I wanted to be loved.
I longed to be worthy.
I yearned to deserve something good and safe.
Rurik. With every ounce of my being, I dreamed of belonging with someone who would accept all of me. Even my dark past.
“Come here,” Rurik said in the dream, his voice so quiet and far away despite his head being so near mine as he lay behind me, trapping me close. “Come here…”
I turned, desperate to face him, but with that jerk of a movement, I snapped myself right out of the dream.
With a gasp, I sat upright, flinging my body back with so much force that the uncomfortable and hard chair I’d chosen slid backward. The feet scraped over the polished floor, adding a loud noise to further wake me.
Breathing hard and fast, I blinked and brushed my hair back from my face. Forced to wake up so suddenly, I tried to orient myself again.
The library.
I must have napped.
My math book still lay open in front of me, the pages of equations blurring as I tried to clear the residue of sleep from my eyes.
No one was around me. In the distance, the hum of the ventilation and the printers droned on like welcome white noise. Fading sunlight shone in through the windows, proving I hadn’t napped for very long at all if the sun was still near sunset.
I exhaled a long breath, relieved that nothing had happened. No one had bothered me. I was stuck in that weird dream of wishing I could see Rurik again, but it hadn’t been a mistake. Lowering my guard like that was a grave error to commit, especially in public. But I was fine. Everything was normal—as normal as it ever could be.
I slumped in my chair, still catching my breath as I brushed my hair back from my face.
And then I saw it.
As I lowered my gaze to the table top, I noticed a different color of paper sticking out from my math text. Furrowing my brow, I plucked it out from the pages it’d been stuck between.
Lined yellow paper. I hated using lined paper or notebooks, preferring the openness of a blank rectangle of white instead.
This wasn’t mine. But it had somehow gotten into my things.
Lifting the folded-over half of the paper, I frowned at the message.
I know what you did…
Five words. Three dots.
That was all that had been written in a sloppy all-caps scrawl.
My blood froze despite the rapid pumping of my heart. Panic washed over me, and I felt the full, leaden heaviness of dread settle in the pit of my stomach.
Oh, God.
It was him.
Jerome was after me. He was the only one who could’ve left this specific message for me.
No one else knew me. No one here on campus knew me enough to be able to pen this message and leave it for me.
No one but this blast from my past.
I reread it, ignoring how the paper shook like a leaf on a tree branch in the wind. The words didn’t change.
I know what you did…
The ellipsis at the end damned me even more. He wasn’t only reminding me that he knew about the darkness staining my past. He was also taunting me with that punctuation that suggested he had more to say about it.
What? What is it?
Deep down, as I panicked, I worried that I really didn’t want to know what he expected to happen with me. That was how terrible my secret was, that I had to shield it the best I could. I had to shield my dark secret forever because it really was the damning evidence that proved how I would never be worthy of love or respect again.
Not through friendship with Eva.
Not through anything else like what I’d dreamed of with Rurik, either.