Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
With the stress of the past few days, I’d forgotten about Charlie giving Lola my phone number until she texts me the following night.
Unknown
Hey Allie!!! This is Lola. Charlie said it was okay to give me your number, so I hope you don’t find this creepy. Would you like to meet for coffee after the holidays or whenever you’re free?? I can pick you up on your break from work. This is a very long text, sorry!!! It’s okay if you don’t want to hang out. Just let me know :)
Sitting cross-legged on my couch, I stare at my screen until it dawns on me that this is my life. That someone, for some reason, met me and thought I was cool . Cool enough to want to be my friend.
That’s because she doesn’t know who I really am.
I shake my head, willing the mean thoughts to go away. No matter what my mind tells me, I have the right to start over and to do it on my terms.
Me
Hi, Lola! I’d love to meet for coffee this week. I get off work at three on Monday. Does that work for you?
I wait anxiously for a reply that comes only minutes later, my dinner from an hour ago jumping around in my stomach.
Lola
Yay!! I’m so excited. I know just the place, and you’re gonna be OBSESSED with their carrot cake cookies (Charlie said you liked carrot cake, and I hope the idiot wasn’t lying). I’ll pick you up 3
A warm sense of belonging settles in my chest. I can’t remember the last time I had a girlfriend, even though I’ve always longed for one of those tight-knit friendships I saw in movies and read about in books. I tell myself not to get my hopes up—I don’t know her well, after all—but I can’t help but nurse the good feeling I get from Lola.
Me
He wasn’t lying. I love carrot cake. Can’t wait :)
Proud of myself for taking this step forward and not freaking out too much about it, I type a quick text to Jada with the news. I know she’ll be proud of me too.
As I press Send, something happens.
Something I can’t identify right away but know deep in my bones is bad. Really, really bad.
A deafening sound comes from the direction of my front door—a loud boom that freezes my body on the spot. For a second, I think maybe someone’s knocking, but then I come to my senses—nobody knocks on a door as if they were trying to bash it down.
My spine stiffens, and panic wraps around my heart. I sit very still and listen for any sound inside or outside of my apartment.
A minute passes. Nothing.
What the hell was that?
I’m about to get up to look through the peephole when it happens again.
The best way I can describe it is as if someone was throwing themselves at the door, trying to break it down.
My hands start shaking with adrenaline, but I remind myself that the last thing I need is to let fear paralyze me. If nothing else, I’m a survivor.
I’m alone at home, but maybe whoever is at the door doesn’t know it. I won’t make a sound, won’t?—
“Get it open, damn it,” a male voice says, as if he were talking to someone else.
The metallic click of the lock fills the apartment. They’re trying to get in.
With trembling fingers, I unlock my phone and dial nine-one-one, hoping that my dry throat allows me to speak. I crouch behind the couch, hiding in case they get in.
The man kicks at my door again as a voice on the other end of the line answers, “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
I don’t know how I manage to ignore it, how I tune everything and everyone out but this call. “T-There’s a man banging at my door. He’s trying to break in.”
“Okay, ma’am,” the woman answers in a calm voice. “What’s your address?” I tell her. “Police are on the way. Please stay on the line until they get there.”
“O-Okay,” I stammer, crouching lower behind the couch.
Another loud bang, and I flinch. “P-Please.” Tears prick the backs of my eyes, but I don’t want to cry right now. I need to stay calm and strong in case something happens. “P-Police.”
“They are almost there,” the dispatcher assures me, but I’m pretty sure it’s the standard answer. “Is anybody else with you?”
“No. I live alone,” I whisper, hoping the man or men outside don’t have some magical hearing.
The door rattles with another hit, and I shut my eyes, thinking this time it’s coming down for real. By some miracle, it stands still.
Travis’s lock.
It feels like a million years have passed when I finally hear, “Police!”
The relieved sigh I take next makes the tears come out, and I croak out, “I think the police are here.”
“Okay,” the woman answers. “Please stay on the phone until we make sure you are safe.”
I’m wiping the tears away with the sleeve of my hoodie when there’s a knock at my door, and the air whooshes out of my lungs again.
“Bannport Police,” a man calls out. “We received a call from this apartment.”
Still holding the phone to my ear, I check that it’s really the police out there. Once I thank the dispatcher and hang up, I open the door to the same two officers who investigated the break-in next door.
The next twenty minutes are a blur. They question me about tonight’s incident, and I spot at least another four officers making rounds up and down the hallway.
I knew it, yet my stomach still drops when they tell me there’s a very high chance that whoever tried to get inside my apartment tonight were the same people who targeted this building a few days ago.
“I don’t understand,” I tell the officers, my voice still shaky. “I was inside. It doesn’t make sense to break in when someone is inside, does it? D-Did they want to hurt me?”
They exchange a look that doesn’t make me feel better.
“We’ll send more patrol cars to the area and look up footage from all nearby cameras,” the female officer reassures me. “In the meantime, is there another place you could spend the night? Someone you could call? You might feel safer somewhere else for the time being.”
When they leave after saying-but-not-saying they can’t do anything about the break-ins right now, I’m left with a sense of raw fear.
I knew I had to move out of here, but this is different. Because now I can’t bring myself to spend one more second between these four walls that no longer form my safe place.
It’s ruined.
Everything is.
Angry tears roll down my cheeks before I can stop them. Police don’t seem to be in any hurry to find whoever is terrorizing this building. What if something happens before they find who has been breaking in?
What if someone tries to take me again?
As much as I try to ignore the connection, I can’t help but think there’s something very wrong and very strange about all this. Days after the George Eden article went live, I found my car window down. Now I’m convinced I didn’t do it, not even accidentally. How would that even happen? Other than the one time I did it to talk to Travis, I don’t recall rolling down my windows. I don’t do it during winter—it’s too cold.
Then, someone broke into the apartment next door but didn’t take anything. Days later, they try breaking into mine. And if Travis hadn’t installed that new lock, they would have.
I could be dead right now.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but what if someone is targeting me ? What if Claudia’s ring isn’t truly dissolved and they’re after me, fearing I’ll speak out against them now that my name is on the news?
There are too many coincidences, and my gut is screaming that I’m not safe on my own anymore.
I don’t know why I search for his number and dial it. All I know is that I feel in danger, and there’s only one person whose presence can soothe me before I inevitably go into full panic-attack mode.
I tell myself that I’m being selfish for a good reason, that this is bad, and he’ll understand why I’m calling at eleven at night, as Travis’s gruff voice greets me from the other line. “Allie?”
“Hey, Travis. Sorry to bother you. I know it’s late, but… could you come over, please? Someone just tried to break into my apartment.”
There were times in the past fifteen months when I thought I had seen Travis look angry. As in, furious. It didn’t happen often, but I recognized the signs—his face turned meaner, colder, harsher, and his massive body was shackled with tension. His jaw ticked, and his eyes boiled with a pool of simmering anger.
I thought Travis had looked angry when his friend put his arm around me that night and said all those nasty things. I thought he had been pissed off when I messed up the stock orders, or when I hugged Charlie, or when Robert Marcelli had almost called me a bitch.
Turns out I had seen nothing.
Travis knocks once, hard, and says in that husky voice, “Allie, open up. It’s Travis.”
As if I would mistake that voice for anyone else’s.
I quickly check my phone and try not to react to the fact that we hung up six minutes ago. Six . I have no clue where he lives, but his driving speed is impressive nonetheless.
I haven’t opened the door all the way when I see firsthand how wrong I was about witnessing Travis’s true fury.
Those military eyes scan every corner of my apartment, then my face. Assessing, looking for something I’m not sure he finds.
“Are you hurt?”
There’s tension in his jaw and around his mouth, and he looks ready to pounce on any intruder.
“I-I’m not. I’m fine. Nobody got in.”
If bear-man had been a dragon-man instead, he would’ve breathed fire right about now. “What the fuck, Allie?”
That earns him a slow blink. I open my mouth to ask him what I’ve done wrong now, but he beats me to it.
“I told you that you couldn’t live here any longer.”
Is he for real?
“I want to move out.” He knows this. “You know I can’t find a place, Travis. Why are you angry at me?”
When his eyes meet mine again, some of his tension seems to deflate. “I’m not angry at you.”
I shut the door behind us. A few of my neighbors have gathered in the hall to discuss the break-ins, but I can’t find it in me to join them.
“Sure looks like it,” I accuse him. “Do you think I want to live here? That I want to be on edge all the time, waiting for the lucky day I get robbed? Or worse?”
I’m aware that my chest is heaving, that my voice is louder, and that I’m getting worked up, and I hate every second of it. I’m not scared of conflict, but I don’t seek it either. And I hate that Travis thinks someone trying to break in is somehow my fault.
“Allie.” His voice sounds softer, but I’m barely listening.
“Do you think I enjoyed calling the police and hiding behind my couch, hoping that my door held up?” My eyes travel to the ceiling, and I tell myself I’m not going to cry. I’m not . But my voice falls a second later, and so does the first tear. “I was so scared. I didn’t k-know what to do.”
Travis takes one step forward, then another. He holds out his arms, wrapping them around my shoulders. When my wet cheek meets the warmth of his chest, covered in an old shirt that smells of detergent, it finally dawns on me.
My boss, this intimidating man who stayed up all night in my apartment to make sure I was safe and wears a friendship bracelet I made for him, is hugging me.
“You’re okay,” that gruff voice says in a gentle tone I’d never heard from him before. “You were so fucking brave, Allie. I’m proud of you.”
Another tear falls, then more. Maybe it’s because I’m pressed against his chest and he can’t see my face, or maybe it’s because his hug feels like my only safe place right now. But I don’t overthink it when my arms wrap around his torso, hugging him back.
And when he pulls me closer to his body, I don’t overthink it either.
I let out a shaky breath. “They tried to… to…”
“Shh….” He buries his fingers in my hair. “You’re safe now, sweetheart. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
My skin breaks out in a sea of goose bumps at the term of endearment, at the protectiveness of his words and embrace.
“I’m so sorry I spoke to you like that. I shouldn’t have. I was so fucking scared for you, and I didn’t handle it well.” I feel the hand on my back rubbing circles up and down my spine, soothing me. “You did good, Allie.”
I shut my eyes, begging the tears to stop, but I’m too shaken up to think straight.
Someone tried to break into my apartment while I was inside. What if they had succeeded?
“Look at me.”
What would have they done to me?
What if the police had taken longer to show up?
“Allie, look at me.”
A firm but gentle weight settles on my chin, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s Travis’s fingers, holding my chin up.
My eyes are so blurry, I might be imagining the soft look in his.
“I’m here, and you’re safe. You’re not alone anymore.”
I blink, and more tears fall. I think my bottom lip might be trembling. “I don’t want to stay here.”
He nods. “Where do you want to go?”
I wish I had a place to call home, a safe space to run to when the weight of life falls on me. But I don’t, I never have, and maybe I never will, so I’ll settle for the next best thing.
“Can you take me to a hotel?”
Travis searches my gaze before he nods again. “Grab your things and I’ll drive you. Yeah?”
I nod back as his warm fingers drop from my chin. Then I wipe at my eyes and try to muster as much strength as I can to start packing. There are only two hotels open during the winter season in Bannport, and knowing my luck, every room will be booked.
A few sets of clothes, all my underwear, my bathroom things, my shoes, my phone and charger, and all my cash later, I meet my boss at the door, from where he hasn’t moved.
“You ready to go?” he asks gently.
When I nod again, he grabs the backpack and small suitcase I’m carrying. I let him, too tired to argue.
We don’t speak as we walk to his car, the man who just hugged me and glued all my broken pieces back together staying right at my back the whole time. A bodyguard.
Once I’m strapped in, he drives away into the night. At some point, he asks, not turning his attention from the road, “You doing okay?”
I give him an honest answer. “Not really.”
As we drive through the quiet town, I reason that there’s no point in telling Jada and Paul about tonight. I mean, technically nothing happened. I don’t have a single scrape or bruise on my body, and nobody did anything bad to me. They don’t need to know.
So I decide to keep tonight’s events to myself—at least for now—as Travis pulls into a parking lot. I recognize this hotel from my first days in Bannport when I stayed here while I looked for an apartment. The rooms were clean and cheap, which is exactly what I need right now.
“This place work for you?” Travis asks me as he kills the engine.
“Yeah. Thank you for… for everything.” Even if it makes my palms sweat a little, I add, “I’ve got it from here. You can go back home.”
“All right.”
But Travis doesn’t leave my side.
And he doesn’t go home.
Before I can argue, he books two adjoining rooms for the night and pays for them. Then he carries my bags to the elevator and gestures for me to follow him.
And before I can process what the hell is happening, he’s handing me the key to my room and saying, “If you need me, give me a call or a knock.”
I ignore the frantic beating of my heart and ask him, “Why are you doing all this for me?”
Because I don’t get it. I really don’t.
It’s one thing to feel a bit fond of your employee—an employee he swore he wouldn’t befriend—but this ? Spending the night in a hotel when he has his own home just because I’m agitated and scared? This isn’t normal, and I’m tired of wondering why he’s going out of his way to help someone he doesn’t owe anything to.
“I said nothing was gonna happen to you, and I meant it.” Before the butterfly in my stomach can react, he adds, “I’ll make a few calls tomorrow. See what apartments we can find in the area.”
I think I nod. This is… this is too much, and it’s happening too fast.
“I mean it, Allie. You need anything, you call me. Understood?”
I swallow. “Understood.”
He dips his chin. “Try to sleep.”
I nod again.
He looks like he’s going to say something else but stops himself. The hand that’s holding the key to his room flexes once.
“Good night, Allie.”