Chapter 12
Annabelle
“He’s fine, he’s a friend,” I say to Margaret, who gives me a severe glare.
“He’s a creep.”
“He didn’t want to interrupt me while I was working.”
“Humph. Has he heard of a phone?”
“He wanted to check on me. I’ve been feeling under the weather.”
Margaret sniffs. “So he skulks behind shelves in a cap.” She gives me another look, sharp and assessing. “You all right, love?”
The question lands badly. It’s kind, and I don’t know what to do with kindness unless it comes with instructions.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
She studies me for a second longer, then nods in that way people do when they know you are talking rubbish and decide not to push. “Get these reshelved before the afternoon rush starts.”
“Right.” I take hold of the trolley and wheel it away before she can say anything else.
My hands shake after that. Not badly. Just enough to irritate me every time I slide a book onto a shelf. I keep seeing him at the end of the aisle. Looking at me. Wanting to see me. It is too much. Too intense. Too strange. But why doesn’t it scare me?
All I can think is that someone wanted to see me.
Not because they needed a book. Not because I work here. Not because they had to.
Just me.
The thought worms into places that have been empty for so long that I don’t know what to do with the ache it creates.
I shelve a stack of biographies in the wrong place and have to take them back out again. My concentration is fucked. Every section I go into feels too narrow, too quiet, too full of the memory of him standing there in that cap, watching me like I’m the only thing in the building worth seeing.
By lunch, I’m exhausted.
I sit in the staff room with a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps and a bottle of water, staring at my phone.
I want to message him, but I have no idea what to say.
In the end, I throw my phone back in my bag and finish my crisps.
He dropped me off this morning, came back to watch me and will pick me up after work.
Why doesn’t this bother me? Why don’t I know anything about him?
I snatch my phone back up and type a message before I can stop myself.
Who are you?
The message sits on the screen. Delivered.
My heart hammers a rhythm against my ribs that makes me feel sick. It’s a stupid question to ask a man who knows where I live and has seen the most intimate parts of me.
He is the man who cleaned my kitchen, broke a tile in my shower, and watched me from behind a bookshelf like a ghost.
The phone vibrates on the plastic table. I flinch.
The man who is going to save you.
I swallow hard. My throat feels like it is full of dry sand.
Get back to work, Tinks. I’m counting the minutes until three.
I put the phone face down. My skin feels too tight for my body. He is everywhere. In my house, in my head, at my job.
Throwing the empty packet of crisps in the bin, I stand up with my legs heavy. I need to stop this. I need to tell him to fuck off and leave me alone.
But as I walk back out to the library floor, I know I won’t. I’m a drowning woman, and he is the only thing keeping my head above the surface.
Back on the floor, every time the front door opens, I look up. I expect to see him. And I’m disappointed when I don’t.
“Annabelle? The cart is full,” Margaret says, her voice cutting through my fog.
“Yes. Sorry.”
I take the handle. My knuckles are white. I just want it to be three o’clock. I want to be back in that car. I want to be safe and ruined all at once.
My body performs the tasks my mind has abandoned as I move through the aisles like a ghost. Every time a shadow falls across the carpet, I catch my breath, expecting the weight of his stare to return.
Margaret watches me from the desk, her eyes narrowed with a suspicion I can’t argue with.
But Margaret hasn’t lived in the silence of my cottage. She doesn’t know the way the air feels when the police tell you your mother is just a cold file.
At ten to three, I head to the staff room to grab my bag, and I push through the heavy doors at exactly three o’clock.
The heat of the pavement hits me, thick and suffocating.
Across the street, the black Porsche is waiting with Ethan leaning against it, arms and ankles crossed. He has changed into a grey tee.
This time, I don’t hesitate.
I cross the road, my heart thumping a frantic, desperate beat. He straightens up, watching the road for me and opens the passenger door before I even reach him. Ignoring the car, I walk straight into his arms.
He seems surprised for a microsecond before he wraps his arms tightly around me and kisses the top of my head. “Everything okay?”
“It is now.” I pull back and slide into the leather seat.
The interior is cool, a welcome relief to the humid air outside.
He closes the door for me and rounds the car.
When he gets in, the space feels smaller.
He doesn’t start the engine immediately.
Instead, he reaches over and settles his hand on the back of my neck.
His skin is hot. It is the same touch from the library, but it feels heavier. More sure.
“Did Margaret get over her urge to call the police on me?”
I blink. “Yes. She still thinks you’re a creep.”
“It won’t happen again,” he says, his eyes flashing with annoyance. “I’ve had a word with… myself.”
I blink slowly, not sure how to take that. “Well, good. Stalking me in the library when there are children around is the best way to get arrested.”
“Noted. Myself won’t stalk you again.”
“So you admit it was stalking?” I don’t know where the energy has come from to make this accusation. But it’s out before I can stop it.
“It’s not stalking if I’m already in your bed, sweetheart,” he replies, sitting back and firing up the engine. “It’s making sure my woman is all right.”
A sob nearly escapes me. Any suspicion I might’ve had just vanishes in an instant. “Why?” I whisper again. “Why me?”
He doesn’t look at the road. He looks at me with an intensity in his blue eyes that makes my breath hitch. The silence in the car stretches, heavy and thick with things I am too tired to unpick.
“Because you were slipping through the cracks,” he says. His voice is low. It fills the car. “I saw you, and I decided you were not going to fall. You are the only thing worth my time in this miserable city.”
The car moves away from the kerb with a smooth surge of power. I sink into the leather, letting the vibration of the engine move through me.
“So you were stalking me… before?”
His hand tightens on the steering wheel. “Before what?”
“The club. You know too much about me. I don’t know anything about you.”
“If you want to know something, just ask.”
“What do you do for a living that you drive a Porsche, and you can spend time running around after me? Where do you live? What’s your favourite colour? Why did you come to the library earlier, really?”
He smirks. “The Porsche is a second car. My Ferrari is in the shop. Family money. Investments. In a penthouse in the city. Grey, like storm clouds. Because I wanted to see you, learn you. See you when you think no one is looking.”
My mouth drops open. I didn’t expect all of that. I don’t know what I expected, in all honesty. “Oh.”
“Anything else, Tinks?”
“What do you know about me?”
“More than you’ve told me. I know people who can find things out, Annabelle Louise Harrison.”
“Which people?” I whisper, my blood turning to ice.
The speedometer climbs. Ethan keeps his eyes on the road, his expression a mask of cool indifference. “The kind of people who make it their business to know everything. I don’t take risks, Annabelle. Not with things I want to keep.”
“You investigated me.” My voice is a thin thread of sound.
“I made sure I understood the woman I was going to claim.”
“That is terrifying.”
“Maybe. But it’s also a promise. You’ve spent four years screaming into a void. I’m the one who heard you.”
“When? When did you first see me?” I don’t want to question. I don’t want to push him away, but I can’t stop now.
He looks at me briefly, that smirk still in place. “At the club, Annabelle.”
I chew the inside of my lip and feel like a fool. I’m chasing monsters where there are none. “Sorry,” I murmur. “I’m out of sorts. Today has been weird.”
“Weird is a start,” Ethan says. “Normal was killing you, wasn’t it?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. He isn’t wrong, and the truth of it feels like a weight being lifted off my chest and placed onto his shoulders. He accepts it without flinching.
The car glides into my street. Everything looks the same—the peeling paint on my neighbour’s gate, the overgrown hedge at number twelve—but the cottage feels different as we pull up. It doesn’t look like a prison today.
Ethan cuts the engine and gets out of the car. I wait for him to come around and open the door. He helps me out and laces our fingers together. Leading me into the cottage, the scent of food hits my stomach, and I drop my bag on the floor, kicking off my shoes.
“I need to go and change,” I murmur.
“Come,” he says, and pulls me gently towards the stairs.
“We can’t—” I blurt out, remembering yesterday, this morning. The tampon.
“I know. I can restrain myself, Tinks.”
He leads me into the bedroom, the familiar space feeling smaller with him inside it. I stand by the dresser, uncertain, while he moves to the wardrobe and pulls out a fresh pair of short pyjamas and underwear.
“Bathroom,” he says, striding past me to the cupboard above the sink. He grabs the box of tampons, and I shudder at the thought of this. This morning, he caught me off guard.
“I can do it,” I say, staying where I am. “I managed at work.”
“Because I wasn’t there,” he says, and sets them on the sink. “I’m here now, so you don’t have to do anything.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” he says.
He doesn’t wait for my permission. He steps into my space and pulls me forward, his presence crowding the small bathroom until the air feels thick.
He reaches for the hem of my shirt, and I lift my arms, allowing him to peel the fabric away.
I’m a doll again. A project. Something to be handled with care and control.
When I’m bare, he doesn’t look at me with the raw hunger from the library.
His gaze is clinical, almost devotional.
He helps me out of my clothes and onto the toilet, kneeling between my knees.
My face is on fire, my heart hammering against my ribs, but I don’t pull away.
I can’t. The relief of being cared for is a drug, and I am a desperate addict.
He handles the task with a steady hand, his movements efficient and quiet. He doesn’t make it a joke. He doesn’t make me feel small. He just makes me feel like I don’t have to exist as an individual for a while.
“Done,” he murmurs. “Comfortable?”
“Yes.” My voice is broken, and he hears it as he washes his hands.
He dries them and wraps his arms around me. “You aren’t alone anymore, Annabelle.”
“Ethan?”
“Mmm?” He brushes a kiss against my temple.
“Thank you.”
He pulls back just enough to look me in the eye. “Don’t thank me, Annabelle. I’m taking care of what’s mine.”
Ethan doesn’t wait for a reply; he goes to work dressing me and then takes me back downstairs to eat, where I let him feed me again because I can.