Chapter 10
Ten
I’m sorry I took the perfume.
Forgive me. It just makes me
feel better having it close.
I miss you so much, Rox
She hadn’t noticed the note at first and was unsure how long it had actually sat there on top of her dresser, while she undressed from work.
Until she stepped up to it to place her earrings in the jewelry dish that sat next to her selection of perfumes, and it had caught her attention in the dim shadows of her bedroom.
The moonlight falling on it as if to say ‘Hello, I’m here’.
In the place where her favorite perfume usually sat, the one that had been missing for weeks, sat a bright, neon orange post it.
With shaking fingers, she picked the handwritten note up, reading it over and over again before crumpling it in her hand and tossing it into the garbage.
He was back. It was him; she knew now. And he’d been inside her house.
Inside her house.
Probably more than once.
He’d stolen her perfume. Her favorite red bra and matching panties, too, she guessed, the night she’d fallen asleep in the bathtub. The roses. It was all him. It had to be.
How many times had he been inside? How many times had he rifled through her things, stolen from her, watched her?
She glanced around, eyes wide. He wasn’t threatening her, she reasoned with herself, trying for calming breaths. He wasn’t hurting her, wasn’t trying to hurt her. He was leaving her love notes, as he’d see them.
Did she dare call the police? Would they even take this seriously? He wasn’t hurting her. But this was harassment, stalking at the least, right?
Crossing the room, she reached for an inconspicuous cloth bound book between several others that sat atop her nightstand.
Opening the front cover revealed a small secret safe.
She twisted the dial to the combination and it opened, revealing her small handgun hidden there.
Roxy replaced the book, sliding it between a worn, faded linen copy of Pride and Prejudice and an old, frayed copy of Bram Stokers Dracula.
She sat on the edge of the bed, letting the weight of the handgun become familiar again after so long.
She’d gotten it after Free had brought her home, after Neal had beaten her bloody and then hightailed it out of town.
It was registered, legal, and she knew her way around it well enough and was a decent shot, at least at the range she had frequented in the months after the attack.
It had lived in her purse for over a year, carrying it with her everywhere she went, just in case he came back.
She had retired it to its hiding place in the book safe, after she was sure Neal wasn’t coming back. It was a terrifying, welcome weight in her hand now. Because he was back.
And she wouldn’t go down without a fight. Not this time.