25. Julia #2
“Establish coordination through timing rather than trying to prove an instruction we don’t have,” he says.
“And subpoena the sister’s communications with him before the hearing if you can.
If they’re texting immediately before she messages Melissa, you’ve got more than coincidence.
Even if the judge doesn’t find a technical violation yet, you can ask to have the order clarified to specifically prohibit third-party contact about anything except genuine child-related emergencies. ”
Daniel stares at me for another second. Then he sets his fork down very carefully.
“So when are you taking the bar?”
I groan. “Not this again.”
“Yes, this again.” He leans back against the booth, his expression settling into the same one he has worn the other times we’ve had this conversation. “You realize I’m getting tired of asking.”
“And yet you keep doing it.”
“Because every few weeks you do something like that and remind me your law degree is being used to correct my punctuation and bully vendors.”
“I do many important things.”
“You do, which is why I’d like you to do them while billing at an attorney rate.”
I smile despite myself and reach for my drink. “Right now I have enough going on. Therapy is taking more energy than I expected, work is busy, and studying for the bar isn’t exactly something I can squeeze between answering emails and trying to become emotionally functional.”
Daniel’s teasing eases at that, his expression becoming more thoughtful without turning unnecessarily serious. “I know, and I’m not telling you to do it next month. I’m telling you not to make *someday* into the place you put things until they disappear.”
I look at him over the rim of my glass. “That sounded annoyingly wise.”
“I bill four hundred dollars an hour for sentences like that.”
“I’m not paying.”
“You already bought me fries.”
“I absolutely did not.”
His smile returns, but when he looks at me again, something about his attention changes.
I narrow my eyes. “What?”
Daniel studies my face with increasingly inappropriate interest. “What’s been going on with you?”
The question catches me off guard enough that my hand stops halfway back to my plate. “What’s been going on with me?”
“That is usually how questions work, yes.”
“Nothing.”
“Mm-hm.”
I know that sound. “What?”
He points his fork vaguely toward my face. “You look different.”
There it is again. Kai said almost the same thing at our last appointment, though somehow having Daniel say it while examining me over a burger feels considerably more threatening.
“Different how?”
“Good different.” His gaze narrows with theatrical concentration. “Relaxed. Flushed.”
My cheeks immediately get hotter, which is deeply unhelpful. Daniel’s expression changes. Oh, no.
“No,” I say before he has even opened his mouth.
His eyes widened with delight. “Did you get laid?”
I burst out laughing. “Daniel.”
“You did!”
“I did not say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” He lowers his fork and points at me as though presenting evidence to a jury. “Julia, I’m gay. We have radar for this shit.”
“Oh my God.”
“Who is he?”
“There is no he.”
“Girl, you cannot bullshit a bullshitter.”
I reach across the table and swat the back of his hand.
He laughs, pulling it out of range before I can do it again.
For one dangerous second, I consider telling him.
Not the truth, obviously. There is no version of “I knowingly let my actual stalker come inside wearing a balaclava and then had the best sex I’ve had in years” that results in Daniel calmly finishing his burger.
But I could turn Ghost into somebody else.
A man I met. A one-night stand. Something unexpected that I’m not sure will become anything more.
It isn’t even completely false. I did meet him outside my usual life, and I genuinely have no idea what happens next.
The problem is that Daniel knows me. He knows I don’t go to bars alone.
He knows where I spend most evenings and that my social life consists largely of Tessa dragging me places and me complaining about it beforehand.
The second I invent a mysterious stranger, I’ll need a location, a meeting story, probably a first name, and knowing Daniel, within ten minutes he will want to know his profession, blood type and whether he has ever been arrested.
I take another fry instead. “I’m not discussing my sex life with you.”
His grin becomes unbearable. “That is not a denial.”
“Eat your lunch.”
“Oh, this is so much better than a denial.”
“Daniel.”
“Fine.” He raises both hands, although the smile remains. “I’m done.”
“You’re terrible at being done.”
“I’m learning.”
I shake my head and return to the screenshots between us, grateful when he lets me change the subject back to work, even if I catch him looking at me twice afterward with enough smug satisfaction that I consider kicking him under the table.
Ghost stays mine. For now, I like it that way.
There is another black envelope waiting when I get home. Seeing it sends a rush through me so immediate that whatever lingering dignity survived Daniel’s interrogation dies somewhere between the driveway and the porch. I pick it up before I even unlock the door.
By the time I step inside, my finger is already beneath the seal.
Little Ember,
I told you I would come back.
Before I do, I want you to have something.
Go to Vesper in the North Loop tonight. Pick the sexiest thing they have, and don’t choose the one you think is sensible or flattering or appropriate. Pick the one that makes you blush when you imagine yourself wearing it.
Everything else is your choice. I want to see what you choose when nobody chooses for you.
Don’t worry about what I intend to do with it. You’ll find out soon enough.
—Ghost
I stare at the address written beneath his signature.
Vesper. Of course I know the store. Every woman in Minneapolis with an Instagram account and an unreasonable relationship with expensive underwear probably knows Vesper, even if most of us have never walked through the door.
It sits in the North Loop between a boutique that sells sweaters costing more than my electric bill and a jewelry store where nothing in the window has a visible price, which is generally how I know I don’t belong inside.
I read the letter again.
Pick the sexiest thing they have.
My body remembers last night with humiliating efficiency.
I should stay home. Instead, twenty minutes later I am driving toward the North Loop.
I have told myself repeatedly that going into a lingerie store is not a binding agreement to do anything beyond shopping.
I can browse. I can laugh at the prices.
I can decide Ghost has temporarily lost his mind and go home with nothing except a story about the time my stalker sent me underwear shopping. The lie survives until I step inside.
Vesper is beautiful in a way designed to make money feel fictional.
Dark wood, brushed brass, soft lighting that somehow makes everybody’s skin look better, and racks spaced far enough apart that nothing feels crowded.
Silk, satin and lace hang like tiny works of art rather than underwear.
A saleswoman looks up from behind the counter, smiles warmly and asks whether I need help.
“No, thank you. I’m just looking.”
That part is technically true. For approximately thirty seconds.
Then I reach the first rack. Ghost’s letter said to pick the sexiest thing they had.
He was specific about the store, but everything else he decided to leave up to me.
Which, all in itself, was nerve wracking, considering I haven’t worn anything like this in years.
No, scratch that. Judging by the tiny pieces of lace hanging off the silk hangers in front of me, I have never worn anything like this. Ever.
I was blushing just by looking at it and the thought of actually putting something like that on was embarrassing, but also strangely arousing.
Because Ghost has somehow altered my brain chemistry.
On the days he would leave a new one, I was barely functional because.
And that was back when I only had his words.
But now, after I let him in my home — which I’m still seriously considering bringing up to Kai in therapy — I know exactly what the hands that write those letters can do.
The fact that this time Ghost hasn’t described any details of what he plans on doing after he sees me wearing whatever I choose from this…
my entire body was vibrating from anticipation.
Will he leave it on me? Will he rip it to shreds? I pick a black laced bra and matching thongs off the rack. It looks so delicate. As if the slightest pull of his fingers could tear it so easily and the mere thought makes me instantly wet.
What is happening to me? Why does my stalker have this control over me? Have I always been this deprived?
I look around the store, almost sure that the sales woman can actually read what I’m thinking off my flustered face but she’s not even looking at me. She’s too busy texting someone who obviously has the same effect on her as my Ghost has on me.
I turn my attention back to the ensemble I chose and head over to where the fitting rooms were.
I told myself I was only going to look. That I wouldn’t actually buy anything.
But here I am, tethering on the verge of madness, because I want to feel the expensive piece of lace on my naked skin.
I want to imagine what it would feel like to stand in front of him wearing this.
I just wish his face wasn’t covered all the time because, for some reason, seeing his entire face as I stand in front of him, wearing this… somehow became my biggest wish.