Chapter Nine Cole #3
I was half-asleep on my couch when the knock came. Soft. Hesitant. Nothing like Emma’s usually confident announcement of her arrival.
I knew something was wrong before I even opened it.
She stood in the hallway, mascara streaked down her cheeks, her left eye swollen shut. Her lip was split. Dried blood crusted the corner of her mouth, and she was cradling her ribs like they might shatter if she breathed too deeply.
“Cole.” Her voice cracked on my name the second she saw me. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
I don’t remember pulling her inside. I don’t remember closing the door. One second she was in the hallway, and the next she was sobbing against my chest while I held her.
That’s the exact moment when I was reborn, made into a monster by a weak, insecure male. Shitbag Steve is not a man. Never has been and never will be. A real man would never intentionally hurt a woman.
“I’m going to kill him.” The words come out calmly. Too calmly.
“No.” Emma grabs my shirt with shaking fingers. “Please. I just— I need my brother right now. I don’t need you to do anything.”
So I stayed.
I held my baby sister while she cried herself to sleep on my couch. I pressed ice to her swollen face and cleaned the blood from her lip with hands that wouldn’t stop trembling. I listened to her whimper his name in her nightmares.
And I didn’t go after him.
I did the right thing. I helped Emma file a police report. I went with her to start the process of getting a permanent restraining order. I trusted the system to handle it.
Three weeks later, Shitbag Steve violated that restraining order and beat Emma within an inch of her life. She was hospitalized with a fractured skull, bruised lungs, two black eyes, and a broken nose.
She survived.
But neither of us would ever be the same.
I’ll never forget the doctor pulling me aside to tell me that if the neighbor hadn’t heard the screaming—if Emma had gotten to the hospital twenty minutes later—
Too late. It would have been too late.
I stayed in my lane. I let the system work. And my sister almost died because of it.
I refocus on the screen in front of me, on Lars Winters’s smug DMV photo staring back at me.
Not again.
Never again.
I pull up a new browser window and start searching. Social media profiles, public records, employment history. I’m crossing lines, violating the principles I’m supposed to be embracing in “recovery.”
This is for Hailey’s safety, I tell myself. Protecting, not obsessing.
It’s exactly what I’m not supposed to be doing.
But I can’t stop. The itch to dig into Lars Winters, to hunt down every last detail of his life, is insatiable. It’s not something I can ignore. It’ll never go away.
Lars Winters. Fifty-two years old. Frequent patient at Fort Collins Memorial.
Multiple arrests for drug possession, one for assault three years ago, though his lawyer managed to plead it down.
I recall the look the officers exchanged when Hailey told them Lars’s name.
They recognized it. And still, they did nothing.
Winters has no current employment listed. So the scumbag’s unemployed and has nothing better to do than harass my girl.
I catch myself.
My girl.
I shake my head, refocusing on the task at hand. I learn that Lars lives alone in an older house on the north side of town.
I dig deeper. Traffic violations. Court records. A bankruptcy filing from five years ago. A restraining order filed against him by an ex-girlfriend in 2019.
He’s done this before.
Fuck, I should stop here. Close the laptop, call Tyler, admit that I’m on the verge of spiraling.
Instead, I get up and pour myself a cup of coffee from the pot I made this afternoon. It’s cold now, but I don’t care. I just need the caffeine.
Because I’m not stopping.
Not tonight.
Not until I know everything there is to know about Lars Peter Winters.
Not until I figure out how to make sure he never comes near Hailey again.
I return to my desk, cold coffee in hand, and pull up a new search window. Property records, utility bills, cellular data if I can find a way in. I’ll map his patterns, his routines, his vulnerabilities—so he doesn’t get another chance to exploit Hailey’s.
My phone buzzes with a text from Tyler.
Tyler: Late night check-in. Everything okay? My senses are tingling.
I stare at the terrifyingly well-timed message. This is the moment when I should tell him. It’s the universe giving me another chance to pull back, to admit what I’m doing, to ask for help.
Cole: All good. Up late working on a project. Talk tomorrow.
I silence every notification except calls or messages from Hailey, and set my phone down on the desk.
The coffee is bitter on my tongue, but I don’t spare it a second thought. I’m already scanning the next screen of information about Shitbag Lars. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know I’m making a choice.
I know I’m choosing the addiction over my recovery.
But all I can see is Hailey’s face when she saw her car. The tremor in her hands. The fear she tried to hide.
Someone has to protect her.
The screen glows brighter as I open another search window.
It’s going to be a long night.