Chapter Twenty-Seven Hailey
It’s been eight weeks since Cole confessed it all.
I’m sitting in Dr. Sarah Martinez’s office, a space designed to feel calm and non-threatening with soft lighting, comfortable furniture, and carefully chosen artwork.
Rachel recommended Dr. Martinez after I realized I needed professional help processing what had happened.
I have appointments with her twice a week for an hour.
“Tell me about your week,” Dr. Martinez says, settling into her chair with a warm but professional demeanor. She’s in her fifties, wicked sharp, and wears chunky-knit sweaters in bright colors that illuminate her golden-brown skin. “Any changes in how you’re feeling?”
“I’m feeling better, I think. Some days.” I adjust my position to settle back into the couch. “The permanent protection hearing was pushed to next month, but they did grant me a temporary civil protection order.”
“That’s still a significant step. How did it feel when they granted the protection order?”
“Empowering,” I say, and I mean it. “It felt like I was finally doing something concrete to protect myself instead of just hoping the problem would go away. And now he can’t come within a hundred yards of me, my apartment, or Fort Collins Memorial Hospital without violating the order.”
“And have you heard anything from Mr. Winters since filing?”
“No. The police think he might have left town. Apparently he has a history of moving around.” I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “I guess I feel a little more secure now. I hate that I have to qualify it with ‘a little.’”
“You’ve had very good reasons to be alert for a long time. Your nervous system isn’t going to flip back to a relaxed setting just because a piece of paper exists. That’s going to take time.”
“Yeah. I’m trying to give it time.”
Dr. Martinez nods, making a few notes. Sometimes I start speaking so quickly I’m not sure she’ll be able to keep up, but she never asks me to slow down. I’ve convinced myself her notes must look like chicken scratch, given how vigorously she moves the pen.
“And what about the other situation?” she asks. “With Cole?”
My stomach tightens at his name. “Nothing. No calls, no texts, no unexpected appearances. He’s staying away like I asked.”
“How do you feel about that?”
It’s such a simple question, and the answer is anything but. “Relieved. Angry. Confused. Grateful. Heartbroken.” I pause, trying to organize my thoughts. “Sometimes all at the same time.”
“That’s a normal response to a situation this complicated,” Dr. Martinez says gently. “You’re grieving a lot of different things at once. The relationship. The future you were imagining. The person you thought you understood. It would be strange if that wasn’t messy.”
“I keep thinking about specific moments,” I admit, my voice getting quieter. “Like when he stayed with me the night I was scared. He was so gentle, so protective. It felt so real.”
“It probably was real, Hailey.”
“So how do I reconcile that with the rest of it?”
“You don’t, necessarily. You hold both. People are rarely one thing.
That doesn’t excuse what he did. It just means that the story you’re carrying is more complicated than ‘he’s a villain’ or ‘he’s a good man.
’ Both can be partially true at the same time.
That’s often the hardest part of getting through something like this.
Most of us are morally gray, whether we want to admit that or not. ”
“It’s exhausting.”
“I know it is.”
I scrub my hands across my face. “The hardest part is that I miss him,” I whisper, the admission feeling like a betrayal of myself. “I know what he did was a lot. But I can’t just turn off my feelings.”
“Those feelings are valid, Hailey. Missing someone you cared about isn’t the same as endorsing what they did. The work is in being honest with yourself about both at the same time.”
“I keep wondering if I’m going to be angry about this forever, or if at some point it softens.”
“That varies for everyone. What I can tell you is that people often swing back and forth for a while. Some weeks, the anger is louder. Some weeks, the missing is louder. Neither is wrong. Pay attention to which one is running the show when you make important decisions. That’s the one that matters.”
We spend the rest of the session working on grounding techniques and strategies for managing the anxiety that tends to spike when I’m out in public. She gives me homework—journaling exercises, relaxation techniques for when I feel overwhelmed.
As I’m leaving, she hands me a pamphlet about support groups for stalking victims. “You might find it helpful to connect with others who’ve had similar experiences,” she says. “When you’re ready.”
I take the pamphlet but don’t commit to anything. Right now, twice a week with her feels like enough to handle.
…
At home, I go through my daily security routine: checking my windows—including the new one in my living room, arming the alarm system I had installed after I ripped out all the equipment Cole brought over, and making sure the curtains are closed.
It’s a series of actions that helps me feel some measure of control over my environment.
Chewy greets me with his usual enthusiasm, scampering up to his favorite perch on my shoulder. His unwavering affection has contributed more to getting me through the last several weeks than I care to admit.
“How was your day?” I ask him, scratching under his chin. “No one broke into the apartment, I hope?”
It’s become a routine joke between us, but it reflects the nightmare I’m trying to leave behind.
After dinner, I settle on the couch with a book. But my mind keeps drifting back to Cole.
The truth is, I don’t want to hate him.
I want to be angry, to dismiss everything we were as manipulation, because that would be simpler. But the reality is more complicated. The way he listened when I talked about my work. The gentleness in his voice when he called me “beautiful.” Those moments felt real because they probably were real.
Which makes everything feel worse. It would be easier if he were a monster who had never cared about me at all. Instead, he’s probably someone who cared a lot and expressed it in ways that confused us both.
I’m about to head to bed when there’s a soft knock on my door. It’s too late for a delivery, and no one buzzed my unit. Before the prickle of unease at the back of my neck can bloom into full-on anxiety, someone on the other side of the door starts to speak.
“Hailey, it’s Tyler—Cole’s friend. Please don’t open the door.
I have a letter here from Cole that I’d like to leave for you.
He wasn’t going to send it, but our therapist in the group convinced him to let me bring it by.
She thinks it could be useful for him, though you’re obviously under no obligation whatsoever to read it, or even to let me leave it here. ”
I’ve wandered closer to the door, though I have no plans to open it. I check in with my gut, like Dr. Martinez has been encouraging me to do.
I’m not feeling fear in this moment. Just curiosity.
“So,” Tyler says, his voice as steady as it has been this whole time. “Do I have your permission to leave this outside your door?”
I think about it. And I mean, really think about it.
Cole agreed to write something, at his therapist’s suggestion, as part of whatever work he’s doing. He didn’t come to my apartment himself. He’s still respecting my boundaries, even if this is more of a push than he’s given so far.
“You can leave it,” I say. “And then I want you to go.”
“Of course,” Tyler says. “I’m going now.”
Through the peephole, I watch him board the elevator. The second the doors close, I unlock and open my door.
There’s a single envelope on the floor, addressed to me. I recognize the handwriting immediately.
My hands start shaking as I pick it up.
My first instinct is to throw it away unopened. To take it straight to the dumpster and pretend I never saw it. That’s what Rachel would tell me to do.
But I can’t make myself do it.
Instead, I brew a cup of chamomile tea and sit at my kitchen table with the letter. After a few minutes, I decide fuck it and open it carefully, like the paper is delicate.
But it’s not the paper that’s delicate. It’s me.
Hailey,
You asked me for space several weeks ago. I’ve given it to you. I will keep giving it to you for as long as you need it, and if forever is what you need, then forever is what you get.
I ran the plate the night he keyed your car. I ran the plate, and I kept running. I built a file on him that I had no business building. I put eyes on his apartment. I set up a tracker on his phone. I followed him more nights than I can count.
The part I keep coming back to in therapy isn’t any of that. It’s that none of it felt that wrong while I was doing it. Every step felt reasonable to me in the moment. That’s the part that scares me now. That’s the part I’m trying to understand.
I told myself a lot of stories about what I was doing and why.
Some of them were true. It is true that I was scared for you.
It is true that I wanted you safe. It is also true that those feelings are not a pass for what I did with them.
I confused caring about you with getting to decide things for you.
They aren’t the same and I can see that now and I am going to spend however long it takes to make sure I don’t confuse them again.
You deserved to be trusted with your own safety. You deserved to make your own decisions about how to handle a man who was scaring you. I took those decisions away from you and thought I was giving you something. I wasn’t. I was taking.
I miss you. I’m not going to pretend I don’t. I miss the sound of your laugh and the look on your face when you’re annoyed at me and the way Chewy watches us. I miss all of it.
I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m not asking you for a second chance. You don’t owe me either of those, and I’m not going to spend the rest of my life standing at your door asking for things I haven’t earned.
I’m sorry for lying to you.
I’m sorry for making you doubt your own instincts.
I’m sorry for taking your choices away from you in the name of keeping you safe.
I’m sorry for all of it.
Cole
I set the letter down on the table with hands that won’t stop shaking.
It isn’t what I expected.
I don’t know what I expected, exactly. Maybe a plea. Maybe a defense. Maybe something I could easily tear apart and throw away and feel vindicated about throwing away. Instead, what I got was a man who took full responsibility for what he did and then asked for nothing.
I read the letter again.
I read it a third time.
Cole is still working on himself. He’s not done. And he isn’t lying to me about not being done. That lands harder than anything else.
I don’t rip it up, and I don’t throw it away. Instead, I fold the letter back along its creases and tuck it into the back of the kitchen drawer where I keep my takeout menus.
Chewy climbs up my arm and settles on my shoulder, pressing his little face into my neck.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I tell him, but of course he doesn’t have much of an opinion.
For the first time in weeks, I fall asleep thinking about Cole with hope in my heart.