Chapter Thirty-Three Hailey
Cole pulls up to a little house on a quiet street in Old Town Fort Collins and shifts the car into park.
It’s the kind of house I’d picture for a romantasy book club.
There’s a whimsical wreath on the door accompanied by a fairy garden to the side of the front walkway.
The mailbox even has cute decorative metal numbers painted to look like red-and-white polka-dotted mushrooms. Nothing about this place reads Welcome to Stalkers Anonymous, the unhinged offshoot of your boyfriend’s therapy group.
Consistent with the stalker theme, though, is a beat-up white van in the driveway. It has a brewery sticker on the rusted bumper and a little dent above the wheel well.
I’m suddenly not so sure this was a good idea. What the fuck was I thinking?
I don’t move when Cole kills the engine. Actually, I stop breathing entirely.
“Hey.” Cole turns toward me, his hand finding my knee. “You don’t have to do this. We can drive away right now and I’ll handle it without them.”
“I want to do this,” I tell him, trying to reassure myself, too. “I won’t be able to function until Lars Winters is no longer out there. So if this is the best way to do it, we have to do this.”
This is easily the most reckless thing I’ve ever done, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
And I am desperate to put an end to my Lars Winters problem.
He squeezes my knee once and lets go. “For the record, I’m not trying to talk you out of this. I’m just giving you an out in case you change your mind. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I believe I remember saying something about wanting you to do whatever I tell you…” There’s a playfulness in my voice.
Cole leans closer, taking my chin between his fingers, instantly giving me the butterflies I’ve missed so much. His words come out low and throaty. “And what would you like me to do?”
I run my tongue over my lower lip and lean a little closer to his lush, generous mouth. When we are a whisper’s distance from the kiss we both want, I let a wicked grin spread across my face and say, “I want you to walk me up to that door and introduce me to your weird therapy friends.”
“Anything for you.” He smiles, brushing his thumb over my cheek before pulling back.
He jumps out of the car and hurries around to my side, where he opens my door and holds out his strong, calloused hand for me to take. I take it, and use him to steady myself as I step out. I’m still unsteady on my feet, but I can get around slowly.
I square up with the house and take a deep breath, which I instantly regret because it hurts my fucking ribs, then say, “Fuck it. Lead the way. Let’s go, stalker boy.”
A brunette woman answers the door before Cole can even knock.
Cole prepped me as best he could during the day today, and I know there’s only one female in the group.
“You must be Jessica.” I extend my hand to hers, and she pulls me into a hug before I can stop her. I yelp when she squeezes me, and she promptly releases me.
“Oh! I’m sorry.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m just so excited to have another girl in the house. All these boys can be a bit much sometimes.”
She’s shorter than I expected. Mid-twenties, maybe. Her straight hair is pulled back in a clip, and she’s wearing an oversize sweatshirt that reads We’re not stressing.
“No! You’re totally fine. Thanks for letting me—”
“Stop. Don’t thank me. Get in the house, sit down, let me get you some water. Wine, maybe? Unless you want something stronger?”
“I might need a drink to get through this,” I admit, laughing lightly. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
She steps aside, waving us in. “Perfect. I’ll get us a bottle of wine. Hopefully you like the sparkly white kind.”
“That’s perfect.” I walk past her, Cole’s touch light at the small of my back. The second I’m through the door, I’m hit with the smell of male cologne and what I’m pretty sure is banana bread. The house is warm and cozy, and there’s an entire wall of romantasy and dark romance books.
I knew it. She totally hosts book club meetings on nights she’s not hosting Stalkers Anonymous.
There are four men sitting in the living room, each more handsome than the last, and they’re all watching me. And suddenly I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
“Everybody,” Cole announces, his voice closer than I expected, “this is Hailey.”
“Hi,” I manage with an awkward wave. “It’s nice to meet you all.”
None of them says anything for a few seconds, and that’s when I realize their eyes are all glued on my bruises. I instinctively roll my sleeves down, holding onto them with my fingers.
“Here.” Jessica is suddenly beside me holding two very full oversize glasses of bubbly wine.
“Did you fit the whole bottle in these two glasses?” I ask sarcastically.
Jessica is giggling. “Duh. I host a book club once a month, and we like to get a little wild when we talk about our fictional boyfriends.”
My mouth drops open, and I’m not sure what to say, so I just laugh with her and take a long pull of wine. “This’ll be fun.”
The broad-shouldered man with the camera bag at his feet starts. “Cole, you didn’t mention she was—” And stops himself.
The guy standing in the corner with his arms crossed just nods at me, and the third one, who I’m pretty sure is Tyler because I’ve heard Cole talk about him dozens of times today, stands up to greet me first.
“Hi.” Tyler holds out his hand. “We talked through your door.”
“We did.” I shake his outstretched hand, then take another big drink of wine. “It’s nice to actually talk face-to-face.”
“I wish it were under better circumstances, but we’re all glad you’re here regardless.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” I offer him a small smile.
The red-haired man with the camera bag is on his feet now, too. “Grant. It’s nice to meet you, Hailey.”
“Lovely to meet you,” is all I can manage, because Cole moves closer, clearly establishing his place beside me among these men.
The other two, Austen and Zach, offer polite hellos, then Cole guides me to the couch. I lower myself down very slowly, careful not to move too quickly or spill my wine. Cole sits down beside me, close enough that our thighs are pressed together.
Austen sits down across from me and immediately pops up again to grab a coaster, then sits back down, then gets up again to grab a second coaster for Cole, who doesn’t even have a drink.
“He’s nervous.” Tyler grins at me. “He’s a fan.”
“A fan of what?”
Tyler swings his head in my direction. “Of you, of course.”
“But none of you even know me.”
“He knows the broad strokes. We all do. Cole talks about you in group.”
I glance sideways at Cole. My look says, “We will definitely be talking about this later.”
Cole has the decency to look caught.
“I’m flattered.” I don’t know what else to say, so I focus on smudging some of the condensation on my glass during the awkward silence.
Jessica reappears with a tray. It’s the most elaborate and decorative charcuterie board I’ve ever seen. She sets the whole thing down on the coffee table in front of me, and I instantly pluck a grape off the vine. “Help yourself. You’ve been on hospital food for days.”
She sits down in the armchair diagonally from me. The rest of the men rearrange themselves around the room, and everyone goes quiet.
“Okay.” Jessica raises her glass to me. Our glasses clink, and we each take a big drink before she continues.
“I know this is a lot. So I’m going to tell you what we’re about, and then I’m going to ask you what you want, and then we’re going to figure out how to give you exactly that. Does that sound good?”
“Yes.” I nod confidently. “That sounds good.”
“Cole has explained the basics?”
“He explained that you’re a group of stalkers. Or…hero stalkers?” I look around for confirmation, but find none. “Recovering stalkers. Sort of.”
Chuckles ripple through the room.
“I suppose that’s close enough. We meet officially with a therapist once a week to talk about interpersonal boundaries and things of that nature.
She does not know we are also sitting in my living room right now, and she will never know.
That is a hard line. She does not know we live this double life. ”
“Okay…” I eye her, unsure why they bother going to therapy if they’re doing this in their free time.
“What we do is help people who need help that the regular system can’t give them.
We each have a particular set of skills.
Between us we can find almost anybody, watch them, document them, scare them off, or remove them from a situation entirely.
We do this very carefully, following rules we’ve set for ourselves. ”
Cole sketched out the basics for me earlier today, but hearing it from Jessica makes this a lot more real. I take a slow breath, and then ask, “You do this often?”
“We do it enough,” Zach chimes in.
“That’s not a number.” I narrow my eyes, but the wine has entered my system, so a small smile lifts the corner of my lips.
Jessica returns the smile. “It’s a number we’re not going to give you. Not because we don’t trust you. But because if this ever ends up in front of a judge, the less you know, the better off you are.”
Cole, beside me, goes very still. I glance at him out of the side of my good eye.
I nudge him with my shoulder. “Did you know all of this before today?”
“Uhh… The basics. I got the basics yesterday. You’re hearing the rest of it at the same time I am.”
“This is a hell of a therapy group, Cole.”
“I know.” He rubs the back of his neck with his hand.
He’s nervous.
“Do you want some wine, too?” I offer him my glass.
Cole shakes his head, holding up one hand. “I’m good, but you enjoy. You deserve to relax a little.”
Jessica clears her throat to bring me back. “There are three rules.” She’s holding up three fingers with her free hand.
She goes over the three rules in depth, and I listen to every word. Tyler occasionally jumps in with a clarification, but it’s mostly Jessica running the show.
“Rule three includes you, by the way. You don’t get to keep secrets from us, either, once you’re in. We work together, or we don’t work at all. We all need to be on the same page.”
I stare at the people around the room, wondering how the fuck I ended up in a room full of “recovering” stalkers who are willing to break laws to find the man who hurt me.
Maybe they really are real-life superheroes.
Tyler seemingly reads my mind, because he puffs up his chest and says, “Stalkers, assemble!” I half expect a final member of the group to fly through the window in a Spandex onesie and cape.
Jessica’s expression suggests she would welcome the ability to shoot lasers from her eyeballs right about now.
Beside me, Cole has not said a single word since Jessica started talking, because he understands, more than anyone in this room, that this decision has to come from me—and me alone.
I think about Lars Winters. The pain he inflicted on me. The fear leading up to the attack, what I felt during it, and what I’ll feel for a lifetime after.
When I became a doctor, I took an oath to do no harm.
I vowed to uphold my patients’ dignity and best interests, promised to bring compassion and understanding to my work.
What does that mean in this moment? Am I still the doctor I thought I was—the doctor I want to be—if I give permission for this group to find Lars Winters?
Because the truth in my heart is that I don’t just want him found. I want him to suffer. I want him harmed.
I know it. Cole knows it.
If I let the rest of the Stalkers Anonymous know it, there will be no going back.
I think about the next woman this monster will go after—because there will be a next one. There is always a next one with men like him. She might not be as lucky as I was. She might not make it out alive.
Do no harm. Maybe for the first time since taking that oath, I truly know what it means.
My throat feels tight and tears are forming at the corners of my eyes, so I down the rest of my wine and set the glass on the coaster with a loud clink. “I’m in. I want him gone.”