Chapter 4
Lucy
Three weeks. Hundreds of texts. And until then, he wasn't just messaging anymore.
I worked a double shift at the café because I couldn't stand to be alone in my apartment, couldn't stand the silence that made every buzz of my phone sound like a scream. The exhaustion helped, in a way. It's hard to feel terrified when you're too tired to feel anything at all.
Unknown Number.
You're being childish.
You know I hate being ignored.
You think you can hide from me?
I'll make you regret this.
I deleted them without reading past the first line, but it didn't matter. There was always another number, another message, another reminder that I couldn't outrun him.
"Lucy." Joanna caught my arm as I passed the register, her voice low enough that the customers couldn't hear. "You're shaking. Have you eaten anything today?"
I looked down at my hands. She was right. I hadn't even noticed.
"I'm fine."
"You keep saying that but I don't think it means what you think it means." She pressed a granola bar into my palm, her eyes searching my face. "The texts haven't stopped, have they?"
I shook my head.
"Then you need to go to the sheriff. Today. Not tomorrow, not next week. Today."
"Joanna." I met her eyes, and whatever she saw there made her stop. "Please. I just need to get through my shift."
"So what's your plan? Wait until he does something worse?"
I didn't have an answer for that. My plan was to be invisible. To be so small and quiet and forgettable that eventually he'd lose interest and move on. It had never worked before, but I didn't know what else to do.
"I'll think about it," I said.
Joanna's expression told me exactly what she thought of that answer. But she let it go, and I went back to the floor, back to the coffee and the customers and the mindless routine that kept me from falling apart.
The café closed at ten. I was the last one out, locking the door behind me while Joanna watched from her car.
"At least let me drive you," she called through the open window.
"I'm fine. You should go home."
She didn't look convinced. "Lucy."
"I promise I'll text when I get there. Go. You've been here since six." I waved her off, standing under the café's exterior light like I was waiting for something, someone. Making it look like I had a plan.
She hesitated, then finally pulled away. I watched her taillights disappear around the corner, waited another thirty seconds to make sure she was really gone, then started walking.
The exhaustion had settled into my bones, heavy and dull.
Three days of barely sleeping, of jumping at every sound, of watching the door every time it opened.
I should have taken the ride. I knew that.
But something stubborn in me refused to let Evan turn me into someone who was afraid to walk six blocks alone.
I walked faster, hands shoved in my jacket pockets, eyes on the sidewalk. Six blocks had never felt so long. Every shadow looked like a threat. Every sound made my heart stutter.
But nothing happened. No one followed me. No one jumped out from behind a parked car or grabbed me in a dark alley. Just the quiet streets and the cold air and the steady rhythm of my own footsteps.
Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe the texts were just texts, empty threats from a man who was all talk and no action.
Maybe I was safe.
I almost believed it.
The hallway outside my apartment was dim, the overhead light flickering the way it always did. I dug my keys from my bag, already thinking about the shower I was going to take, the bed I was going to collapse into, the few hours of sleep I might manage before the nightmares started.
Then I looked up.
My door was open.
Not all the way. Just an inch, maybe two. A sliver of darkness where the door should have been flush against the frame.
I stopped breathing.
I locked that door. I always locked it. Checked it twice, three times, a habit so ingrained it was automatic. Lock, check, check again. Every single time.
But the door was open.
I didn't move. Didn't call out. Just stood there in the flickering hallway light, staring at that crack of darkness, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat.
He was here. He'd been inside my apartment. Touched my things, breathed my air, stood in the space I'd convinced myself was safe.
I thought about running. Thought about turning around and going back to the café, back to Joanna, back to anywhere that wasn't here.
Instead, I turned to the door across the hall.
Cal's door.
My hand was shaking when I knocked.
He answered in seconds, like he'd been aware, like he'd been waiting. Sweatpants and a faded station T-shirt, barefoot, hair damp like he'd just showered. His face shifted the moment he saw me, from tired to alert, something sharpening behind his eyes.
"Lucy?"
It was the first time he'd said my name in six months. The sound of it in his voice, low and rough, almost undid me completely.
"My door," I managed. "It's open. I locked it, I know I locked it, but it's open, and my ex has been texting me, and I didn't know where else to go, I'm sorry, I just—"
He was already moving. Past me, across the hall, his hand catching my wrist as he went. "Stay here. Call 911 if I tell you to."
I started to protest, but he was already pushing my door open. He grabbed a flashlight from the table by his door as he passed and clicked it on as he disappeared inside.
I should have called 911 anyway. Should have stopped him from going in alone, unarmed, breaking every safety protocol he'd spent fifteen years learning. But I just stood there, frozen in the hallway, listening to him move through my apartment.
Footsteps in the living room. The bedroom. The bathroom. Closet doors opening and closing. The sounds of someone trained to clear a space, to check every corner, every shadow.
When he came back, his expression was carefully neutral.
"No one's there," he said. "But your window was unlocked. The one in the bedroom that faces the fire escape."
I hadn't unlocked that window. I never unlocked that window.
"Okay." My voice sounded strange, too high, too thin. The hallway tilted slightly. I pressed a hand against the wall to steady myself. "Okay. Thank you. I'll just—I'll figure it out. I'm sorry to bother you."
I turned toward my apartment, toward that open door and the darkness beyond it. My legs felt disconnected from my body, shaking so badly I wasn't sure they'd hold me. I took one step, then another, and the floor seemed to shift beneath my feet.
His hand caught my arm.
"Lucy."
The way he said my name stopped me cold. His grip was the only thing keeping me upright.
I didn't know what to say. Didn't know what to do with my hands, my eyes, the trembling that wouldn't stop no matter how hard I tried to hold still.
So I just sat there on Cal's couch, in Cal's apartment, surrounded by Cal's things. I remembered again that he used to be my fiancé’s best friend and captain, so I tried to remember how to breathe.
I kept replaying it in my head, trying to make sense of how I'd gotten here.
Tonight, I came home, and my door was cracked open, but I know I had locked it. I didn't go inside, I knocked on Cal’s door instead.
My ex has been texting me nonstop for three weeks, showing up at my job and driving past my apartment.
I explained what happened to Cal, and he didn't ask questions. He just walked past me, went straight into my apartment, and cleared every room. He came back and told me no one was there, but that my window was unlocked.
Inside, I was terrified, but I told him that I'd be okay and that I'd see him tomorrow.
He didn't move. Just growled, "You're not staying here tonight."
I told him I was fine, it was probably nothing, and I didn't want to be a burden.
He looked at me for a long second. I stumbled, and then picked me up and carried me across the hall and kicked his door shut behind us.
He set me down on his couch, voice gruff, and said, "You can be mad at me tomorrow. But tonight, you're safe."
And now here I was. On his couch. In his apartment. Safe, apparently, though I wasn't sure I remembered what that word meant anymore.
His apartment was neat. Sparse, almost, like he didn't spend much time here. A couch, a coffee table, a TV mounted on the wall. Kitchen visible through an open doorway, dishes drying in a rack beside the sink. Everything in its place, everything organized, the home of someone who valued order.
Or someone who didn't let himself want more than the basics.
He appeared from somewhere down the hall with a blanket, dark blue and soft, and handed it to me without a word. I wrapped it around my shoulders.
"Tea?" he asked.
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He moved into the kitchen, and I watched him through the doorway.
Filling a kettle. Setting it on the stove.
Pulling mugs from a cabinet with the same careful attention he'd used to check my apartment.
No wasted motion. No hesitation. Like this was just another task to complete, another problem to solve.
Maybe that's all I was to him. A problem.
After a while I could hear the kettle whistling. He poured, added something from a jar, brought me a mug that warmed my frozen fingers. Then he sat in the chair across from me, close enough to reach but far enough to give me space, and waited.
He didn't ask questions. Didn't demand explanations. Didn't look at me with pity or judgment or any of the things I'd expected.
He just stayed.
"Thank you," I finally managed. "For... all of this. You didn't have to."
"Yeah," he said. "I did."
Something in his voice made me look up. His eyes fixed on me with an intensity I couldn't read. Like he was seeing something more than a scared woman on his couch. Like this moment meant something to him that I didn't understand.
For six months, I'd passed him in the hallway and pretended we were strangers. Now I was sitting in his apartment at midnight, and the distance between us felt like a lie we'd both agreed to tell.
He didn't ask why I'd knocked on his door instead of calling the police.
Maybe he already knew.
Maybe he'd been waiting.