Chapter 5
Callum
Ashley’s messages kept looping through my mind, drifting in and out of focus like thoughts that refused to settle, hovering just beneath the surface even when I tried to push them away.
They had come without warning, without context, without even the courtesy of a greeting, just a sudden, jarring line that sliced through the quiet of my screen and carved its own space into my thoughts.
I think someone is stalking me.
It wasn’t the kind of message you could glance at and forget.
It lodged itself in the mind, sharp and insistent, replaying with the same unsettling echo each time it resurfaced.
I could still see it exactly as it appeared, blunt, breathless, panicked, sitting there in the thread like it had been waiting for me to open it.
And the part that made it hit harder, the part that tangled itself in my chest more than I wanted to admit, was that I hadn’t heard from her in years.
Years where she had finally seemed to understand that whatever thing she thought existed between us had never existed at all, years where she had pulled back and given me the distance I’d needed, years where she stopped calling, stopped appearing, stopped pushing. Years where she let me go.
So seeing her name suddenly appear again, after all that time, after all that near-silence, felt like a ghost reaching out from a place I believed had finally gone still.
And once that first message came through, once that door cracked open even slightly, more followed.The floodgates gave way all at once, messages arriving one after another, stacking over each other with frantic, clawing urgency:
I can’t trust anyone else.
I need your help.
Please don’t ignore this.
Someone keeps showing up outside.
I swear he’s watching me.
Each message tightened something inside me, not because I felt responsible for her or tied to her in any way, I didn’t, but because the fear in her words was real.
The jagged, rushed kind of fear people typed when they were pacing a room, checking windows, jumping at shadows.
It wasn’t the attention-seeking dramatics of the past, not the exaggerated stories she used to tell when she wanted someone, wanted me, to comfort her. This was something else.
And ignoring trembling fear never sat easily. Even when it came from someone who no longer had a place in my life.
Still, replying wasn’t an option. I knew what even a single message would open a door I had closed firmly, deliberately, for good reason.
Boundaries mattered, especially with someone like her, someone who used to take one inch and stretch it into a mile.
And I wasn’t willing to let her back into anything resembling closeness.
But silence didn’t grant the clean detachment I wanted. Not this time. Every message lit up my phone in a way that demanded attention, not because I wanted to give it, but because each vibration made the knot in my stomach inch tighter.
He was outside again.
I have screenshots. I don’t know who to send them to.
Please, Callum.
Please.
All of it crawled under my skin, tapping insistently, refusing to fade.
And beneath all of that, layered quietly under the concern and the frustration, was another pressing truth: if Ginny saw any of this, any of it, her mind would immediately leap to the worst possible explanations.
Not because she didn’t trust me, but because secrets, even harmless ones, had a way of sounding uglier than they actually were.
She’d see messages from a woman who used to want something from me, and she’d see me not mentioning it, and it would wound her before she even understood the context.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I wouldn’t.
Her health mattered, more than anything else in my world.
The doctor’s warning still echoed in my memory with that same steady, clinical seriousness: less stress, more rest, and be mindful of anything that elevates her anxiety.
The weight of that advice clung to me, rewiring how I approached every decision.
Ginny wasn’t fragile, never that, but she mattered too damn much for me to risk adding anything to her plate.
Not even something as distant as someone else’s panic.
So I compartmentalized with practiced precision. I told myself that her messages didn’t matter. That whatever she thought she was experiencing wasn’t mine to solve. That keeping this quiet wasn’t deception but protection, an act of love disguised as silence. The cleanest choice. The safest one.
But reasoning didn’t muffle the echo of her words.
He knows where I live.
I’m scared to be alone right now.
I don’t know who else to call.
They pressed against the edges of my mind, subtle but persistent. I didn’t want to feel anything, but it was hard to ignore the guilt pressing in every time I ignored a message.
The guilt never overridden my reality, though.
My reality was Ginny, and Ginny came first. Reality was our home, our life, our quiet mornings and soft evenings, and the way she looked at me like I was the one person the universe had carved out specifically for her.
Reality was the steadiness we had built, the warmth she tucked herself into, the gentleness I never wanted to crack.
I wasn’t about to let chaos seep into that. Especially chaos from a woman I had deliberately stepped away from years ago.
So I stayed silent.
Yet silence didn’t erase the messages, and it didn’t erase the truth curling quietly beneath them, that a line had been crossed without my choosing, that something unwelcome had crept into the edges of my otherwise simple, steady life.
A secret had begun forming in the space between wanting to protect what mattered and wanting to keep unnecessary worry away from the person I loved most.
A secret that wasn’t born of betrayal or dishonesty, but of intention, pure, firm, careful intention.
But a secret nonetheless.
· · ─ ·?· ─ · ·
More messages came through while I was halfway through a set of reports, the kind of routine work that usually let my mind fall into a steady, easy rhythm. Numbers, lines, clean columns, order, predictability, calm. The kind of thing I normally sank into without a single interruption.
Until my phone lit up with a name I didn’t want to see.
Ashley.
For a second, I just stared at the notification banner, waiting for it to disappear, hoping it would be something simple, something harmless, something unrelated to the frantic messages she’d sent before.
But then another came, and then another, each one chipping away at the hope that maybe she had moved on from whatever spiral she’d been in.
I exhaled slowly, rested my elbows on the desk, and opened the thread.
I finally got a picture of him.
A photograph loaded, grainy and half-blurred, taken through what looked like a living room curtain.
A tall silhouette stood across the street, nothing distinct enough to identify, nothing clear enough to confirm anything.
The lighting was terrible, the angle worse.
It could have been anyone. A neighbor. A delivery guy.
A guy walking his dog. A shape caught at the wrong moment.
My stomach tightened anyway.
Another photo followed, a partial shot of a shadow near what might have been her apartment walkway, and then a screenshot of text messages sent from an unknown number.
You’re not alone.
Nice dress.
I see you.
No proof that they weren’t faked. No reason to assume they were real.
But also no reason to assume they weren’t.
My jaw clenched. I rubbed a hand across the back of my neck, trying to ease the tension gathering there, trying to breathe through the annoyance that kept threading itself through the worry.
It wasn’t my job to deal with this. I didn’t owe her this.
Boundaries existed for a reason. But fear didn’t care about boundaries, and her fear, real or imagined, landed differently than I wanted it to.
I typed without thinking, fingers moving before my brain had fully caught up.
Where are you right now?
The moment I hit send, regret flickered sharp and immediate. A single message could open the door again. A single acknowledgement could lead her to believe she still had access to me. A single crack in the wall I’d built years ago could undo all the distance I’d worked so hard to establish.
But it was already done.
And Ashley replied almost instantly.
At home. He was outside again. I swear he knows when I look out. I’m shaking so hard I can barely type.
My pulse ticked hard against my throat, frustration and concern tangling in the space behind my ribs.
I stared at the screen, rereading her words, trying to sort out which part of this was real and which part was panic.
She’d always been prone to spiral, dramatically, intensely, relentlessly, but this didn’t sound like exaggeration for attention. The fear in her typing was too raw.
Still, it didn’t change the truth: I didn’t want her pulled into my life again.
And I definitely didn’t want her fear bleeding into Ginny’s.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard as I debated the next message, choosing my words carefully, slowly, deliberately.
I’m in the middle of something. You should call the police if you feel unsafe. Don’t rely on me for this.
I stared at that message, read it again, then deleted the last sentence.
Too harsh.
Try again.
Call someone you trust and don’t stay by the windows. Get away from the curtains, lock your doors. If you need proof for the police, keep any messages he sends.
Better. Neutral. Helpful, but not inviting.
I hit send.
And immediately deleted the entire thread.
Not a message, not a screenshot, everything.
I erased the whole conversation, wiped the notifications, cleared every trace of her name from the recent texts.
I didn’t want any part of this to drift into Ginny’s orbit, not when she had bigger things to deal with, not when she woke some mornings with that faint tightness in her chest she tried so hard to hide, not when her doctor had looked so carefully at her and said, You need less stress in your life, Ginny.
I wasn’t going to bring her more.
My phone buzzed again, a new message from Ashley, now arriving into a blank thread.
I wish you were here. You always made me feel safe.
A pinprick of irritation sparked behind my eye.
This, this right here, was exactly what I never wanted to open the door to. Gratitude laced with expectation, with old familiarity, with the wrong kind of trust. I needed to shut this down before it became something she leaned on. Before it became something that felt bigger than it was.
I typed again.
I can’t be your point of contact for this. Call someone close to you. And call the police.
Short, firm and clear.
And I deleted it again, the moment it sent.
The confirmation bubble vanished. The message disappeared. The thread cleared. Silence returned.
And I sat back in my chair, shoulders tense, hands clasped, trying to breathe evenly.
Nothing about this should matter. Nothing about this should follow me home. Nothing about this belonged anywhere near Ginny.
She had been so bright before, wrapped in that blanket my mother brought her, smiling softly as she traced the edges of the fabric, her fingers relaxing as she tucked herself into the little comfort she’d been given.
She needed that softness, that steadiness.
She needed our home to feel calm. She needed her world small and warm and quiet until her health evened out again.
She did not need this.
She did not need some woman she didn’t like, didn’t trust, and didn’t want near us interrupting her peace.
She did not need stalker photos from someone whose boundaries had always been questionable.
She did not need to wonder why Ashley had come to me.
She did not need the pressure of assuming there was something wrong between us.
No. Absolutely not.
I wouldn’t let that hurt her.
She came before all of it.
Every time.
By the time I was heading home, the decision had already settled inside me, steady, certain, final.
I would keep this quiet. I would keep this small.
I would keep this contained and distant and away from the one person who mattered more than anything.
And when I walked through the door to Ginny, when she looked up at me with that soft, steady warmth she always had, when her smile met mine and eased the entire weight of the day from my shoulders, I knew I’d made the right call.
Her arms slid around my waist, her cheek brushing my chest, her breath soft and familiar against me. The whole world seemed to go quiet in that moment, like her presence muted every other sound, even the buzzing anxiety I hadn’t fully shaken.
And as I held her, as the warmth of her settled into me, as she tipped her head up with that gentle little smile she saved just for me, the decision hardened even further.
This thing with Ashley, these messages, these photos, this panic, it was nothing.
Or it would become nothing.
I would let it fade, let it die out, let it resolve without ever touching the life I had built with Ginny.
We had enough to deal with.
She had enough on her plate.
Her health came first, not some ghost from my past clawing for attention.
And if keeping one small secret meant protecting her from unnecessary fear, then I could live with that.
Easily. Until my phone buzzed again, and again.
I don’t feel safe. Please don’t ignore me.