Page 106 of Stalkers Anonymous

“And how do you know all that?” she interrupts.

The door rips open, revealing the woman who’s quickly become my entire world.

The rage in her eyes makes me take a step back. She’s been crying. She’s in an old T-shirt and leggings, her hair knotted in a bun at the top of her head. Even now, as she stares me down with her wrecked face and her locked jaw, my stupid, reckless brain is still clocking how devastatingly beautiful she is.

“How did you even know enough to look him up?” she demands.

I close my eyes. Here it comes. The confession that’s going to unravel anything I had left with her.

“I got his license plate the night he keyed your car. I pulled security camera footage in the area until I had him on film. I ran the plate. I got his name, his address, his record. And a few other things.”

“What other things, Cole?” Each word comes out harsher than the last.

“I’ve been tracking his phone.” I force it out. “That’s how I knew he was here tonight. He crossed a geofence I set around your building.”

The color drains out of her face.

“You—” she starts, and stops, and starts again. “Do you know how much trouble I could be in for that, Cole? The fact that I told you his name is already a HIPAA violation. You took that name and you ran it, and you built a whole surveillance operation off it. If this ever comes back on me—”

“It won’t.”

“You don’t know that.” She crosses her arms over her chest.

“I do know that. It’s the one thing I did clean. There’s no paper trail leading back to you.”

“Oh, good.” Her laugh is almost hysterical. “As long as you covered your tracks, right? What a fucking relief!”

“Hailey—”

“Who’s he?” Her gaze snaps past me to Tyler.

“This is Tyler. He’s from my therapy group.”

“Your therapy group?”

“I haven’t found the right time to tell you about it yet.” The words come out in a rush. Maybe I can still save this. I have to try. “I’m in therapy. Jack’s company is making me go, but still. I’m working on myself. I started the program just before I met you, and I thought I could handle it. I thought I could be normal with you, but when you called me so scared that night… I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing.”

Her eyes narrow, landing on the words I tried to skip over. “Work-mandated therapy for what?”

“My sister’s ex-boyfriend put her in the hospital. I spent three weeks finding him. I beat him unconscious in a bar parking lot and used company resources from my last security job to do it. I got caught. I lost the job. My current boss hired me on the condition that I go to the group for at least six months.”

She lifts her brows in an expression of incredulity. I want to take comfort in her disbelief, but I know it just means I’ve broken her trust even more drastically than I thought.

My name is Cole, and I’m a recovering stalker. The words from that first meeting feel like a lifetime ago.

Except I’m not recovering.

I never was.

I just got better at hiding my issues.

“And then you met me,” she says slowly.

“And then I met you.”

“And then Lars threatened me.”

“And then Lars threatened you,” I echo her once more.