Page 40 of Stalkers Anonymous

I have his name, his address, his vehicle information.

The smart thing to do would be to give all of this to the police. Let them handle it. Stay in my lane.

But the police already made it clear they don’t care enough to look into this more than they already have. Not without more direct threats or physical harm.

By then, it might be too late.

Too late.

The words echo in my skull, dragging me backward through time. My apartment fades away, replaced by a memory from three years ago that I’ve tried to bury a thousand times.

I was half-asleep on my couch when the knock came. Soft. Hesitant. Nothing like Emma’s usually confident announcement of her arrival.

I knew something was wrong before I even opened it.

She stood in the hallway, mascara streaked down her cheeks, her left eye swollen shut. Her lip was split. Dried blood crusted the corner of her mouth, and she was cradling her ribs like they might shatter if she breathed too deeply.

“Cole.” Her voice cracked on my name the second she saw me. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

I don’t remember pulling her inside. I don’t remember closing the door. One second she was in the hallway, and the next she was sobbing against my chest while I held her.

That’s the exact moment when I was reborn, made into a monster by a weak, insecure male. Shitbag Steve is not a man. Never has been and never will be. A real man would never intentionally hurt a woman.

“I’m going to kill him.” The words come out calmly. Too calmly.

“No.” Emma grabs my shirt with shaking fingers. “Please. I just— I need my brother right now. I don’t need you to do anything.”

So I stayed.

I held my baby sister while she cried herself to sleep on my couch. I pressed ice to her swollen face and cleaned the blood from her lip with hands that wouldn’t stop trembling. I listened to her whimper his name in her nightmares.

And I didn’t go after him.

I did the right thing. I helped Emma file a police report. I went with her to start the process of getting a permanent restraining order. I trusted the system to handle it.

Three weeks later, Shitbag Steve violated that restraining order and beat Emma within an inch of her life. She was hospitalized with a fractured skull, bruised lungs, two black eyes, and a broken nose.

She survived.

But neither of us would ever be the same.

I’ll never forget the doctor pulling me aside to tell me that if the neighbor hadn’t heard the screaming—if Emma had gotten to the hospital twenty minutes later—

Too late. It would have been too late.

I stayed in my lane. I let the system work. And my sister almost died because of it.

I refocus on the screen in front of me, on Lars Winters’s smug DMV photo staring back at me.

Not again.

Never again.

I pull up a new browser window and start searching. Social media profiles, public records, employment history. I’m crossing lines, violating the principles I’m supposed to be embracing in “recovery.”

This is for Hailey’s safety, I tell myself. Protecting, not obsessing.

It’s exactly what I’m not supposed to be doing.