Page 48 of Stalkers Anonymous

“Emma. She’s four years younger than me.” I stare at my coffee, watching the steam curl upward. “Four months ago, she showed up at my apartment in the middle of the night. Her boyfriend had beaten the shit out of her. Split lip, black eye, bruised ribs. She could barely stand.”

Tyler’s expression shifts. He knows where this is going. Of course he does.

“I wanted to kill him,” I continue, my voice flat. “Right then. That night. I could have ripped him to shreds. But Emma begged me not to. She needed me, not”—I gesture vaguely—“whatever I was about to become. So I stayed. I held her while she cried. Helped her with the police report and legal paperwork. Did everything right.”

“But?”

“But three weeks later…” I finally look up at Tyler. “He found her and put her in the ICU. She almost died.”

Tyler is quiet for a long moment. “What did you do?”

The question hangs in the air. He already knows the answer, but he’s giving me the space to say it out loud.

“I found him.” My jaw tightens at the memory. “Tracked him down and confronted him outside one of the dive bars downtown.”

“And?”

“And I beat him the way he beat my sister.” I meet Tyler’s eyes without flinching. “I made sure he felt every single thing he did to her.”

Tyler doesn’t look shocked. Doesn’t look disgusted. If anything, he looks like a man who understands the math I was doing in that moment.

“How’d you avoid charges?”

“He didn’t press them. I made it clear that if he did, I’d make sure every cop, every prosecutor, and every journalist in the state knew exactly what he’d done.”

Tyler starts to nod, but I hold up a hand.

“He did, however, hire a lawyer to sue NextGen, the security firm I worked for at the time, because he figured out I used company resources to track him. I got fired, and… The only reason I have my current job is because I agreed to participate in the group.”

Tyler lets out a long breath, but…that’s it. The irony of the bad guy using the very system designed to hold him accountable against the person who stopped him doesn’t seem to faze Tyler. Almost like this is a story he’s heard before. If I think about that too hard, rage might burn me up from the inside out.

“And Emma?”

“She’s okay. Physically, anyway.” My chest feels tight. “Sometimes I worry that I remind her of that night. Of all of it.”

Tyler finally takes a sip of his espresso, processing everything I’ve told him. “That’s heavy, man. Thanks for trusting me with it.”

I nod, something loosening in my chest. Not relief, exactly—more like the release of pressure from a stuck valve.

“So that’s what’s eating at you?” Tyler asks carefully. “The stuff with Emma?”

I hesitate for just a fraction of a second. “Yeah,” I lie more easily. “Being around Hailey… It’s bringing up a lot of old feelings. That need to protect. To make sure what happened to Emma doesn’t happen to someone else.”

It’s not untrue. It’s just not the whole truth.

Tyler studies me, and for a moment, I think he’s going to push harder. But then he nods slowly.

“Okay. I get it.” He leans back in his chair. “But here’s the thing, Cole. What happened with your sister—that wasn’t you slipping. That was a one-time reaction to an extreme situation. It was revenge. The fact that you’re aware of those protective instincts now? That you can name them? That’s progress.”

I nod along, letting him believe he’s helped me reach some breakthrough. We make small talk for the next fifteen minutes while we finish our coffee, then call it a night.

“Same time Thursday for our check-in?” Tyler asks as we reach our cars.

“Sure,” I agree. “The diner again?”

“Works for me.” He pauses beside his car, expression serious. “And Cole? Thanks for opening up tonight. I know that wasn’t easy.”

“Thanks for pushing,” I say. And I mean it, even if I didn’t give him the full picture.