Page 134 of Letters From A Stalker

Little Ember,

You were sleeping too peacefully for me to wake you, so I left before morning could ruin the mystery.

Take a hot bath when you get up. Drink plenty of water, eat something that qualifies as an actual meal and be kind to the muscles that are going to remind you of me today.

I know I was rough with you. You asked me to be, and I loved every second of giving you exactly that, but wanting you that way doesn’t mean I stop caring about how you feel when it’s over.

And since you were asleep, I’ll admit something I probably wouldn’t if you could look at me while I said it.

I liked holding you afterward. More than I expected to.

Take care of yourself for me, Little Ember.

—Ghost

I read the last few lines twice. Not because they are difficult to understand, but because they sound different from the man whose previous letters have mostly concerned themselves with everything he wants to do to me. This is softer without becoming sentimental, intimate in a way that catches me more effectively than another page describing his hands ever could.

I liked holding you afterward.

Apparently so did I. My thumb moves slowly over the bottom edge of the paper before I fold it again and leave it beside the coffee machine, where I can pretend I am not going to read it for a third time while breakfast is cooking. I follow his instructions mostly because they are sensible and only partly because remembering the tone he uses when he tells me what to do makes obedience considerably more interesting than it should be. I drink two glasses of water, force myself to eat toast and eggs instead of pretending coffee counts as nutrition, then run a bath hot enough that the steam fogs the mirror.

The heat works its way gradually into every sore muscle while I sink deeper beneath the water, and inevitably my mind goes straight back to him. Not to anything complicated, just flashes. The tattoos moving beneath my hands. The bison skull across his back. The faint laugh behind the mask. His mouth in the dark. The fact that he stopped the second I pushed against his shoulder, without making me ask twice. And then the question that has been hovering since I found the empty side of the bed returns. Will I see him again? His note doesn’t promise it. Neither did last night, really. Ghost has built an entire relationship out of anticipation, and I have no idea whether his idea of “coming back” means tonight, next week or whenever he decides he wants me wondering about him badly enough.

I get out of the bath, I decide there is nothing I can do about that without standing in the middle of my living room and shouting questions into the trees. So I get ready for work.

The fact that I choose a higher-necked blouse has absolutely nothing to do with the mark on my throat. That is my story.

Daniel takes one look at my lunch and steals three fries before I have even put my bag down.

“I hope you know theft is still illegal when committed by an attorney.”

He chews with the calm entitlement of a man who has been stealing food from me for nearly five years. “Only if you can prove ownership.”

“The receipt is literally in my bag.”

“Circumstantial.” He rolls his eyes, emphasized by a hand wave.

I slide into the booth across from him and pull my plate farther away while he gives me the deeply wounded look of someone being denied a constitutional right to potatoes. The restaurant is only a block from the office, one of those places we come to often enough that the server already knows Daniel wants sparkling water and I will eventually ask for another Diet Coke whether I intend to or not. Friday lunch is busy around us, conversations overlapping with dishes and cutlery while sunlight comes through the front windows in pale rectangles across the floor.

Daniel drops a file beside his plate. I stare at it.

“You brought work.”

“You say that like you haven’t spent half our lunches reading over my shoulder.”

“That is because your legal opinions contain commas in places that offend me personally.”

He snorts. “Actually, this one is why I asked you to come.”

“You told me you were buying lunch.” I protest.

I mean, yes, I have worked through lunches but today feels like “I don’t want to work through lunch” day.

“I am buying lunch. I’m also exploiting your brain while we’re here.”

“Fine.”

He opens the file and turns one page toward me. “Remember the Kendall matter?”