Page 90 of Letters From A Stalker

The fact that I have absolutely no legitimate reason to dislike him has never made disliking him particularly difficult. Maybe Tessa is encouraging Julia to reconsider. Maybe they are discussing the fact that he asked her out. Maybe Julia is explaining why she said no or maybe none of this has anything to do with him. The letter could have made her blush too. That possibility slides through me differently. I watch Julia take another drink of wine and her eyes move briefly toward the hallway, toward the console table. My pulse changes. Is that where she put it? She looks away again almost immediately, and I have no way of knowing whether the movement meant anything. Ghost doesn’t need certainty. He likes the possibility.

She kept it.

I already know that much, or at least I believe I do. She didn’t mention the letter during therapy. She arrived distracted, gave me several opportunities to notice something was wrong and then deliberately kept whatever occupied her thoughts to herself. The clinical interpretation is easy enough. People with Julia’s history often protect information until they understand their own response to it. She may not yet know whether the letter frightened her enough to report, whether it represents an isolated event or whether giving it attention risks making it larger than it is.

Ghost’s interpretation remains considerably simpler.

Good girl.

I stay until Tessa falls asleep on the sofa. Julia notices before long and takes a photograph of her. I know because I see the flash of her phone screen, followed by the expression of someone deeply satisfied with having acquired future blackmail material. Then she covers her friend with a blanket. The gesture is so instinctive that she barely seems aware of doing it. I think of what she told me in therapy, how quickly she sees what other people need and how naturally she gives. My chest tightens again. Eventually Julia turns off the television and walks upstairs. I leave only after the bedroom light goes dark.

Sunday should be enough. Three nights in a row would qualify as a pattern even if the behavior itself didn’t already qualify as stalking. I spend most of the day finding reasons not to return. Laundry. Groceries. Notes that need updating. A long call with someone from the safe house regarding funding for a security-system upgrade. I go to the gym later than usual and stay until my shoulders ache, then make dinner rather than eating at Mara’s because I have no interest in answering questions about why I’m distracted. At nine forty-seven, I’m on the motorcycle. Apparently self-awareness is not the same thing as self-control. Tessa’s car is gone when I reach Julia’s street. The house is quiet again. I settle into the trees and immediately notice the difference.

Last night, almost every downstairs light was on. Tonight there is only the warm lamp beside the sofa, a smaller light farther toward the kitchen and the flickering television.

Julia is alone. She wears another oversized shirt, dark this time, with bare legs tucked beneath a blanket on the sofa. Her hair is loose and slightly messy, as though she ran her hands through it instead of bothering with anything more complicated. She looks tired. Comfortable and absolutely beautiful. I fucking hate that word because it doesn’t explain anything. Beautiful is too polished for what draws me to her here.

Julia is attractive in my office. That is objective enough that pretending otherwise would be idiotic. This is something else. There is flour dusting her hip on Saturday because she wiped her hand against her leggings without noticing. There is the way she bites the inside of her cheek while reading something on her phone, the way she checks the refrigerator twice within fifteen minutes as if better options might spontaneously appear, the way she presses both feet beneath her thighs when she gets cold instead of getting up for socks.

Little things. Nothing anyone would photograph, nothing she would think worth mentioning. Those are the things I come back for. The television light changes across her face. For a while she watches without much interest, checking her phone twice and setting it facedown again. Then her attention stays on the screen. Something shifts. It takes me a moment to understand what I’m seeing. Her posture changes first. She settles farther into the couch, eyes fixed on whatever is happening in front of her. The blanket remains pulled over her lap, concealing everything below her waist, but her face becomes different enough that I stop breathing normally.

Fuck. I should turn away.

The thought is immediate, clear and absolutely correct. But I don’t move because her lips part slightly. One hand disappears beneath the blanket. Heat tears through me so violently that I have to shift my weight against the tree behind me. There is nothing to see. Not really. The blanket covers her completely from the waist down. The distance and glass eliminate anything that could reasonably be called detail. I don’t need fucking detail. Her face tells me everything. Her eyes close for several seconds before opening again, unfocused now, attention no longer on the television. Her head tips back against the couch cushion while her breathing changes in small movements I can see in her chest. My hands curl at my sides.

Leave.

I remain where I am. Because — fuck!

The rational part of me produces objection after objection with almost clinical precision. She believes she is alone. This is private. Watching her in ordinary moments was already a violation, but this is something else entirely.

Go.

Ghost ignores every fucking word. He watches the flush deepen across her face. Watches the tension gathering in her body and the way her teeth briefly catch her lower lip. Watches a woman who has spent weeks telling me how difficult it is to identify what she wants to give herself something without asking permission from anyone. And all I can think about is how badly I want to be the one giving it to her. That thought is dangerous enough. The next is worse. Would she let me? Not Dr. Blackwood. Not the man sitting opposite her in a controlled office asking carefully phrased questions about boundaries and consent.

The man in the shadows. Ghost. The one who tells her what he wants without softening it into something easier to accept. My pulse pounds hard enough that I feel it beneath the strap of my helmet resting loose against one hand. Julia’s face tightens. Then everything in her releases.

I can’t look away. It’s way too late for the gesture of decency. I fucked that up the moment I decided to stay and watch her the first night. No matter how much I sugarcoat the reasons or try to rationalize. Especially since I keep coming back. So yes, decency is not a word I can use at this moment. Her hand is visible again above the blanket, resting against her stomach. For one moment, I expect satisfaction. It sure as fuck satisfied me watching her this.

Instead, Julia stares at the television with an expression so empty of pleasure that something inside me goes still. She doesn’t look upset, not ashamed. She look underwhelmed. She looks like someone who scratched an itch because it was irritating her and discovered afterward that the relief lasted approximately three seconds.

Her mouth twists faintly. Then she exhales, reaches for the remote and changes whatever she was watching. I almost laugh. Not because anything about what I have just done is funny, because that expression is unmistakable.

Well. That was disappointing.

The thought comes in her voice. I know it would probably piss her off that I can imagine it so accurately. My attention stays fixed on her while another idea begins forming. Not sexual at first. Observational. She wanted something. She gave it to herself. It wasn’t enough. The language arrives almost on its own.

I know the ache in your body when you press your hand against your core, wishing someone else would.

I close my eyes and there it is — the next letter. The sentence should disgust me. Instead, I begin building everything around it before I have even left the woods. What she wants, what she denies herself. The difference between touching herself because desire demands some kind of answer and being touched by someone who has spent enough time watching to know exactly how she reacts. Ghost takes the thought and runs with it. He wants to tell her that he sawit. He wants her to understand that the privacy she believes surrounds her is thinner than she knows. He wants to frighten her with that knowledge. Worse, he wants to know whether frightening her will make her curious again.

I look toward the couch. Julia has moved on as though nothing happened, legs curled beneath the blanket while she watches something else and absently runs one hand through her hair. Normal. Unaware.

Mine, whispers the part of me I should have silenced weeks ago.

I think about Thursday. Her saying no. What it meant when someone ignored it. Every rule I have built my adult life around because I know exactly what unchecked control becomes in the hands of a man who believes wanting something makes it his. The contradiction is enormous. I see it clearly. That may be the most damning part. I am not confused about what I’m doing, I am choosing it.

I stay another twenty minutes before forcing myself back toward the motorcycle. The ride home does nothing to clear my head. I barely walk through my own door, the second letter is already taking shape. I don’t remove my jacket. I don’t turn on the television or pour a drink or pretend I’m going to spend the rest of the evening doing anything remotely normal. I go directly to the desk. The black stationery waits in the drawer.