Chapter 1
Hello, Claire.
The private school where Claire Radcliffe teaches has barely any security. It’s like they don’t listen to the news. It’s located in an affluent neighborhood. Packed with rich white privileged brats who get raised by nannies while their mommies take the trendiest exercise classes at the gym before heading home to fuck their pool guys. These people are a bunch of sheep. They think they’re above anything happening to them.
I could blow up this whole building right now if I wanted to with what I have in my trunk. But that would fuck up my plans for Claire.
Right now, I need Claire. I need all the things she doesn’t yet know she has to offer me.
She’s eating lunch with a handful of the other teachers in a small trendy deli across the street from the school. Her blue eyes are glued to the apple she just bought, which was probably too expensive for her to splurge on, but she’s hungry and her cabinets are empty at home. I know, because I rummaged through them this morning while she was in the shower. She lives on Ramen noodles and whatever else she could get to fill her belly at the Dollar Tree.
Private school teachers don’t make much, I suppose. This meager life she leads is a far cry from what her family name implies. The Radcliffe family was a wealthy one at one time, a very wealthy one.
Maybe she should call that family to buy her some new underwear, that drawer was pretty empty of anything good too, and now she’s out her favorite thong, because it’s currently balled up in my front pants pocket.
I’m sitting two tables over from her, but she doesn’t notice. I’m quite vigilant. Invisible when I need to be. I’m layered in a hoodie and heavy coat, sipping on a nine-dollar cup of freshly ground bullshit, watching her. Every now and then I bring her panties out and sniff them. Her scent makes my mouth water. No one around me notices. Fucking amazing to me. How can you not notice someone sniffing a fistful of panties near you? Fucking snowflakes, every one of them.
Claire’s got her lesson plan book out and she’s writing in the tiny calendar boxes. The male teacher next to her watches. The Jackass has probably been trying to fuck her for months, but she doesn’t notice—or if she does, she doesn’t let on. She always was a cock tease.
I squeeze myself through my pants thinking about it.
“You need to eat something more than an apple, Claire. Let me buy you a sandwich,” Jackass says. He leans in closer to her. Too close. I wait for her to smile up at him and bat those beautiful blues. Maybe try and seduce a sandwich and dessert out of him for free. But that’s not how it goes down.
Good girl, Claire.
She scoots away, taking back her personal space. Maybe she’s not good, maybe she’s just playing hard to get.Oh, Claire, I hope you’re not. “No thanks,” she says to Jackass. “I’m not hungry.” I know she’s lying, because I can hear her stomach growl as she nibbles on the skin of the Golden Delicious she’s holding in her tight little fist. In my personal opinion, Claire Radcliffe seems to be a walking cliché. There’re daddy issues written all over those pouty lips. Mommy issues too,Jesus, we can’t forget those. I see her bitterness and distrust in every gesture and expression she makes. It’s in the way she sits hunched over, no sign of self-confidence, or the way she talks to people in that clipped-off manner, giving nothing of herself away.
I think I like this Claire Radcliffe. The one that hurts and isn’t such a perfect fucking Radcliffe anymore. This Claire is broken, and broken girls are always more fun. Most desperate to be loved. And I want Claire desperate.
I press down on my cock again. A desperate Radcliffe is a huge turn-on.
Her nails are bare, unlike the other women sitting with her, and her sweater is a plain, baggy turtleneck while the others wear bright colors to catch all the right attention. She wears no make-up, but her lips are naturally plump and pink, and for a brief moment I wonder how wet they’d feel wrapped around the head of my cock with those blue eyes looking up at me. I take another deep inhale off her panties.
She reaches across the table for a book lying by the half-eaten lunch of a woman whose hair is pulled back so tightly in a bun it makes her eyes look all wrong. My focus snaps from the bun to the soft expanse of Claire’s waist when I notice the hem of her sweater ride up as she stretches to take the book. I think I see the swirl of dark ink peeking out, and I wonder when or if she ever got a tattoo. Whose hand did she hold when the needle pierced her skin? Claire sits back down and looks at her watch. She’s counting the minutes until lunch is over. Her knee starts jumping. She still has thirty minutes but doesn’t want to stay another second.
The rest of her party speak loud across the table to each other, laughing raucously. Yet Claire’s silence seems the most cacophonic.
I don’t know much about Claire now. I did, once, another lifetime ago. And honestly, I haven’t thought about her for a while, not until a few days ago. Not until my life got pulled out from underneath my feet. Now, I’m trying to get to know her again, trying to see what kind of a person she turned into. I’ve been following her for four days. I know where she lives, where she works. I know she’s almost always alone. And when she’s home she reads too many romance novels and needs to make herself cum in utter silence twice before she can fall asleep, filling herself with her own fingers instead of any one of the willing men who circle around her perimeter like vultures. Is she waiting for her very own love story?
I think she’d enjoy a family drama or a phycological thriller better, she’d relate to it more with all her mommy and daddy issues.
I’m almost finished with my coffee when Claire’s cellphone rings. It takes her a moment to fish it out of her old worn bag and another to stare down at it curiously. Jackass leans over and says, “Where’s that area code from?”
She doesn’t answer Jackass. She knows the area code, she knows where the call is from, she just doesn’t want to speak to anyone in that area. But she answers anyway. Which is good. It’s an integral part of this game and part of what must happen.
“Hello?” she says into the phone, pushing herself away from the table, her colleagues. Jackass watches her closely, circling and circling, waiting to pick at her bones.
“Yes, this is Claire Radcliffe.” She moves closer to my table as she listens to the voice on the other end of the phone. I already know what the voice is saying.
Claire’s beautiful face turns a stark white, her free hand lifts up and trembling fingers touch her mouth. Her eyes squeeze closed and now she’s so close to my table and my empty cup of shitty coffee I could hear the person’s voice she’s listening to. “…found the body of one Libby Radcliffe, who hanged herself inside the living area of her home approximately four days prior.”
“M-my mother’s dead?” she whispers into the phone. Jackass teacher guy jumps up to her rescue, running his hand through his hair pretending her worst news is his as well. He stands in front of her, waiting to comfort her, but she doesn’t get off the phone fast enough for him so he manhandles her into his chest.Jesus, Claire, I hope you’re not sleeping with this guy. She’s on the phone, crying into Jackass’s chest. He shrugs over her head at their other colleagues that are watching her meltdown. His hip bumps into my table. He doesn’t even say excuse me.
Claire is inconsolable.
Just the way I need her to be.
Her colleagues gather up all her belongings and they rush her outside.
I sit back and smile, waiting for my next move.
