It’s decided.
I have to take this to the police. They’ll do something…surely? Cade claims not wishing to harm me, but he’ll hurt those around me. The blood on his hands from tonight proves all I need to know. Involving the law is the only sane way to deal with a man without boundaries, even though he’ll be pissed.
I’m mad he broke in, so it’s nothing less than deserved.
Hopefully the cops believe me. They have to. If they do, what changes? If they don’t, it leaves me in danger. Or not, because hewon’t hurt me. Somehow, I trust it deep down even while barely knowing him.
Is he even a bad person?He’s charming, but doesn’t seem bad. Was everything with him a ploy?
It doesn’t explain that when his lips brushed mine, an untamed jolt of power rocketed through me, demanding I press into him. That I open both my mouth and life and let him do whatever he wants.
MA thesis aside, I hated ending things with Cade. Had he not broken in tonight, stained with the blood of my date, maybe I’d have been thrilled to see him again. No matter how ridiculous, Cade nonetheless altered something in me from that first letter.
Months of pitiful attempts to erase him from my mind feel even more silly now. With him around, I won’t need to.
Whoa. Exhaustion clearly to the max degree has me insane. I have to turn him in. Have to stay far away from whoever he truly is. Have to because he’s a?—
“You shouldn’t judge a person. Half of my appearance is to purposely give that impression to people. It’s called defence.” Isaid that to him—about myself. How am I supposed to do the same in return then to him?
With my mind running ragged in every direction, sleep eventually drags me away into the darkness.
Into a place Cade meets me in.
With my alarm, I roll to smack my phone quiet, something soft annoyingly right there, brushing my cheek. It’s soft, but not my blanket either.
“Ugh, Millie, off.” My hand swats but doesn’t find the furball. Rather, as my legs shift, she moves with me from her place by the end of the bed.
If not my cat, then… My lids flick open to the white flower resting beside me.
A calla lily.
“Oh my god.”
Gripping the flower, I shoot upright in bed, scanning the room forhim. Cade came back. He’s the only man other than my dad to know I prefer these, and certainly the only one to ever have sent them.
There are two more calla lilies, one in the centre of my room and the second connecting the path to my doorway. The door, which is opened farther than it was when I went to bed.
“Fucking asshole.” I hiss the words through clenched teeth, praying he’s still in my house and overhears. That he knows what’s coming his way.
The trail I may be dumb to follow leads to the kitchen, where there’s another lying just inside the doorway. The rest are in a glass vase that’s normally kept in the cupboard above the fridge.
Not only did he return at some point in the night, but he ensured Iknewhe did. The build-your-own bouquet he’s scattered is reminiscent of the one from last year, and with a weight in my stomach, I walk to the table to grab the card sticking out from the flowers.
Be Mine.
You’re Mine.
It’s in the same handwriting I spent months poring over; the same slants to his letters; the same pressure where his pen dug in the hardest. There’s no question this time, just a blatant stated fact. A command my thumb brushes along.
Millie enters the room and rubs against my ankles, her tail winding in request of her morning treats. “What do I do about him, girl?” I murmur as I follow her request. If I have any hope of getting ready for work in peace, appeasing the animal is step one.
Hermeowis in response to her treats, not my question, so I’m forced to go on without an answer.
To say my morning worsens isn’t a lie.
It seems Cade was a very busy person, as displayed by the second bouquet I discover when opening my front door to leave for work. It’s smaller than the one he decorated my house with, made up of four red roses resting on top of the fresh inch of snow that fell overnight and dying every second it’s out here without care.
“You have to be fucking kidding me,” I growl, snatching up the flowers and retreating inside to toss them out. A glance at my phone reassures me there’s five minutes until the bus’s arrival. The stop for which is only across the street, giving me time to deal with this shit—so long as the bus doesn’t arrive early today, which it sometimes does.
