Ten
I’m sorry I took the perfume.
Forgive me. It just makes me
feel better having it close.
I miss you so much, Rox
She hadn’t noticed the note at first and was unsure how long it had actually sat there on top of her dresser, while she undressed from work. Until she stepped up to it to place her earrings in the jewelry dish that sat next to her selection of perfumes, and it had caught her attention in the dim shadows of her bedroom. The moonlight falling on it as if to say ‘Hello, I’m here’.
In the place where her favorite perfume usually sat, the one that had been missing for weeks, sat a bright, neon orange post it.
With shaking fingers, she picked the handwritten note up, reading it over and over again before crumpling it in her hand and tossing it into the garbage.
He was back. It was him; she knew now. And he’d been inside her house.
Inside her house.
Probably more than once.
He’d stolen her perfume. Her favorite red bra and matching panties, too, she guessed, the night she’d fallen asleep in the bathtub. The roses. It was all him. It had to be.
How many times had he been inside? How many times had he rifled through her things, stolen from her, watched her?
She glanced around, eyes wide. He wasn’t threatening her, she reasoned with herself, trying for calming breaths. He wasn’t hurting her, wasn’t trying to hurt her. He was leaving her love notes, as he’d see them.
Did she dare call the police? Would they even take this seriously? He wasn’t hurting her. But this was harassment, stalking at the least, right?
Crossing the room, she reached for an inconspicuous cloth bound book between several others that sat atop her nightstand. Opening the front cover revealed a small secret safe. She twisted the dial to the combination and it opened, revealing her small handgun hidden there. Roxy replaced the book, sliding it between a worn, faded linen copy ofPride and Prejudiceand an old, frayed copy of Bram StokersDracula. She sat on the edge of the bed, letting the weight of the handgun become familiar again after so long. She’d gotten it after Free had brought her home, after Neal had beaten her bloody and then hightailed it out of town. It was registered, legal, and she knew her way around it well enough and was a decent shot, at least at the range she had frequented in the months after the attack. It had lived in her purse for over a year, carrying it with her everywhere she went, just in case he came back.
She had retired it to its hiding place in the book safe, after she was sure Neal wasn’t coming back. It was a terrifying, welcome weight in her hand now. Because hewasback.
And she wouldn’t go down without a fight. Not this time.
Eleven
“Hips closed, knees open, feet planted, shoulders dropped. Make sure you brace for impact.”
Roxy chanted the words back to herself in her head after he called them out. Repeating them over and over again in her head, trying—and utterly failing—to concentrate on the drill they were working on, and not the sculpted, bronzed, half naked man that was prowling through the paired off duos spaced across the gym floor.
“Strike.”
She struck the mitt on Natalie’s right hand and her friend stumbled backward with the force, having not prepared for the hit. Roxy fought the urge to roll her eyes. To Natalie, this was just an hour of ogling Travis… but to her, it was vital.
He was back.
In the days since she’d found Neal’s note, she’d hardly slept, could hardly eat for the fear coursing through her veins every waking moment. So she’d thrown herself into training. Listening to every single word Travis taught them. Because she knew… she knew she would need it.
Maybe not right now, but she would.
He was back, he had sent those flowers, and he had beeninher house, multiple times it seemed. He’d stolen her perfume, had taken her clothes…had come back to leave a fucking note, asking forforgiveness. She nearly snarled with the memory of that note.
She’d fallen asleep in the bathtub and he’d crept through her house without her even knowing it, while she was there, totally unaware. Had he spied on her in the bathtub? Had he watched her, naked and completely vulnerable? Her breath quickened as anxiety spiraled through her, making her chest seize, but she shoved it down. Focusing on her stance; her every muscle straining with how tense she was.
He could have stood over her, doing God only knows what, could have harmed her… and she had been totally oblivious of his presence. He had come back, after that. To leave that note. To tell her he was here, and he was watching.
She had called Bobby, her landlord, and he had come out to replace the locks on the doors, installed a new chain bolt, as well as to check all the windows. She hadn’t told him why; just said she’d thought she’d seen someone lurking and wanted to make sure everything was up to snuff. But still, she felt on edge and hated being home alone at night, terrified to sleep in case he was able to get in again.
