When I get home from a day of work I hardly even remember because my mind was so focused on this little game Zane and I are playing, I stop short when I see that the post-it note I left on the door this morning has a new line added to it.
I pick it up, my hand trembling slightly. My heart stops at the simple, curt phrase on the paper.
Not yet.
That’s it.
Two words.
Yet they cut so deeply. Maybe more than they should, coming from a man I’ve never met—a man I don’t even know what he looks like.
On the brighter side, he responded at least… That has to count for something.
I peel the note off the door, fold it, and keep it in my hand as I head into the kitchen. I pour myself a glass of wine, and fold the note over and over, wondering how much longer this will go on.
Chapter Three
Zane
I let myself into Georgia’s apartment quietly, carefully closing the door behind me.
I’m getting impatient with myself.
I’ve been close to her so many times now, close enough to brush past her in hallways, close enough to hear the cadence of her breathing when she pauses outside her building…so close that the restraint is starting to feel like a physical ache. Every instinct I have urges me forward, tells me to take the next step, to reach out and touch her already.
And yet…I don’t.
Something still holds me back.
Georgia has been receptive. More than receptive. She reads every letter. She wears what I ask. She leaves notes for me on her door like breadcrumbs meant only for me. After the first time she asked to meet, she stopped asking, but not because she lost interest. I can see it in the way she lingers now. The way she looks around before unlocking her car. The way her smile softens when she thinks she’s alone.
She’s waiting, anticipating just as much as I am.
But I’m not ready to see what happens when she really looks at me.
I can hide most of the damage with clothes. My face was spared the worst of it thanks to the helmet I had on, though the scars near my eye and along my cheek are still there; thin, pale reminders of the moment the visor shattered. The rest of the scars are easier to conceal. I don’t dwell on them anymore. They’re part of me now, like the limp I manage without thinking.
What I can’t predict is her reaction.
That uncertainty keeps me in the shadows longer than I planned.
I move through her apartment slowly, deliberately, taking in the familiar details. The way she lines her shoes up by the door. The throw blanket folded just so on the couch. The faint hum of the refrigerator and the soft tick of the wall clock.
I know this space almost as well as she does. Though she doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know that I’ve already been inside her house.
The first time I’d picked her lock, but it didn’t take long for me to find her spare key in a kitchen drawer. I made a copy and the next few visits were easy. Placing the cameras in her house was also easy, and as much as I know how fucked up that is, the need to see her overrides whatever guilt I’m supposed to feel.
I was strategic with the camera positioning. I chose spots that give a clear view without being invasive, and while I gave into the urge to put one in her bedroom, I did disable the video but left the audio on.
I’m a bastard, but not so much to scare the woman I care about. No, when I see her that way for the first it will be at her invitation.
I just need to make sure she’s safe. All the time.
The cameras are how I learned about the sink.
I heard the drip first, faint but persistent, late one night while she stood at the counter rubbing her temples, muttering under her breath about her landlord. I heard her leave a voicemail. Then another. I heard the frustration in her voice when no one called her back.
So now I’m here. To fix the sink.
