Chrissy pulled out of the parking lot, taillights glowing in the misty dark. I started my engine, merged behind her, and let the adrenaline of being so close, yet so damn far away, smooth into something cold and razor-sharp.
She took a left onto Highway 98 without even signaling. Of course she did. She was preoccupied and playing Russian roulette with her safety… again.
I stayed several cars back, invisible in the stream of headlights.
She cut right onto County Road 64, that long two-lane ribbon that carved all the way through from Daphne to Loxley and beyond, with plenty of dark stretches. It could easily be a predator’s paradise. My hands tightened on the wheel at the thought of anyone but me laying a hand on her.
She didn’t notice a damn thing.
Halfway across Baldwin County, she finally reached 59 and turned right toward Stonewood… toward home, or what passed for it.
Ten minutes later, her apartment complex came into view. It was three stories of old red brick, dim exterior lights, and too many blind corners. She pulled into her usual spot, still paying no attention whatsoever to her surroundings. Again, she left her car unlocked and shuffled into the building without lifting her head from where she was gazing down at her phone.
I gritted my teeth almost hard enough to crack them and kept driving, circling around the back of her building. I parked in the farthest, darkest corner of the lot, exactly where a real threat would park.
I had a perfect view into her dining area through the open blinds. Of course she hadn’t closed them. Of course, she didn’t think for a second that anyone might watch her.
Chrissy didn’t even bother to flick on the light at first. No, she just dropped her purse on the table and rubbed her temples like the day had taken a piece out of her that she might never get back. She moved slowly, shoulders caved in under invisible weight.
My chest tightened, anger folding into something worse… something helpless and possessive.
I hated that feeling… that raw, animal panic that lived under my ribs. The accident had taken my face and my body and carved them into something unrecognizable. It had stolen three years from me and left me to wake up to a father who’d died under circumstances that everyone called tragic, but no one dared question too closely. The world had shifted under my feet, but it hadn’t taken away the part of me that wanted someone to belong to me, and vice versa.
Chrissy made that want unbearable. She was the one thing I couldn’t reason away, the one soft place I’d ever been tempted to land.
Watching her unravel under the weight of everyone else’s needs made me furious. Watching her walk blindly into danger made me murderous, but watching her suffer alone? That made me feel… doomed.
She deserved safety, comfort, and luxury. She deserved someone who wouldn’t let the world chew her up and spit her out.
She got me instead, and I was going to do everything in my power to spoil her rotten… if she’d just open her godforsaken invitation, agree to play the Game, sign the contract, and pass all my tests like I hoped and prayed she would.
I stared at her through the open blinds and drummed my fingers against my thigh, my impatience ratcheting up with every wasted second that ticked by.
“Come on, sweetness… just open the fucking invitation already.”
Chapter
Five
CHRISSY
By the timeI got home, my skin felt too tight for my body.
The lobby in my apartment building smelled like old carpet and burnt popcorn. My ground floor apartment wasn’t much better, to be honest. It was quiet, dark, and cold from the drafty windows I still hadn’t gotten around to sealing. I didn’t bother turning on the lights. I just kicked off my heels, dropped my bag on the kitchen table, and stood there like I forgot what I was supposed to do next.
I could still hear Granny Irene’s voice in my head from a good day months ago.
You don’t have to carry it all, baby girl.
God, I wanted to believe that.
I pressed my fingertips to my temples and rubbed slow circles, trying to chase off the headache that had been building since lunch. The guilt sat heavier, not just from the overdue bills or the forced smile I’d worn all day like armor, but from the way I’d left her there. Confused, drifting, and alone in that antiseptic room while I ran back to my apartment to get ready to face tomorrow,and yet another day at a job that barely covered the costs of her medical care.
I exhaled through my nose and moved on autopilot, pulling the mail from my purse and dropping it in a messy stack beside my bag.
That’s when I saw it again… the envelope with my name hand-written on it.
It was cream-colored and a heavyweight paper. There wasn’t a stamp or a logo on the envelope. There was onlyChrissyscrawled across the front in spidery, deliberate cursive handwriting that looked like someone had taken a painstaking amount of time writing my name with an obscenely expensive fountain pen. The handwriting was masculine, but unfamiliar.
