Genny stared at me, a bit like a teacher eyeballs a naughty kid in class.
“No, Jez. The fact that you’ve had three threats sent, ones that contain far more detail than I’m comfortable with. This needs to go to the police.”
I chewed the inside of my mouth. In the last ten days, I’d received three death threats. I’d had a few threats made already via messages on social media, all of which I’d passed over to Genny for advice. Then I’d had a few more which were more of the same, so I’d just blocked and moved on with it. None were specific, none contained any detail that made me think they could become reality, none made me think anything other than that they should get a life.
But these three — one via my personal email, another delivered to Nate’s house and a third left behind my car windscreen wiper — were different.
“I don’t want Jesse to know.”
Genny shook her head. “You might never speak to me again, but you don’t get to make that call. My conscience does. Put it this way, what if this moron decides to try to get to you while you’re at Nate’s, babysitting the girls?”
I blanched. My stomach turned. I’d tried not to think about the what ifs, preferring to deal in actual facts — different from what I usually did as a romance writer — which was far healthier than getting carried away with worries and suppositions.
“Nate’s got a really good alarm system.”
“Jerrica, I read threats on a daily basis. There are a lot of fucking psychos out there. Sometimes, someone thrust into the public domain like you’ve been catches their eye. You remind them of someone they hate, and all that hate is transferred onto you. Occasionally, they have some serious mojo going on and the meds just aren’t cutting it, or their relationship has ended and they just have the extra sharpened side of bite which means they’ll go through with something. Most of the time, it’s just words. This doesn’t read like that to me.”
“Are you sure you haven’t been reading too much true crime?” I eyeballed Genny, although I was starting to feel slightly sick.
She stared back at me. “Why won’t you tell Jesse?”
I looked beyond her, fixing on the dart in photo-Guy’s head. Tears were promising.
“You know what happened to his mum?”
Genny nodded. “I do.”
“I don’t think he’ll be able to get his head around the possibility of something happening to me.”
“You think he’ll end it with you to keep you safe?” Her eyes narrowed, her expression telling me she already thought that was a very stupid idea.
I shrugged. I didn’t know, but it was a possibility. I knew Jesse still veered on the scared side of being in a relationship. He still asked me what he should do in certain situations, making a joke of it, and I knew he’d been reading other romance books than mine to try to learn what I might like. It was sweet, just giving me all the more reason to fall in love with him.
“Jerrica, you have to tell him.”
Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to get the chance.
The first game of the season started at eight in the morning, when Jesse woke, sat up bolt upright and froze. It woke me from a very nice dream where I’d been on a beach and at first, I’d been afraid someone — possibly my stalker person — had broken into Jesse’s house.
“What is it?”
He turned and looked at me, his expression softening, brushing his hand through his shock of dark hair that was sticking out every which way.
“Game day. I’ve never woken up with someone in my bed on game day.”
I settled back down, my hand going to his side, feeling the skin there. “What do you usually do on game day, apart from hang around at my brother’s?”
“Breakfast. Shower. Go to Nate’s if it’s a home game, head to the stadium to get on the coach if it’s away, or wake up in a hotel if we’ve stayed over.” He lay back down, facing me.
“Nate’s at ten it is. What do you want to do before breakfast?” I toyed with his arm, my wrist being very quickly caught in his hand.
“Try a new routine.”
And that was how we broke the sink in his bathroom.
We headed to my brother’s house, my parents there too for a few days so they could see the start of the season like they usually did. They hadn’t blinked an eye at me seeing Jesse. My mum had said before she’d been surprised that I hadn’t been ‘romanced’ by one of Nate’s teammates.
It was an easy morning: protein shakes, carbs, my nieces running around as they picked up on the underlying excitement of the day, and Amber seeing football from a different side, as there was no way she could manage helping out in the physio department; she looked like she had an extra-large melon attached to her front.
