Chapter Sixteen
I push into my room, laughing, stumbling in through the doorway. Tripping over each other and giggling like schoolgirls, shushing each other louder than necessary. We’re late. Darius decided we should have a night off from all the studying and celebrate my breakup with Lexi. He never liked her anyway. I’m in my final year. This is it for me. I’m getting ready to graduate, and I can’t wait. I want to get away from this shithole.
From everything that happened recently, and the so-called family. I just need a fresh start, a million miles away from them all. Everything was going great until a few months ago, when my sperm donor, Enzo, appeared out of nowhere. Sweet-talking my sister into going to some fucking rando’s wedding. My mum forced me to go with them to chaperone my sister, but I have a feeling she knew what the deal was and was actually excited for her.
My mum was Enzo’s mistress, and when she got pregnant with my sister, then me later, she thought she had it made. She thought he would leave his wife and make her his number one. Instead, he stuck us on the other side of the city in a crappy place, far enough away from his family to be out of sight, out of mind.
Mum spent all the money he sent on trying to keep up with the good life, trying to convince him she was a catch and he was missing out. Leaving us with just enough to get by, and if I didn’t have a partial scholarship, there’s no way I would be able to afford university. The student loans will crucify me for the next ten years as it is. Imagine having to pay full tuition.
But I refuse to beg him for more. I’d never even met him before he turned up with a proposition for my mother. Apparently, he fucked her into submission and left with a promise of trying to marry my sister off. I shudder at the thought. While Mum was keeping up with her hair and nail extensions and Botox, her designer clothes, and her lavish lifestyle, sleazing around with other guys for handouts. Growing up, I could see my sister is going to be just the same. Flash a bit of ass at a wealthy man for his money and attention.
Enzo took us to this fancy wedding, paraded my sister in front of some thuggish asshole, and offered her as his bride-to-be. The guy fucking accepted, and then Enzo spent the rest of the week lavishing her with money and gifts to show this dude how much she would be a perfect match.
Getting home, my mum was so excited when she heard who was going to be her new son-in-law, she jumped around, clapping her hands and praising my sister, wanting to make sure she didn’t fuck this up. Apparently, he’s some important, influential guy, and my sister’s life is made, and Mum’s too if they play their cards right.
It disgusts me. I’ve worked hard to better myself, and she’ll just open her legs. Fuck some thuggish old guy, a fucking sugar daddy, to get what she wants. Maybe I should have been born a girl. I long for better. I want to get as far away from my family as possible. If I never see any of them again, it will be too soon. There’s no love lost between me and my sister, or my mother, for that matter. I was just an inconvenience growing up. I wasn’t cute. I couldn’t flash my eyes at men like my sister and get them to part with their money. I was just always in the way. I’ve always been alone, and I’ve kinda got used to the fact that I have no one to have my back. It’s just me.
I flop onto the bed and pass out, wallowing in the realisation that no one will ever choose me. I will never be someone’s priority. I’m destined to be alone.
When I wake up, I feel like I haven’t slept. My tongue feels thick and furry, and I groan as I turn over. I wince as something sticks in my cheek. When I open my eyes. There’s a black box on my pillow. I gasp, and Darius launches his pillow at me, telling me to groan fucking quieter. I blink and drag myself to sit at the end of the bed.
My hands shake as I take the lid off the box. A silver lighter on a velvet pillow. It’s beautiful. Engraved and weighty in my hands. There was a pen before, and also a tie clip. They all seem expensive. I don’t know if it’s some fucked-up stalker or Enzo’s weird way of reaching out. It’s the smell that’s throwing me. It’smanly, dark, and just screwing with my mind. I shake my head. What the fuck is happening? I’m so confused and don’t know whether to be scared, flattered, or seriously worried.
I drag myself off the bed and head into the shower. I need coffee and to make better choices. I stand with my head under the shower for the longest time as I try not to puke. My mind is reeling over who is first sending me gifts, but also how they are getting into my dorm room. As I scrub myself down and clean my teeth. I start to feel more human, but I definitely need food and coffee.
I drag my ass into the coffee shop on the other side of campus because I still can’t bear the thought of bumping into Lexi. I order the biggest, strongest, blackest coffee and pile masses of sugar into it until my teeth twitch. I take a deep inhale of it and groan at the smell, sipping on the coffee with my eyes closed as I enjoy the sensation of the caffeine running through my system. Before heading off to uni with what’s left of my coffee. I’m not built for drinking. I’m certainly not built for this city.
I fumble through the day, barely coherent in my classes, not sure if it’s the hangover or the stalker, but something isn’t sitting right. I just can’t wait for this day to be over. Once the last bell sounds, I snatch up my stuff and head home via the coffee shop again.
When I open my door, I freeze. There’s another black box on my pillow. I stand there just staring for what feels like an eternity. I storm into the room, snatch the bag from my bedside table, toss the new gift straight in it, stuff the bag in my backpack, and storm out. This is the last straw.
I can’t keep doing this. I’m starting to question my sanity. I keep finding gifts in my room, either when I get home or when I wake up, and I smell that same smell, that masculine, headysmell with the hint of cigar, it lingers, clings to everything, and it feels dangerous, and intoxicating.
Someone’s fucking with me. I don’t think it’s Lexi, but I haven’t seen her since. I’m on edge, jumpy, creating shadows in my mind, noises which can’t be there but also seem so loud—how can they not be? I’m being followed. I know I am, but when I feel it and I check, there’s nothing and no one there.
I see figures lurking in the depths of any shadow, in my dreams that startle me awake, sweating, breathing heavily, tightness in my chest. I’m not sure what’s real anymore. I’m not sleeping since finding all the random boxes with trinkets inside them. We’d been out drinking, and I woke to a box on my pillow again. I didn’t even open it. The gift before was a Zippo lighter engraved with my name, along with intricate vines and leaves trailing around a human heart. It was stunning, weird, and expensive.
When I showed Darius, he said he thought he saw a man in our room, but then thought he was dreaming and rolled over, going back to sleep. I quizzed him, but he can’t remember what the man looked like, big dark eyes, scary looking, I mean—not helpful.
I sit at the police station with my bag of weird trinkets. Every one has been found on my pillow, in my locked room. Small notes that I found at the bottom of each box that make no sense, signed…
BR X
I don’t know what to think or where to go from here.
“Mr Christian?” the policeman asks as he comes through the doors. I stand to greet him, and he escorts me back into an interview room. I take a seat and nervously fidget, picking at myfingers while I wait for the officer to get ready. Once he takes a seat, I push the bag of items across the table. He moves them to the side and picks up his pen.
“So you believe you have a stalker?” He looks at me and blows out a breath as if he would rather be anywhere else than here.
“I do have a stalker.” I grab the bag, pushing it back towards him. “They left me these.” I snatch the bag and toss the stuff onto the table. “On my pillow.” I stare at him wide-eyed. “In my locked dorm room, while I was in there asleep.” He still stares at me. “You need a key card to get into the building and a physical key to access the room.”
He writes something down. “So what makes you feel you might be being stalked?”
My eyes widen. Is he fucking serious? “Because I’m being followed, because someone is breaking into my room while I sleep and leaving me… gifts.”
“Could it be an ex-girlfriend?”
I grit my teeth. I’ve only ever had one girlfriend, and turned out she wasn’t my girlfriend really, and that was weird in itself, the way she just disappeared after a note was pushed under my door.
