1
Ava
There’s a certain kind of fear that lingers even after the terrible moment has passed. That is the kind of fear I feel now as we work to clean up the damage the fire did to the house. The danger is gone, and even though the house sustained some damage, it’s not beyond fixing. But I’m having trouble getting the feeling out of my head from that night—the feeling of being woken from my sleep and needing to run. And the feeling of the one place that is supposed to be safe and secure, so easily taken down by a spark and a single flame.
After a few days, Trevor and I are able to get most of the damages repaired. Fortunately, the firefighters got there before the flames had spread too rampantly throughout the house, and the damage was contained mostly to the living room and front hallway. The authorities say that the fire was started there in the front hall by somehow being able to slide a burning piece of paper through a partially open window, where it quickly caught the curtain on fire. When Trevor woke me and pulled me out the side door with him into the yard, I stood watching the house burn until the firetruck got there.Thatis the image that I’m having trouble shaking from my mind.
“You okay?” Trevor asks as I pour us cups of coffee with a shaky hand.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie. “You?”
“I think we should stop pretending that we’re both fine,” he says. “We both know that we’re not. I’m totally on edge now about how far Max is actually willing to go, and I can see that you are completely shaken.”
I nod and lift my cup to my lips to take a hot sip. Caffeine is probably the last thing that my nerves need right now, but it tastes good anyway.
“I just don’t understand what he’s trying to accomplish,” I say with frustration. “Why doesn’t he just leave us alone? It wasn’t like I was ever involved with Max. We were partners on projects, and he was an acting boss to my position once he moved up the ladder of seniority. But none of the interactions I had with him would warrant this type of behavior.”
“Literallynothingwarrants this type of behavior,” Trevor said.
He definitely wasn’t wrong.
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “But what I mean is that it isn’t even like he’s a scorned lover or something.”
“My honest opinion is that he’s just batshit crazy,” Trevor says. “And I think we can now safely assume that he’s also extremely dangerous.”
He’s right. Since there is no reason Max should be coming after Trevor and me this hard, we are both beginning to worry that he might actually be dangerously unstable. And neither of us is quite sure what to do about it. We can’t prove that the arson was his doing, but we both know it was. Trevor filed a police report and alerted the cops that Max was behind it. Since the officers are friends of his they are pretty willing to at least entertain the idea that Trevor is right. So now the cops are doing extra patrolling around the house to keep an eye on things as we try to get back to living our lives.
“We can’t keep hiding and living in fear of this guy,” Trevor says as he comes to wrap his arms around me while we stand next to the coffee pot in the kitchen. “We need to keep going with our plans.”
“Agreed.” I sigh as I bury my face against his shoulder. “I just wish he would come at us head-on instead of being so creepy and sneaky.”
“Agreed,” Trevor says. “Then I could beat the living shit out of him and we could be done with all of this.”
I roll my eyes at him.
“Beating him up definitely made this situation worse and not better,” I remind him.
“Nah,” Trevor says as he shakes his head. “This guy has a screw loose. He would have snapped when you left the company regardless. Guys like Max are all the same. They won’t back down until they have nothing left to fight.”
“How to we make it so that he has nothing left to fight?” I ask. Whatever that entails, I want to do it.
“We can’t. We don’t have any control over what’s going on in that guy’s sick head. The best we can do is not give him any more thought or attention than we have to.”
He kisses the top of my head and gives me a big squeeze before letting me go.
“I know it’s hard, but we can’t let him get to us, Ava,” Trevor says. “Come on, I think it’s about time that we have a moving day, don’t you?”
“A moving day?” I ask.
“Well, if we’re going to officially start this life together, then I should probably upgrade from justsleeping over, don’t you think?”
“Wait, do you mean you want to move into the house now?” I ask excitedly. “Likeallthe way?”
“Yeah,” he nods with a smile.
“Today?”
“Sure, why not?” Trevor answers. “We’ve finished all the repairs on the house, and before we start on anything else, I think it would easier to do if we were living in one place. I mean, if that’s okay with you of course.”
