“Hold on. Let me check.”
I could hear him shuffling through papers. My heart began to pound harder with every second.
“Yes. My apologies. There was maintenance on your floor while you were away.”
While he was giving me the details, my eyes stayed locked on the laptop screen.
I paused the image.
What I saw frightened me.
It was Jeremy.
He looked straight at the camera and smiled.
A wave of sickening fear surged through me, so strong it felt as though he were standing right in front of me. His evil grin paralyzedme. He had changed his appearance—his beard was scruffy, his hair grown out. He wore glasses and false teeth, but I recognized him instantly.
Everything came rushing back. The abuse. The yelling. The horror.
I emailed the clip to Alex and then forced myself to watch the rest of the recording.
Jeremy moved from room to room, entering the kitchen and throwing the towels on the floor. He smiled after drawing on the cupboard door. He didn’t go into Lucas’s room.
Then he entered my room.
I felt sick as I watched him rifle through my clothes and drawers. He took one of my undergarments and stuffed it into his overalls. Then he took a bra and underwear and sat on my bed. I couldn’t look away as he pleasured himself, releasing himself onto my delicates. After scrunching them up, he threw them onto my bed and left.
The past had come back to haunt me, crushing any hope I had for a peaceful sleep.
I changed the sheets on my bed first. Then I cleaned the entire house. I scrubbed and sanitized every surface. Every corner. I needed control. I needed clarity. I told myself again and again that I would not let him get to me. I exercised. I moved my body until exhaustion dulled the fear just enough. Then I messaged Alex, asking for an update on Jeremy.
While dropping Lucas off at school, I spoke to the principal. “I want you to make sure that no one—absolutely no one—besides Caleb or me picks him up from school. If there are any changes, I will call you myself. But I mean it. No one.”
I was scared. Paranoid, maybe. But I had a right to be.
Alex called me later. “Nyah, we’ve lost track of him.”
Terror surged through me. “How is that possible, Alex?” I yelled into the phone.
“I’m sorry, Nyah, but I can’t request that my boss keep a tracker on this guy for no reason.”
“But what about what I sent you this morning?” My voice shook as the fear built.
“You need to come down to the station and press charges. That would help.”
I drove there immediately and filed the charges with Alex’s help.
From that moment on, I became hyper-vigilant. I constantly looked over my shoulder. I began meeting Tyrone every week. I changed the locks without telling Larry and gave Caleb and Elle spare sets of keys.
Caleb had picked up on my stress. I could see it in the way his eyes followed me, and in the way his hand lingered a second longer on my back. Every time he asked what was wrong, my throat closed. I told myself I was protecting him by staying quiet, but the truth was more selfish than that.
I was afraid.
Afraid of what telling him would change.
Jeremy wasn’t just a man from my past—he was the past I had clawed my way out of, the version of myself I had buried so deeply that even I pretended she no longer existed. Telling Caleb meant resurrecting her. It meant admitting that danger had followed me here, into this life I was trying so desperately to keep intact.
What if knowing made him look at me differently? What if love turned into caution, into distance, into a quiet calculation of risk? Would he stay with me, or would he decide that being with me was too dangerous?
