Knox’s expression softened just a fraction. “We’ll keep the feed up the whole time, if he comes close again, I call the policeand you head there. I need your help here, you know more about her than I do.”
I felt fractured, and in more ways than one. I knew what he said had truth to it, but everything in me needed to be with her. “We keep the feed on, and you send everything you find to the app on my phone. I want every video, every picture, every detail.”
“Deal. I’ll dig deeper too. We’ll figure out who he is before morning, and we'll have a plan.”
I hesitated again because every instinct I had was screaming to leave. I forced myself to think—to see the bigger picture, the way Knox did. I had to trust him in order to keep her safe.
“Fine,” I said finally. “But I’m not leaving her again once I get back to her.”
“You won’t have to,” he replied, already turning back to his screens.
Sinking into the chair behind me, my eyes stayed glued to the monitor, watching the empty room like he might come back the second I looked away. He wasn’t going to get away with this again because I wasn’t going to justgo after him. When I found out who this was,I was going to kill him.
20
Ember
I woke slowly, realizing how early it was. There was barely any light coming in from my window which meant I still had time to rest. My body felt heavy, but in a good way. I laid there in the quiet for a little while, wrapped deep in my blanket. Not only did my head feel clear, but my chest wasn’t tight for once. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I actually slept well.
When I finally blinked fully awake, my hand drifted across the nightstand to my phone. The screen lit up as I brought it closer, seeing no new notifications. I didn’t know why that made something in my chest dip slightly, but it did. In some small way, I'd hoped he would message me, but maybe this was another test, another way to show he owned me.
I clicked on the last message he had sent me as my thumb hovered over the keyboard. I stared at the screen for a second before frowning and closing out of it. I exhaled quietly, letting my head sink deeper into the pillow.
Why was this so hard?It was just a simple text to the man who’d been stalking me. I pressed my lips together, then typed again as I sat up.
Hey.
The message was a simple one, with nothing behind it. I clicked send and took a deep breath. As I did so, I registered something across my room. I pushed myself up against my headboard. My gaze drifted, unfocused at first. Then it narrowed in on my vanity, and everything in me stilled.
I moved off the bed and reached for the light switch. As brightness flooded the room, my eyes settled back on the mirror. There, on the glass, written in thick jagged lipstick strokes were the words:
I will never stop.
My body went rigid at the sight, and I knew something was wrong. A small white envelope was next to the mirrored glass.
What the actual fuck.
The paper was bright white, with my name scrawled in black across the top. For a split second, I convinced myself I imagined it. Then, I envisioned just tearing it up. The idea of torching the paper even filtered in, but Ineededto know what was inside.
Letting courage replace my fear, I grabbed the envelope and opened it slowly. Not knowing what to expect, I braced out of instinct—like whatever was inside might explode. To my surprise, the contents seemed to be quite small and spilled out onto the floor around me. Pictures, each one falling like broken glass.
Dozens of them.
Each one was a different polaroid. Yet, in all of them I was sleeping. I bent to grab them and realized what I was looking at. In some, I had clothes on, but in others, I was completelynaked. The room around me swayed as I picked up more, shots where my legs were spread open. Tears fell down my cheeks as I went through each one.
Someonehad been in my room, watching me.
Someonehad been taking pictures of me, taking advantage of me.
Someone who didn’t plan on stopping.
The panic hit fast as I scooped the photos up with trembling hands. Clutching them to my chest, a few more tears fell out of pure, unsolicited anger. When I finally slowed down my thoughts long enough to process them, I forced myself to look at each one again. Moving over to my bed, I spread them across the blanket.
There was only one person who could be responsible for this—one person who I had almost chosen to let in. Inhaling deeply, I walked into my bathroom to find the lighter I kept next to my candles. After grabbing it, I returned to pick up the first photo. Flicking my thumb, I watched it curl and blacken in my hand. One by one, I burned them all, letting the ashes fall across my bed like dark snow. When the last picture was gone, I stared at the crumbles of what was left. “You can fuck all the way off.”
A million different emotions filled me, all morphing into a combined weight that settled deep in my chest. Through shaking hands, I shuffled to the mirror and pressed against the words on the glass, rubbing once. As the lipstick smeared, I watched the lines blur into distorted red smudges. This wasmyroom, my safe space.How dare he trespass here, and how dare he take those pictures of me.
Pulling my hand back to me, I looked down at my palm that was now crimson-stained. This was the same color I’d worn the first night with him—a thought that only enraged me further. Pressing my hand back to the mirror, I laid it flat against the sentence, dragging it down and scraping it sideways. I then moved in circles, breaking every letter into nonsense. I didn’t stop until the message he left was an unrecognizable mess. The more I smeared, the better I felt.
