Page 93 of The Advocate’s Ultimatum

She hesitated, then stepped back. “I don’t have long.”

The apartment was small but neat, with everything in its place. A life that had been pulled back into order. She didn’t offer him a seat, but she didn’t ask him to leave either.

“I understand you used to date Maddox. Is that correct?” JP asked.

“We were together about eight months,” she said. “On and off at the end.”

“Why’d it end?”

She let out a breath that sounded like a laugh. “Because I finally paid attention.”

“What does that mean?”

“At first, Todd seemed normal. He was quiet and kind of boring, honestly.” She crossed her arms. “But he had interests. At first, I didn’t think much of it. Everyone has their things.” She glanced at JP. “But it didn’t stay small.”

“What kind of interests?” JP asked.

She looked away for a moment. “His sexual interests were all about the young,” she said. “Everything had to be young. I mean, he didn’t ask me to shave or anything like that. It was more like a teenage young. And he really couldn’t function without it, if you know what I mean.”

JP nodded.

“Sometimes we’d watch porn. I was kind of okay with that, but the videos, the images were always teenage stuff.” She shook her head. “It got to where it wasn’t just something in the background. It was the only way.”

“Did you ever see him with anyone underage?” JP asked.

“No,” she said. Then, after a beat, “Not directly.”

“But?”

She shifted her weight. “He’d notice them. Out in public, at stores, parks, wherever we were.”

“How would he act?”

“Not obvious,” she said. “That’s what made it worse. He’d just watch. Like he was studying them.”

“Did he ever comment on the girls?”

“No.”

“Did you ever confront him about it?”

“Yeah,” she said. “More than once.”

“And?”

She gave a small, bitter smile. “He said I was overreacting. That I was making something out of nothing.”

She walked to the kitchen counter, then turned back. “He started asking me to dress differently,” she said. “Younger. Specific things.”

“Like what?”

She blushed. “School uniforms. Cheer outfits. Stuff like that. At first, I laughed it off, but then it kept coming up, over and over. That’s when it stopped being funny.”

“Did you ever see him cross a line?” JP asked.

She shook her head. “Not in front of me.” A pause. “But I stopped trusting what I couldn’t see.”

“Did he ever talk about specific girls?”