Page 22 of To Obsess

I take the time to moisturize from head to toe, throw my hair up in a towel, and dress in my favorite fuzzy pajamas. Heading down the stairs, I feel rejuvenated for the first time in I couldn’t tell you how long. The weight of the world has shifted, making it a little easier to bear.

Click.

I freeze mid-step, halfway down the stairs at the sound of a door shutting quietly. Abby was on her way to go over the emails and start research for the next episode, so I force my feet to move, ignoring the chill that has spread over my body. It’s just Abby, I remind myself as my foot hits the bottom step. From there, I have a clear view out the living room windows to the driveway.

My breath freezes in my lungs as I take in the sight. The driveway is empty except for my car. Abby isn’t here. I turn slowly toward the kitchen, dread filling my veins. Fighting every instinct screaming at me to run, I take one tentative step away from the front door.

My blood turns to ants crawling inside my veins as I push myself to the kitchen, eyes catching on the table where the card had been sitting for the last several days. The card is still there, but there’s something else lying beside it now.

I’d left it open, determined to find some clue as to the identity of the writer. It’s now closed with a deep red sunflower lying next to it. A sunflower that hadn’t been there forty minutes ago when I went upstairs to shower.

My blood chills, freezing me in place once more as I gaze out the window facing the backyard. I can’t be certain, but I swear I thought there was movement at the very edge of the yard, just this side of the pines. But there’s nothing there. Blinking to clear my vision, I shake my head and pick up the sunflower.

It feels like a lifetime passes before a notification pops up on my phone, letting me know Abby just pulled into the driveway. In under two minutes, she’s bounding up the front steps and through the door. “I can’t believe so many people listened to our first episode! I think this could be really big if we do it right.” I don’t move an inch. Don’t turn to her. Just stare at the sunflower and the card beyond it.

“Babe? What’s wrong?” she says, coming to my side. “That’s gorgeous!” Plucking the flower from my fingers, she puts it to her nose, inhaling deeply.

My eyes must convey the terror worming its way through my system because her entire demeanor shifts when her eyes meet mine. “Is this…?” The words she doesn’t say hang in the air between us.

“I was in the shower. I must have forgotten to lock the door. But I knew you were coming over, so when I heard the door close, I thought—then your car wasn’t in the driveway.” I can feel myself rambling now, trying to push through the fear and get the thoughts out before I spiral. Now that I think about it, my phone screen was clear of any notifications when I got out of the shower. No motion had been detected until Abby passed by the gateposts at the end of the driveway. The pit in my stomach grows as my head begins to swim with confusion.

“He was here?! In your freaking house?!” she yells, tossing the flower back onto the table. She grabs the card, opening it yet again, as if the words will somehow magically give her some different insight than it has given us for the last week. She stops dead in her tracks, eyes lifting to mine. “You didn’t tell me about this.” The words are accusatory as they roll off her tongue.

My brows knit together in confusion. “The card? Yes, I did. Are you fucking delusional?” I spit back, hurt marring the words.

For the first time in our many years of friendship, I see unadulterated terror shining from her eyes. As she flips the card around, I suck in a breath, eyes flitting back to hers before I grab the card from her hands.

There, stuck to the inside of the card, is a black sticky note smeared with silver ink that wasn’t there before. In scrawled handwriting, it reads:

GREAT EPISODE, VIOLET.

-K

Chapter 21

KILLIAN

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I mutter to myself under my breath, scrubbing my hands through my hair until the needles of pain are enough to bring me back down to reality. I puff air into my cheeks before slowly releasing it. “Fuck indeed.”

I truly hadn’t meant to listen to her podcast. Well, not at first anyway. I didn’t even know she was doing a podcast until this evening. How the fuck that slipped past my awareness, I’ll never know. But when I saw her face in the list of new shows I was scrolling through, bright with a smile and twinkling eyes to match Abby’s beaming smile beside her, I clicked without hesitation.

The instant her voice came through my headphones, I was done for. In seconds, I was enraptured by her charm, lost in the lilt of her voice as she explained the premise of their new podcast to anyone who might stumble across it. At first, she sounded shy and reserved, doing her best to sound professional and polished. By the third minute, she seemed relaxed, as if she was just talking to Abby on her front porch without a care in the world for who might join their conversation.

6:57. Six minutes, fifty-seven seconds. That’s when everything changed. My stomach fell to my feet as Violet’s words sank in, settling like concrete. I’ve been getting these cards on my birthday every year since I was nine. Yeah, I don’t know who they’re from or what this person wants, but there’s definitely been an escalation over the past year. An escalation. Honey, you have no idea.

I listened to the rest of the podcast with rapt attention, committing every word to memory. Tracking every miniscule change in her tone, memorizing each word she used to describe her feelings as she had received each card over the last two decades.

In the end, I don’t actually know how I feel about it all, she had said with a quiet laugh. The attention and care put into every card seems so sweet and thoughtful. I guess I just wish I knew who was behind it all. Hopefully not some deranged psychopath. That last part was said with a brighter laugh, as if she thought that was too far-fetched to even be a possibility. Oh, my sweet, naïve girl.

The events that followed were basically out of my control. No matter how much I tried to tell myself that breaking into her house was a bad idea, I couldn’t seem to stop my hands from writing the three words on the sticky note, driving to my usual parking spot, watching her house until I knew she was heading for a shower, and slipping into and out of the kitchen. All it took was a quick tap on the camera app to turn them all off, and I could move around the property unnoticed.

That leads us back to the present, where I stand just outside her line of sight in the shadows, devouring the fear leeching from her and Abby. Even from this distance, I can see it clearly written across their faces, lining their bodies with tension. As satisfying as this whole thing has been, I can’t help but recognize the spiral for what it is.

For the following four days, my dreams are ravaged with visions of Violet. Regardless of what menial task I’m completing, she’s in my head. I swear I could smell the soft scent of her shampoo on the wind at one point.

I’ve done my best to ignore the urges that seem to gnaw at my bones any time I’m forced to sit in silence for more than a few minutes. The urge to check the cameras, to go to her, find her at the bookstore or in the coffee shop. The urge to make her mine, whether she’s willing or not.

The words from the first podcast play in my head, over and over, taunting me. I don’t actually know how I feel about it all, she had said, torn between finding the gesture endearing and equally creepy. That single sentence started a spiral I’m struggling to control.