Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
So I pretended to take some asshole guy from the bar up on his offer to take me out after work, knowing I wouldn’t feel so bad about him getting hurt since he’d been making “jokes” about roofies all night.
In my experience, decent guys didn’t joke about date rape. So, yeah, if he got his ass kicked, I wasn’t going to shed a tear about it.
I double-checked that I had my stun gun and my knife, then I followed him back to his place.
I told the guy that I wanted to feed him before I fucked him, buying some time as I threw together a makeshift meal that I choked down before waiting until he hit the can, and rushing out of there.
Sure enough, I caught it on the police blotter.
He’d had a ‘home invasion.’
Someone had broken his jaw.
One guy who you were seen with who met with tragedy could be random. Two, a coincidence. But three? That was a pattern.
That was a threat.
No one can put their hands on you but me.
I waited it out at first, figuring it would blow over. I really needed a break from men anyway.
But the flowers and notes never stopped.
I thought about leaving.
Hell, I even did it for a while.
First, I went to my aunt.
But the notes followed me there. And even if they didn’t, I wasn’t sure I could continue to live in her cluttered, crazy house much longer.
After my aunt, I told no one and went to a little nowhere town in Utah.
Don’t ask me how, but I was found there as well.
I’d gone to the cops then. Who’d been oh so helpful, telling me that stalking was hard to prove and prosecute, even if there was a person to prosecute.
But I never saw who was leaving the notes or flowers. And it damn sure wasn’t Czar, who was still locked up.
After the third town where my past kept catching up to me, I went back to Shady Valley with my tail between my legs.
I asked Conor, Cillian, Rian, Sean, and Eoin for advice.
The conclusion was that I didn’t want to fuck with a big Bulgarian crime syndicate. They didn’t know a lot about the operation, but said they knew enough to be concerned about whoever was sneaking around dropping notes and flowers. And, clearly, watching me.
Sean had been the one to pull me aside and tell me to consider going to the prison, talking to Czar, trying to reason with him.
Maybe that was exactly what I should have done.
But I’d been so angry and bitter and over the whole situation that I didn’t want to ever see the man again.
And since I was pretty sure I was done with men for the time being anyway, I figured it didn’t fucking matter if I stayed in Shady Valley.
So that was what I did.
With Delaney, who had become a good friend to me. With her brothers who had been more of a family to me than my own family had been my entire life. With the bikers when they came back. With the locals I had really grown to have affection for.
There was some safety in that for me. Having people around who cared about me.
I figured I could ignore the notes and flowers.
And if I wanted to hook up, I could do it when I was out of town if I was smart about it.
Then, miraculously, the notes and flowers slowed. Almost stopped. Just showed up on the anniversary of the day Czar was taken away. And my birthday. And Valentine’s Day.
It was about that time that I finally felt safe enough to make that agreement with Slash. Fuck buddies. But only out of town. Because I couldn’t let him get hurt. And, even more than that, I couldn’t get his whole club involved in some sort of street war with the Bulgarian organization.
Things just… kept on keeping on.
The notes and flowers became something expected. Like a light bill.
No big deal, even.
Just sentimental shit from a man who didn’t know when to let go.
Until that morning.
When I opened my apartment door to find a flower, a note, and a package.
There had never been a package before.
I mean, sure, it could have just been a package delivered by a kind neighbor who saw it down on the mail table, and didn’t want it to get swiped.
But something told me that wasn’t the case.
My stomach dropped immediately, and some irrational part of me was paranoid about it being a bomb or poison that might fly up in my face when I opened it or something.
I actually brought it into my bathroom, set it in the tub, opened the window, and pulled my shirt up over my face as I cut it open.
But there was no clock ticking down to my demise.
And there was no powder shooting up in my face.