AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I didn’t like the sound of it at all. “You know that I looked him up, Marilyn, and I think that you should be a bit more concerned about him. He is not what you think.”
Marilyn was silent again, and I wondered if I had again stuck my foot in my mouth. It felt like that was a normal occurrence when it came to Marilyn.
“You looked him up? What do you mean?”
“I have police friends that looked him up in the system and he has all kinds of red flags. Do you know that he was arrested several times in the last few years for stalking? The last time was just about eight months ago.”
I could just imagine her face going white as I talked to her. I bet her hands were shaking and she was moving her dark hair out of her face like she used to when she was nervous. I had just delivered some information that I knew she couldn’t like. I didn’t want to tell her any of it. “That must have been his ex-girlfriend. We started dating about seven months ago.”
“When did you break up?”
She told me that it had been almost a month ago, and he just wouldn’t let her go. “I had to move here, just to get a break from him. It is crazy, I am a lawyer, but I don’t know what to do. He hasn’t done anything wrong, yet. I have been told that I will have to get a protection order, but I know that they don’t work.”
“I think that we need to up your security a little bit right off the bat. The plans we’d talked about aren’t going to be enough for this guy.”
“Well, I am not worried about the cost of it. I am worried about what is going to happen when he finds out where I live. He has been calling, and I think he has police friends too. I don’t know how else he could find me so soon.”
“Do you have the same phone?”
She paused and then said that she did. She wanted to know why I was asking.
“Why don’t you come over to the office, Marilyn? I think we need to really talk about this seriously.”
She wanted to know what we needed to talk about, but I didn’t want to do it on the phone. I just told her that it was urgent, and I would be there the rest of the day. I hoped that she would come by. She said she would try to get away, but she was likely thinking that it wasn’t business related. I didn’t want to tell her my suspicions. She wasn’t going to be happy about them, and I didn’t want to freak her out.
With everything going on, I felt guilty about all of it. At the end of the day, I was excited to see her again, no matter what the reasons were. I could feel the happiness coming over me, and it only stopped when I realized that I wasn’t alone in the office. I sent everyone to an early lunch. They were supposed to get me something too, but I told them not to worry about the time they were gone. That got me a few looks and I knew that I was losing the war already. I wasn’t able to hide how I felt at all. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to. What I wanted was Marilyn. That’s all there was to it, and I wasn’t ashamed to get her in my arms one way or another. Her ex might very well be the best thing for the situation. He could freak her out and chase her right back into my arms.
6
Marilyn
Hal wasn’t making me feel safe at the moment at all. When he told me what he’d learned about Jesse, then showed me his rap sheet from the police station, I felt downright sick to my stomach. I was in his office and trying not to let all of the conflicting emotions take over. I was worried about what he said about Jesse, but I was also all flustered because he was who he was. Hal had a way of making me feel crazy when I was around him. I wanted to say or do something, but there was nothing that I could do to straighten it out. I didn’t want to need him, but at this point I think it was clear that I did.
“Did you ever think when you enlisted that you were going to be doing this?”
“What, hometown security?”
I shook my head. “No, helping damsels in distress. I wouldn’t have taken you for that sort of guy. You were always there for me when we were together, but it didn’t seem like something that you wanted to do, more of a duty. It’s just strange that you made it your job to keep people safe.”
I pressed my lips together and wondered why everything seemed to come out so badly around him. Why was I just messing it all up? He was helping me, going out of his way to do so and I couldn’t keep the crap from falling out of my mouth.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that I didn’t like it. I always liked being there for you, Marilyn.”
I wanted to bring up the fact that he broke up with me and told me to piss off. That wasn’t going to help anything, but it did remind my brain to stop looking at him like he was a potential life mate. He wasn’t and I should be reminded of that every time I thought otherwise. Hal had already broken my heart before and the last thing I needed to do was give him a chance to do it again.
“I know, sorry. You are being so nice, and I’m really just freaked out and not thinking straight.”
Hal told me that it was fine and that I didn’t have anything to worry about. I believed him too. That was likely the problem. I couldn’t think of anything else going any better. Maybe Hal wouldn’t look so enticing after everything, if I had something else to occupy my mind. Because I did and I was single, I had nothing to take my mind from it.
“So where have you been, Hal? Here the whole time? You did your four years and came home?” I asked, trying to get a timeline of what he’d been doing for the last decade. I had a lot of ideas in my head, but none of them seemed to really pan out with the man in front of me. What happened to him and how much had he changed? Maybe I needed him to be different, so I wouldn’t feel the same.
He smiled for a moment and then his smile deteriorated. His face looked like it hadn’t smiled in years. “Yeah, something like that. I guess you could say that I was done with it, though I did stay a bit longer than four years.”
“Were you trying to do another tour?”
I could tell that he was uncomfortable, and I had no idea what was going on. When his hand went to one of the deeper scars on his face, he grimaced. “I had to stay a while.”
“Why are you being so cagey?” I asked. I was joking, but soon I regretted the mirth. Any mirth was lost in a world that could do something so horrible to Hal.
