Page 135 of Stalkers Anonymous

“Yeah. Me, too.” I offer him a small smile.

The red-haired man with the camera bag is on his feet now, too. “Grant. It’s nice to meet you, Hailey.”

“Lovely to meet you,” is all I can manage, because Cole moves closer, clearly establishing his place beside me among these men.

The other two, Austen and Zach, offer polite hellos, then Cole guides me to the couch. I lower myself down very slowly, careful not to move too quickly or spill my wine. Cole sits down beside me, close enough that our thighs are pressed together.

Austen sits down across from me and immediately pops up again to grab a coaster, then sits back down, then gets up again to grab a second coaster for Cole, who doesn’t even have a drink.

“He’s nervous.” Tyler grins at me. “He’s a fan.”

“A fan of what?”

Tyler swings his head in my direction. “Of you, of course.”

“But none of you even know me.”

“He knows the broad strokes. We all do. Cole talks about you in group.”

I glance sideways at Cole. My look says, “We will definitely be talking about this later.”

Cole has the decency to look caught.

“I’m flattered.” I don’t know what else to say, so I focus on smudging some of the condensation on my glass during the awkward silence.

Jessica reappears with a tray. It’s the most elaborate and decorative charcuterie board I’ve ever seen. She sets the whole thing down on the coffee table in front of me, and I instantly pluck a grape off the vine. “Help yourself. You’ve been on hospital food for days.”

She sits down in the armchair diagonally from me. The rest of the men rearrange themselves around the room, and everyone goes quiet.

“Okay.” Jessica raises her glass to me. Our glasses clink, and we each take a big drink before she continues. “I know this is a lot. So I’m going to tell you what we’re about, and then I’m going to ask you what you want, and then we’re going to figure out how to give you exactly that. Does that sound good?”

“Yes.” I nod confidently. “That sounds good.”

“Cole has explained the basics?”

“He explained that you’re a group of stalkers. Or…hero stalkers?” I look around for confirmation, but find none. “Recovering stalkers. Sort of.”

Chuckles ripple through the room.

“I suppose that’s close enough. We meet officially with a therapist once a week to talk about interpersonal boundaries and things of that nature. She does not know we are also sitting in my living room right now, and she will never know. That is a hard line. She does not know we live this double life.”

“Okay…” I eye her, unsure why they bother going to therapy if they’re doing this in their free time.

“What we do is help people who need help that the regular system can’t give them. We each have a particular set of skills. Between us we can find almost anybody, watch them, document them, scare them off, or remove them from a situation entirely. We do this very carefully, following rules we’ve set for ourselves.”

Cole sketched out the basics for me earlier today, but hearing it from Jessica makes this a lot more real. I take a slow breath, and then ask, “You do this often?”

“We do it enough,” Zach chimes in.

“That’s not a number.” I narrow my eyes, but the wine has entered my system, so a small smile lifts the corner of my lips.

Jessica returns the smile. “It’s a number we’re not going to give you. Not because we don’t trust you. But because if this ever ends up in front of a judge, the less you know, the better off you are.”

Cole, beside me, goes very still. I glance at him out of the side of my good eye.

I nudge him with my shoulder. “Did you know all of this before today?”

“Uhh… The basics. I got the basics yesterday. You’re hearing the rest of it at the same time I am.”