Page 54 of Obeying

When we pull up to my house, he parks and walks me to the front door. The air is warm, the street is quiet.

I turn to him on the porch. "Thank you," I say, keeping my voice steady. "For yesterday. The casework, the strategy, all of it. It really helped."

"Thank you too," he says, then he smirks. "For the other things."

I roll my eyes. "Goodbye, Maxwell."

He lets out a low laugh. Then he reaches out, and for a second I think he's going to touch my face. His hand comes up, his fingers hover just an inch from my cheek, and I can feel the warmth of them even without contact. He hesitates, then he pulls back and clenches his jaw.

"Good night, Kristen."

"Good night, Logan."

I didn't think such simple words could make my chest feel like this: full and light at the same time. I step inside. I don't look back. I don't dare. When I close the door and lock the deadbolt, I lean against the frame with my hands pressed to my face.

The flutter in my chest is ridiculous. This lightness is ridiculous. This stupid, reckless, terrifying hope that maybe, maybe, something good is actually happening to me and it's not going to be taken away.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it doesn't, and I go to sleep smiling.

In the morning, I head to the hospital early.

I'm changing in the locker room when Nancy, the unit clerk, finds me with an envelope in her hand.

"Dr. Portland? Someone left a package for you."

"From who?"

"They didn't say. Just said it was for you."

I take it. It's a brown envelope with no label or return address. I finish changing, sit down on the bench, and open it.

Photos.

Me and Logan, yesterday, standing on my front porch, close together, smiling. His hand in the air, inches from my face. There are three of them, taken from different angles across the street, each capturing different moments. One where we're laughing. One where he's reaching toward me. One where I'm looking up at him, and the expression on my face is impossible to misread.

I stare at them, and all the warmth from yesterday drains out of me.

He's watching us, he knows where I live, and now he has evidence that looks exactly like the allegation he filed.

17

LOGAN

She walks into my office without knocking, and I know before she opens her mouth that something's wrong.

She puts the envelope on my desk. I open it, and my whole body tenses.

Photos from yesterday.

"He's going to use this," she says. "Against us. Against you."

I stare at the photos. But I'm not thinking about the complaint, the board, the hearing, or what these pictures mean as evidence.

I'm thinking about someone standing across the street from her house. With a camera. She went home last night feeling safe, and she wasn't. Someone was watching her, in the one place she's supposed to feel safe, and she had no idea.

I press my lips together. My hands close into fists on the desk. This anger isn't about strategy or the investigation. This is about her. This woman, who spent three years being controlled and scrutinized, just found out she's still being watched, that she can't even stand on her own front porch without someone documenting it.

"We need to talk about what this means for the complaint," she says. "If he submits these as evidence, it confirms his allegation about us. We need to get ahead of it. Report the surveillance. Document the timeline. Show that he's been stalking me."