Page 110 of Letters From A Stalker

“I said I understand.” He wails.

For several seconds, the part of me I keep calling Ghost wants to keep him there long enough that this path becomes something he never thinks about using again. He wants Julia’s street permanently tied to the memory of cold metal beneath this man’s jaw, because apparently fear feels like an appropriate solution when possessiveness is doing the thinking. Then I actually look at what I’m doing. Not at the man who stopped to stare at Julia. At me, at the terrified stranger pressed against a tree while my hand crowds his throat and a gun sits beneath his chin because he did not obey me quickly enough. The picture hits somewhere painfully familiar. My father would understand this.

That is enough. I lower the pistol. The jogger’s knees almost give when the pressure disappears, and I tuck the weapon at the back, stepping away from him.

“Go.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice. He turns toward the path, nearly loses his footing on the wet ground and then breaks into a run the moment his shoes reach pavement, disappearing down the pathway without looking back. I remain where I am until the sound of his footsteps fades completely.

The drizzle has become steadier, cold water slipping through the trees and finding its way beneath the collar of my jacket, while my right hand throbs hard enough that I finally look down and see blood mixing with rain across two split knuckles. For a while, I simply stare at them. Henry would’ve hated what I just did. My father would’ve approved it.

Fuck.

I have no interest in thinking about either man while adrenaline is still making my hands feel too light and my chest too tight. My eyes return to the house almost automatically. The lamp is still on. Relief hits me harder than guilt. Julia has no idea anything happened because, from where she stands, the night never changed. She still believes there is one man hidden somewhere beyond the reach of the light and one set of eyes watching because she deliberately allowed them to.

I move back through the trees until I reach roughly the same position I occupied before the jogger appeared, listening for any other footsteps while the rain darkens the shoulders of my jacket. Julia is still at the window. For one brief second, I close my eyes. She didn’t leave. When I look at her again, whatever nervousness was there at the beginning has almost completely disappeared. She stands closer to the glass now, lost enough in what she is feeling that I doubt she is debating whether this was a good idea anymore. The possessiveness returns so quickly that the jogger might as well have never existed. Her hand continues moving beneath the line of her shorts while the flush across her face deepens, and when her forehead finally settles against the window, her breath clouds a small patch of glass directly in front of her mouth. Then her eyes open, straight toward the trees. Toward me. Everything else drops out for a few seconds, including the pain in my hand and the weight of the pistol now resting against my hip again.

“Come on, little ember.” My voice comes out quiet.

Her body tightens a moment later anyway. The release takes her harder than it did Sunday, and I see it in the way her shoulders draw inward, the way her free hand grips the frame and the way she struggles to keep her eyes open while everything else begins pulling her away from control. She looks directly into the trees when she comes. For me. She chose the window, chose the light and chose to let me stand here while she gave me something she could have kept entirely to herself. Nothing I stole from her before could ever feel half as powerful as something she willingly handed over.

She remains against the glass afterward while her breathing slowly steadies, and then she laughs. I can’t hear the sound, but I recognize it in the shape of her mouth and the small, disbelieving shake of her head. A smile pulls at mine before I can stop it. She looks embarrassed, slightly stunned by herself and, more importantly, satisfied in a way she absolutely was not last Sunday. I care about that more than I should. Instead of disappearing from the window, she stays there and looks through the darkness as though enough determination might force the trees to reveal me. One hand lifts. Her fingertips settle lightly against the glass. Her mouth moves again, although this time I can’t make out the words. It doesn’t matter. She is talking to me and that gets somewhere the sexual part of tonight didn’t.

Until now, most of this has gone one direction. I watched, wrote and asked while Julia reacted to whatever I placed in front of her. Tonight she answered me. Not with a letter. With a choice she made herself. Rain continues slipping through the trees between us, visible only when droplets catch the light near the house, and I stand there with split knuckles tucked against my side and a pistol resting beneath my jacket while somewhere farther down the path a man may already be considering whether involving the police is worth explaining why he stopped outside Julia’s window in the first place. That possibility should make leaving easy and it doesn’t, because she is still looking for me.

Eventually Julia steps away from the glass and returns to the couch, where she picks up my letter and reads part of it again. Something quieter settles inside me at the sight. She kept the others. I don’t know that for certain, but I’d put money on it. Ghost likes that possibility far too much. Eventually she folds the page and slides it back into the black envelope. The lamp remains on. For a moment, I consider staying and immediately begin producing reasons for why it would make sense. The jogger could return, somebody else might use the path, or I could remain until Julia goes upstairs simply to make sure nothing else happens after I leave. Bullshit, she already gave me what I asked for. If the light is going to mean consent between us, then I don’t get to quietly stretch the meaning whenever I decide I want another hour.

So I leave before I convince myself otherwise. The walk back to the ZX10R feels longer than it did when I came in, partly because the adrenaline is fading and partly because every movement reminds me that my right hand hurts and there is a loaded pistol beneath my jacket that suddenly feels a lot heavier than it did when I clipped the holster into place at home. The jogger’s face keeps coming back. For a few minutes, scaring him felt good. That is the part I like least. He looked at something I had already started thinking of as mine, and every reasonable thought inside my head disappeared beneath the need to make him stop. Now that the heat is fading, the entire thing looks exactly as fucked up as it should. I dragged a stranger into the woods, punched him and put a gun beneath his chin because he looked through a window too long. There isn’t a version of that story where I sound sane.

When I reach the bike, I sit there for a while before starting the engine, listening to rain tap softly against the visor while pain pulses across my knuckles whenever I curl my fingers around the throttle. Henry comes back into my head. He had a temper too. People sometimes confuse self-control with never getting angry, but I saw Henry furious enough times growing up to know better. When he was truly pissed, his voice usually got quieter instead of louder. The difference between Henry and my father was never whether they felt anger. It was what happened after. My father got angry and everyone around him paid for it. Henry could be furious and still remember who the fuck he was.

Tonight, for several minutes, I didn’t. I could blame Ghost for that, and part of me still wants to, but the excuse sounds weaker every time I use it. Ghost didn’t drag that man off the path. I did. He didn’t pull the pistol either, my hand did that. Giving the worst part of myself another name does not magically turn him into someone else.

I finally start the motorcycle and head toward the main road. Cold rain hits harder once I pick up speed, but it does nothing useful for my head because Julia’s face keeps appearing behind the visor: her forehead against the window, her fingertips touching the glass afterward and her eyes searching the exact stretch of darkness where she knew I was standing.

When I get home, I leave the wet jacket near the door and walk directly into the kitchen, where dried blood has already darkened across the skin of my hand. Cold water stings when it hits the cuts. I watch the pink thread briefly toward the drain before disappearing. Next Thursday, Julia will sit across from me again. She notices nearly everything, so there is a decent chance she will notice my hand too, and if she asks what happened, I will have to lie. Maybe I’ll tell her I caught it at the gym or did something stupid with the bike. Maybe she won’t ask. For some reason, that possibility feels worse. She trusts me or at least she trusts Dr. Blackwood. Ghost has something entirely different from trust, but whatever exists between them is becoming stronger. She leaves lamps burning for him now. She comes to the window when he asks. Tonight she let him watch something she could have kept completely private because she wanted to know what it would feel like to give him that much. She chose him.

I turn off the faucet and raise my eyes toward the dark kitchen window.

My reflection looks exactly the same as it did yesterday. There is no mask on my face, no visible split between the psychiatrist sitting across from Julia in my office and the man who stood in the woods tonight. For weeks, I have kept telling myself that transferring her would solve the worst part of this, because if I stopped being her psychiatrist, at least one line between us could still be repaired. That idea sounds like bullshit now. If I transfer Julia tomorrow, Ghost still knows where she lives. I dry my hand slowly while staring at my reflection. I should be thinking about how to stop.

Instead, before the blood is completely cleaned from my knuckles, another letter begins taking shape somewhere in my head. And that tells me pretty much everything I need to know.

21

Julia

Saturday morning arrives with the kind of clear, ordinary sunlight that feels almost insulting after everything I did in front of my living-room window the night before. I wake later than usual, warm beneath the comforter and aware almost immediately that I slept straight through the night. There had been no three-in-the-morning inventory of whether I locked the doors, no sudden awakening because the house made one of the harmless noises houses make when temperatures change, and no lying in the dark while my brain dragged out something embarrassing I said twelve years ago and demanded an emergency review. Just sleep. Deep, uninterrupted sleep.

The memory of why I went to bed feeling so wrung out arrives a few seconds later. The lamp burning behind me. My reflection against the glass. The dark stretch of trees beyond it. My hand between my thighs while I looked for a man I knew was somewhere out there, watching because I had deliberately told him he could. Heat creeps into my face even though I am alone. I pull the comforter over my head for approximately five seconds before deciding that suffocating myself probably qualifies as an overreaction.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” My voice sounds muffled beneath the covers, but saying it aloud doesn’t make the memory any less real.

The embarrassing part is not that I did it, it’s that I don’t regret doing it. I understand how completely insane the situation is without needing Kai Blackwood to point it out with that patient expression of his. There is an anonymous man watching my house, leaving letters on my porch and learning things about me I never consciously offered him. Somewhere along the way, I allowed myself to choose the more dangerous situation of performing the act of masturbation for my stalker than entertain the possibility of having an actual man like Michael in my life. The contrast and the absurdity of my choices are not lost on me. Apparently dangerous and hot is something I am more inclined to take my chances on than an office affair that has far less life threatening outcome. I should really consider asking Kai for medication.

My phone starts vibrating, making me jump in bed and my stomach gives one ridiculous little flip before common sense catches up and reminds me that Ghost communicates through black stationery and wax seals, not phone calls.

The screen says Nanna. Everything in me softens. I answer before it can vibrate again.