Page 128 of Letters From A Stalker

The problem was never whether transferring Julia was possible. The problem was everything we had already built by then. Putting her in front of someone new would not erase that progress, and I’m not arrogant enough to believe I am the only psychiatrist capable of helping her. She could do it. She would do it. I simply couldn’t make myself be the reason she had to rebuild that trust with somebody else. That is the respectable explanation. The less respectable one is sleeping beside me. I don’t want somebody else doing this work with her. I don’t want another doctor learning the small things I have spent months noticing, and I don’t want to lose Thursdays simply because that would be the ethical, intelligent, overwhelmingly obvious thing to do. There isn’t a clinical term required for any of that. I’m selfish.

Julia breathes out and turns her face slightly toward me, and I lift one hand to move a strand of hair away from her cheek before it starts tickling her nose.

“You’re going to ruin my fucking life,” I whisper. The worst part is that I sound almost fond of the idea.

I stay until the darkness begins thinning around the edges of the curtains, black slowly becoming charcoal where the fabric doesn’t meet the wall perfectly. Sunrise is still a little while away, but not enough to pretend Friday isn’t waiting for me with a full schedule and patients who deserve a doctor capable of keeping his eyes open. Reluctantly, I slide my arm out from beneath her. Julia immediately shifts toward the warmth I leave behind and makes a small dissatisfied sound as she curls deeper into the pillow. For one dangerous second, I consider lying back down. Instead, I sit on the edge of the bed and rub both hands over my face.

“Do not be an idiot.” Useful advice. Several months late, though.

I pull the balaclava back over my head before the growing light has any chance of leaving complicated, then find my clothes by touch. My jeans go on first, followed by the white T-shirt and jacket, although I carry my boots into the hallway rather than risk waking her by stomping around the bedroom. Before leaving, I look back once. Julia hasn’t moved. I stand there longer than necessary, taking in the outline of her beneath the covers, then force myself downstairs. The old staircase complains under my weight twice despite every attempt to avoid the boards most likely to creak, but no sound comes from the bedroom above me. By the time I pull on my boots near the front door, the house has taken on that suspended quiet that belongs only to the hour before morning properly begins.

I should leave. My bike is parked far enough away that starting it won’t wake half the neighborhood, and I need a shower, coffee and whatever miracle is required to make zero hours of sleep look respectable in a suit. My hand nearly reaches the doorknob before I stop. Leaving while she sleeps was always the plan. Leaving without anything suddenly feels wrong. Not because I think Julia expects some ridiculous morning-after performance involving breakfast in bed. I’m reasonably certain masked stalkers operate under a different hospitality standard.

Still, I don’t want her waking and wondering whether I disappeared the second her eyes closed so I turn toward the kitchen. The first weak traces of morning make it easier to navigate now, and I find a ceramic cup near the refrigerator filled with several pens, scissors and, inexplicably, one chopstick. A notepad sits beside the fruit bowl with half a grocery list on the top page, including dishwasher tablets, bananas and something she has written as “the good yogurt, not the sad one.”

My mouth twitches. I tear off the blank page underneath and lean against the counter. For all the things Ghost has written to her, this one takes longer. Sex is easy when the woman you want keeps giving you material every time she moves through her house. This isn’t sex. I want her to know I stayed. I want her to take care of herself when she wakes up because despite every willing yes she gave me tonight, I was rough with her and she is absolutely going to feel it. More than anything, I want her to understand that coming through her door was never only about finally getting between her thighs.

I put pen to paper.

Little Ember,

You were sleeping too peacefully for me to wake you, so I left before morning could ruin the mystery.

Take a hot bath when you get up. Drink plenty of water, eat something that qualifies as an actual meal and be kind to the muscles that are going to remind you of me today.

I know I was rough with you. You asked me to be, and I loved every second of giving you exactly that, but wanting you that way doesn’t mean I stop caring about how you feel when it’s over.

And since you were asleep, I’ll admit something I probably wouldn’t if you could look at me while I said it.

I liked holding you afterward. More than I expected to.

Take care of yourself for me, Little Ember.

—Ghost

By the time I finish reading it back, I’m already considering crossing out the last few lines because they are softer than anything I have given her so far, but the pen only hovers above the page for a moment before I decide that pretending tonight meant less than it did would be considerably more pathetic than admitting I liked holding her. After everything that happened upstairs, this hardly qualifies as the reckless part. I leave the words exactly where they are, fold the page once and place it on the kitchen counter where she will see it when she comes downstairs.

My eyes catch the coffee machine as I turn to leave, and for one genuinely dangerous second I consider setting it up for her too. That thought lasts just long enough for me to realize I am approximately ten minutes away from checking whether she has eggs and accidentally becoming someone’s husband before sunrise.

“No.” Apparently I do still have limits.

I leave before discovering what else they are.

The cold outside catches the exposed strip around my eyes immediately, sharp enough to finish waking me when everything else about the last several hours failed. Dawn hasn’t properly broken yet, but the sky over Julia’s neighborhood has begun fading into deep blue-gray, softening the houses and bare streets around me. A newspaper delivery car idles near the corner, while somewhere behind one of the neighboring houses a dog gives a single suspicious bark before apparently deciding I’m not worth leaving bed for. Smart dog.

I take the familiar route back toward where I left the bike, pulling the balaclava off once I am safely away from Julia’s street and stuffing it into my jacket pocket. The ZX10R waits beneath a streetlamp exactly where I left it, its black body beaded lightly with moisture from the colder night air. The engine turning over sounds obscene in the quiet morning. Once I reach the wider road, I open it up enough for the wind to cut through the exhaustion settling into my bones. Usually riding clears my head because the bike requires enough attention to leave very little room for whatever followed me out of work that day. Speed, vibration, traffic and cold air reduce everything to manageable pieces.

This morning, Julia comes with me anyway. I see her hand against the wall downstairs and remember the way her body folded against mine when I told her to come. I hear the sounds she made upstairs, feel her nails across my back and remember the moment she touched the tattoos I have spent months hiding beneath dress shirts as though she had all night to learn them. Then the memory shifts, because apparently my brain is determined to make this difficult. Julia asleep with my arm around her. That one catches the hardest. Of fucking course it does.

By the time I pull into my garage, the sky has brightened enough that Minneapolis is beginning to wake properly. I leave the bike cooling behind me and head straight upstairs, where a hot shower removes the smell of her house from my skin without doing much about the faint scratches across my shoulders. I catch sight of them in the bathroom mirror while drying off. Four thin red lines travel over one shoulder. My mouth curves before I can stop it.

“Grow up.”

I’m thirty-seven years old and apparently pleased about being scratched like a college kid after his first good night. The smile remains while I get dressed. The charcoal suit makes the transformation easier than it should. A clean dress shirt covers the ink Julia spent so much time tracing, the cuffs button neatly at my wrists and the jacket hides every physical trace of the man she had beneath her hands only a few hours ago. My glasses go on last. They are always the final piece. The man looking back at me belongs behind a desk — controlled, presentable. Respectable enough that nobody looking at him would assume he spent the night inside a patient’s bedroom wearing a balaclava while she called him by a name she invented for the man hiding outside her windows. That should probably reassure me.

I stare at my reflection for another second, then leave for work.

Mara looks up the second I walk into reception, and the expression on her face tells me immediately that expensive tailoring and coffee have not accomplished nearly as much as I hoped.