Page 96 of Letters From A Stalker

I lower the letter. This is exactly the kind of thought that should send me directly to Kai’s office ahead of schedule. Except telling Kai is somehow even less possible now. The first letter was bad enough. How exactly am I supposed to sit in that chair and hand him this one?

Hi, Dr. Blackwood. My stalker watched me masturbate and then wrote me a letter about it. Also, I appear to have developed the sexual judgment of a woman in a horror movie.

I can already imagine his face. Not judgmental, that might actually be easier. Kai would look at me with that terrifyingly focused attention of his and ask how the letter made me feel. Then he would wait. And because silence becomes a weapon in that office, eventually I would have to answer. Scared, violated, angry, interested, aroused. Absolutely fucking not. I fold the letter carefully. This time, I noticed that I didn't even consider throwing it away. I slide it back into the envelope and place it beside me on the couch before finally standing.

The movement pulls my attention toward the windows. Outside, darkness has swallowed most of the yard. My own reflection hovers in the glass, softer than the last time I stood here searching the trees. Behind it, the porch light reaches only so far before the property disappears into shadow. He could be there. The realization is immediate. Maybe tonight. Maybe not. I walk closer to the window. I don’t press my face against the glass or lift a hand to block the reflection this time. I simply stand several feet away and look beyond myself toward the tree line. There is nothing to see. No movement., no figure between the trunks. If he is out there, he is better at hiding than I am at finding. The thought should make me step away but my eyes remain on the darkness.

A week ago, not being able to see into those woods made my house feel exposed. Tonight, knowing he may be somewhere beyond the reach of the porch light does something entirely different. The fear is still there, I would be lying to myself if I pretended otherwise, but beneath it is a strange, quiet awareness that settles where loneliness occasionally lives without announcing itself. He didn’t lose interest, he didn’t leave. I close my eyes for a moment, immediately disturbed by how close that thought comes to comfort.

When I open them again, the trees remain dark and empty. I still cannot see him.

For some reason, knowing that doesn’t feel quite the same as believing I’m alone.

18

Kai

Thursday arrives with the peculiar disadvantage of forcing me to sit across from Julia and pretend I don’t know what her face looks like when she believes nobody is watching. I have spent four days discovering that there are thoughts no amount of professional discipline can successfully file away. Sunday night follows me into the gym, into the shower where I jacked off at the memory of her face like a fucking adolescent. It follow me into the office and through two days of patient notes that require significantly more rereading than usual because my attention has developed the irritating habit of wandering at exactly the wrong moment.

Monday made it worse. I stood in the trees while Julia found the second envelope, watched her disappear inside with it and remained there long enough to see her eventually approach the living-room windows. She looked toward me. Not directly. There was too much darkness between us for that, but she stood facing the trees with the letter somewhere behind her and searched the place where I was hiding. I had expected fear and there was some, but what I hadn’t expected was how long she stayed there. She didn’t retreat from the glass this time. She didn’t abandon the room or leave lights burning downstairs before disappearing into her bedroom. She simply looked into the darkness as though the possibility that I remained somewhere inside it had become something she was trying to understand rather than escape.

I haven’t decided whether that should reassure or terrify me. Probably neither, considering I have no right to be interpreting her reaction to a situation I created without her consent. Yet here I am. The clock on my desk tells me she’ll arrive in fourteen minutes. I close the clinical article I have been pretending to read and look at the notes from our previous session instead. Sexual assault at eighteen. Possible drug-facilitated assault. Repeated verbal refusal ignored. Dissociative response. Persistent residual shame despite extensive previous therapeutic work. The language remains accurate. It still feels sterile compared with the sound of Julia quietly telling me she remembered saying no. That conversation altered something I had already understood intellectually.

Control has always mattered to me. Not simply in bed, although perhaps especially there. I have never confused dominance with carelessness. The entire point of being trusted with someone else’s surrender is knowing that trust can be withdrawn at any second and treating that possibility as sacred rather than inconvenient.

My father believed control meant making everyone around him afraid of what happened if they resisted. Henry taught me that real control starts with yourself. Julia’s attacker had neither. Ghost has been reminding me of the irony ever since. I can think whatever noble thoughts I want about consent while sitting in this office. At night, I still stand outside Julia’s house without permission and watch through windows she believes protect her from the world. The contradiction is not subtle and neither is my refusal to stop.

A soft knock comes at the door before Mara opens it far enough to lean inside.

“Your two-thirty is here.”

My pulse changes. I resent that too.

“Thanks.”

Mara’s eyes linger on me for half a second longer than necessary. She has been doing that more often lately, usually whenever I leave with the motorcycle helmet or arrive after a night of sleeping considerably less than I should. Whatever she sees, she keeps to herself. Still.

I wait until the door closes before standing. Julia enters a few minutes later, and I have rearranged my face into the expression of a man whose professional life is not currently being dismantled by the woman walking toward his chair. She looks tired but not unhappy. Her auburn hair is loose today, falling over the shoulders of a dark sweater, and there is a faint flush across her cheeks from the cold outside. She sets her bag near the chair, looks at me and smiles in the easy way she has begun doing more often.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Julia.” My response sounds normal. Miraculous.

She settles into the chair and immediately reaches for the water Mara left for her, twisting the cap while I sit opposite.

“How was the week?”

“Fine.”

I wait. Her eyes narrow. “You’re going to keep doing that every time I say fine, aren’t you?”

“Probably.”

She takes a drink, then lowers the bottle into her lap. “It was actually fine. Work was work, Tessa stayed over Saturday night, I cleaned my house like the Pope was coming over despite the fact that she has seen me live in conditions far worse, and Sunday was mostly quiet.”

Sunday. My body remembers far more of her quiet Sunday than she knows. I force my attention toward the relevant part of her answer.

“How was it having Tessa stay?”