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I knew what she was thanking me for, but I didn’t know why.
Any fuckin’ guy would’ve saved Catori. I wasn’t special.
I nodded once, accepting her gratitude, then said, “Tell me about Trent and Thor.”
Harlow wrapped her arms around herself.
“I’ll just preface this by saying that I really don’t think Trent knew about Thor and what he did. He’d followed me to Athens, knowing that was where I went based on what information he was able to glean out of the receptionist at my old job. He’d followed me there and got pissed as all hell when I didn’t answer. Broke his phone into a hundred pieces. I saw the phone in his floorboard when he finally caught up to me on my way back home. He was at a gas station near the interstate. He knew that I would want to fill up before I left, and he knew that I had an Exxon card. He guessed that was where I’d go.” She breathed out shakily. “When I told him about Thor, he was honestly flabbergasted. He asked to borrow my phone, and then he called his brother, who didn’t answer. He then called the cops and told them where I was, and that he’d be home soon to answer any questions that they had.”
“I’ll look into it, honey,” Jack promised. “Now tell Laric about Thor.”
Harlow nodded her head, her eyes red-rimmed as if she’d cried all the way here.
“We went out on a double date two years ago,” Harlow started. “Thor was originally supposed to be my date, and Trent her date. But when we got there, I arrived first as did Trent, and we hit it off. Thor and Cat later hit it off, so we left the pairing as it was. Soon after Trent and I made it official, Thor and Cat did, too. Only, they went sour almost immediately. Thor wanted to know where Catori was every single second of every single day. Wanted to put a tracker on her phone so he could see where she was, and when she was doing it, so that her explanations lined up. When we all told her that was a bit of stalker behavior, Trent admitted that Thor had a tendency to get a bit obsessive about things. Though he’d never seen it happen with a person.”
I reluctantly removed my hand from Catori’s feet, and she immediately groaned and shifted, her feet moving toward the heat.
“Her feet are always cold,” Winter said. “I had to buy her battery-operated socks to keep her feet warm in the winter.”
“She still has them,” Harlow said softly as she watched me move my hand back to Catori’s feet. This time doing it in a way that drew the side of her left one even closer to my thigh.
“I know,” Winter snickered. “I buy her new ones every year. Last year I got her one of those car cigarette lighter blankets so she could wrap them around her lower legs.”
“I got an ice scraper,” Adam added, making me laugh.
Jack shifted his stance against the wall, his eyes going to Al who’d finally walked a little bit farther into the room and laid down onto the hospital floor, his face against the wheel of the bed.
“When Catori came to us about her problem with Thor, I ran a deeper background check on him than I had previously and found out that when he was sixteen, he was pretty much sentenced to rehab for his stalkerish behavior. He’d done virtually the same thing that he’d done to Catori to a girlfriend from high school. I was actually going to look into contacting her, trying to see what he did, because I wasn’t liking how things were working out with Thor. He hadn’t responded well to the restraining order Cat was about to get. I’m talking, blow your fuckin’ gasket lose his shit.”
“How do you know that?” I asked curiously.
Jack tipped his head toward Harlow.
“Thor and Trent were together at the time,” she said sadly. “Trent lives in the duplex next to mine. Thor was over at his place, because he’s no longer allowed at mine. Both Catori and I were at my place. However, with him being served that restraining order at Trent’s place—by the way, they’d tried to serve it at his place which is across town, but he liked to stay at Trent’s place because it made Catori uncomfortable and unwilling to come over to mine—and we’d called the authorities and told them where he was so they could serve him. When he got served, he punched the guy serving the papers in the face. The cops were called.”
“Sounds like a quality guy.” I shook my head. “How did you not see this?”
That last part was directed at Catori, who apparently had heard the question.
