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I hold him tighter, not letting him go. “After, I went to the kitchen, and when I came back, he was messing with the smoke detector. I didn’t know.”
“Know what, Allie?” TJ says through clenched teeth.
“He’s been spying on me!” I rasp. “Cameras outside, in the smoke detectors, you name it.”
“The fucker was watching you without consent?”
His voice is eerily calm and steady, and I wonder if this is him in soldier mode.
I nod. “I caught him messing around with the smoke detector. I demanded to know what he was doing. He took me . . . oh, God, he took me upstairs. He’s got an apartment up there with monitors. TJ, who does something like that?”
TJ pets my hair, trying to comfort me. “Someone real fucked up, Allie-gator. Someone who doesn’t deserve you.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and when he speaks again, there’s guilt in his voice. “Allie, I knew he had an apartment upstairs. I followed him after dinner, saw him go in. I wasn’t sure what was going on, so I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t prove anything, and you didn’t seem open to hearing anything negative about him. I wasn’t sure whether you knew or not.”
I push away from him, pissed. “You knew?”
“I tried to tell you he was bad news!” he exclaims before forcing himself to lower his voice. “I tried to tell myself that it was just a place for the guards to stay on patrol. You know, a place someone could grab some Zs or something. Since they were following you, I figured they had to have a home base. But I didn’t think . . . this. Who the fuck is this guy, Allie? What are you messed up in?”
Even now, I defend him with my silence, keeping his secrets. I shake my head, not answering TJ’s questions.
“You know what? It doesn’t fucking matter. You are a grown-ass woman and you know what needs to happen. Say it.”
I know TJ’s looking for some big clarity moment where I denounce anything and everything Dominick and tell him that he was right all along.
But I’m not there yet.
If anything, therapy taught me that I can’t leapfrog ahead. I have to be right where I am, and that’s okay. I feel betrayed, angry, and hurt, yes.
But I also love him. And no matter what people like to claim, you can’t just turn off love. I would if I could, and I know I don’t have to act on it, but it’s there, still burning like embers, ridiculing my stupidity. But the pain itself serves as a lesson I won’t soon forget.
“Just help me,” I finally say. “I want this place bug-free.”
TJ nods, but I can see the disappointment in his eyes. I can almost see him telling himself . . . one step at a time. It used to be one bite at a time but though I’ve been eating healthy for years now, those urges, ugly and mean, still have roots in my psyche.
The insecurities never really go away. I’ve just gotten better at shutting them up. But now they whisper to me. Stupid girl. Never good enough. You thought a man like that would want you. He just wanted to use you.
TJ takes my hand, likely knowing that my inner monologue has gone dark, but he’s a man of action.
He pulls me into my bedroom, and after a moment of taking the scene in, he snatches all the sheets off my bed and balls them up, carting them into the bathroom and coming back a moment later, a false smile on his face.
“Well, I made sure the hamper lid still works. The dust bunnies at the bottom are pissed though.”
I smile wanly, and he climbs up on the stool I’d abandoned, already reaching for something in his back pocket. Pulling out a knife, he studies the cover for a moment before opening up the blade and using it as a screwdriver to take the whole thing down.
“It looks like . . . yeah, got it.”
TJ takes me with him, room to room, as he takes down each smoke detector so I can bear witness to each painful betrayal. An hour later, I have a box full of evidence of Dominick’s sick obsession.
TJ sets me on the couch and then goes through an exhaustive search of my apartment, looking for bugs and other cameras, though he admits he’s not an expert. It feels like a fresh violation all over again, even though I told him to do it. Seriously, having my brother go through my lingerie drawer to make sure there’s nothing we missed wasn’t cool.
He’s thorough though, not saying anything as he opens every cabinet, pulls out every drawer, lifts everything to see if there’s anything attached to wooden frames or in crevices. Finally, he brushes his hands off and puts the knife away.
