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I dressed in the outfit I’d worn to the club, slouchy shorts that sat low on my hips and a white midriff shirt. I didn’t have a stitch of underwear on, but it didn’t matter, I was going straight home. The black flipflops on my feet made a noise I found soothing as I walked out of the club, my olive-green backpack slung over my right shoulder, clutched in my hand. I just wanted to go home right now. I pushed against the steel door, flinging it out in front of me, a defensive move I’d learned a long time ago. If someone was waiting on the other side, the door would bash them in the face.
“If you ever come near Val again, you won’t get another warning. This is it. Come on my side of town again and I’ll stomp your face into an unrecognizable pulp,” Derek snarled in a menacing tone that made me come to a standstill it was so powerfully threatening. “Don’t come back here unless you want to end up as a permanent fixture in the lake, asshole.”
Derek punched the guy a final time before he climbed off of him, throwing his limp body on the ground. His face was flushed with anger, his eyes dark and scary to anyone else, but to me, they were the most haunting eyes I’d ever seen. Almost beautiful. The rage on his face was a sign of how much he felt for me, of how much he would do to defend me. And I felt my knees soften at him protecting him.
Or was it simply that I was a constant in his sphere and that made me his possession? I wondered as cold blue eyes locked with mine, unchanging. Was he mad at me too? Was this somehow my fault? I was unable to take the accusation that had changed his face. His full red lips were about to speak that accusation into existence, his Nordic good looks suddenly…not so good.
I turned away, the thank you that had teetered on my lips gone now, replaced with the question why? Why was he accusing me of causing this? Why did he look so angry with me? My heart shattered all over again, something that happened every now and then around certain men in my life.
I walked away, headed for my car, my shoulders slumped. I wasn’t a stranger to men or sex, but it was all very complicated for me. There were things I wanted, things I felt around certain men, that I couldn’t explain. And most of that was because those men were forbidden to me, for one reason or another.
I slid into my rusty and dented old Mazda and started the engine. It sputtered for an instant but then caught, firing up with a reassuring rush. “Thank you, baby.”
I talked to the car sometimes, so what? It appreciated the compliments and soothing pats that I gave it, or it seemed to, it kept going, even when other cars of the same age sat lifeless in junkyards. I put the car into gear and drove away, casting one last glance in the rearview mirror to catch one last glance of Derek. He was already gone, the man who made my heart race and wish he’d look at me with more than just a serious glare.
I drove to my house out in the sticks on the outskirts of Chicago, a white, one-story house made sometime in the 1940s. There was only one bedroom in the place, the roof was sagging in my bathroom, and the floors were scuffed hardwood, but it was mine and only mine. I stepped onto the porch, looking behind me to make sure I was alone on the street, then went in, being sure to lock the two deadbolts before I locked the chain in the metal panel on the door.
I dropped my bag on the cheap black coffee table and headed for the kitchen, walking past a Bakelite table from the 1960s and to the door to check the locks there. Fear was a new constant in my life. I felt safe at work usually, well tonight was an exception, but anytime I wasn’t there the fear bloomed into life, making it hard to breathe in the deepest depths of the night.
Once I did my nightly checks, I headed into my bathroom, showered, put on my favorite pink pajama shorts and the matching tank top, and crawled into bed. I reached beneath my pillow, not only to feel the coolness that hid there, but to make sure the cold steel of my gun was still in place.
I had a stalker.
That freak could definitely been a stalker from the things he was saying. How many times had he sat in the club and watched me dance? Had he ever followed me home after work?
Shiver zipped up my spine at the thought.
But for weeks now, I’d definitely heard noises around the house at night that I shouldn’t hear, but I always put it down to feral cats. Well that was until I found footprints out on the lawn after a rainy night to know someone had indeed been lurking near. And it had scared the hell out of me.
So, I had gotten myself a gun from one of those people that was only a friend when you had money and they had something you wanted. She wasn’t the kind of person that really had friends, just…clients.
I’d only bought the gun for protection and planned to use it if those noises ever became more than the sound of something brushing against the wall outside of my bedroom. If the people in my life weren’t so bent on acting like I was a kid and ignoring me most of the time, I’d have talked to one of the men about the problem. But all they wanted to do was grunt at me and walk away. Well, my dad didn’t grunt so much as sigh, but he was too busy to give me more than five seconds to hug me and wander off most of the time too. Especially after he re-married.
No, this was something I’d have to handle on my own. I pushed the revolver to the other pillow in my double bed and tried to go to sleep. I might be able to do that if Derek hadn’t looked at me like that, but the memory of his face came to me again and again. What had I done wrong?
The question kept me awake for too long.
