AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The whole mobile home echoed with the beat of his steps as he walked down the short hall to the bedroom.
Aimee felt like she wanted to throw up. Her nausea rose like a boiling water, tickling the back of her throat. She rested her elbow on the arm of the couch and propped her head against her hand. Was this really to be her life? Could she live here, with him, like this? She couldn’t stand the thought of touching John. Not after the way Xavier had treated her.
She wanted to forget that night with him, but it had changed her. For once in her life she was happy. He respected her, cared about how she felt. Everything with him felt as it should be, as life should be. Now he was going to prison for robbing a bank, and she just couldn’t—
Her eye caught a glimpse of something between the cushion and the wall of the couch. Aimee slipped her fingers into the crack and pinched the small piece of paper. When she withdrew her hand, she was looking at a crisp $100 bill.
She grabbed the side of the cushion and pulled it up to see the zipper for the cushion cover slightly open. Money was looking at her from that small space.
Xavier hadn’t robbed the bank. John did. The police never said cash was stolen, just that it was robbed. She thought maybe Xavier had forced them to do an electronic transfer of money at gunpoint. That’s what they always did in the movies. He was so powerful, she believed he could do anything.
As it turns out, she was wrong. The echoing beat of footsteps came down the hall again and Aimee swallowed her heart. She shoved the bill back into the crack and looked up just as John appeared in the room.
“Are you still—“
His eyes looked at her hand, and then her face. She was sure that no matter how much she was trying to look neutral he could tell something was wrong.
“Ah hell,” he said with a sigh.
Xavier stood when the officer at the jail door called out his name. The other inmates there for anything from drunken misconduct to traffic violations perked up for a second at the activity and then went back to ignoring the dismal life around them.
“I’m him,” Xavier said as he approached.
The door squeaked as it slid open. “Your alibi checks out. The charges against you are being dropped.”
“I have no idea why you thought I would have done this in the first place. During the interrogation you said you had an eye-witness put me at the scene? Was that all you had to go on?”
“You can get your things at the counter up there,” the officer said, ignoring everything Xavier said.
It was the flimsiest police work he’d ever witnessed. After signing the papers and gathering up his personal belongings — what little there was after being arrested in his underwear — he stepped outside to see Roland already waiting for him.
After going home, showering, and changing clothes, Xavier just couldn’t calm down. They didn’t have to tell him. He knew Aimee was behind his being arrested. She probably was working that day, and saw him glaring at her.
She probably thought she’d have the last laugh! Well he’d show her. Xavier picked up the phone and called her. When she didn’t answer, he called again, and again. He called fifteen more times, positive that she’d pick up. She didn’t. He texted her. At first it was scathing, unleashing his full fury. When she didn’t respond, guilt over how he was behaving started to settle in.
He realized he wasn’t giving her any reason to answer him back. If he was just going to yell at her, there was nothing to talk about. So he apologized. Then he begged her to talk to him. He realized how crazy this was all coming across as. He sent a text explaining about how he wasn’t a stalker, he was just upset that she’d sent him to jail. Then he sent another text explaining how he knew that saying he wasn’t a stalker was exactly what stalkers said!
By that point, he started to become sincerely concerned. She would’ve responded by now to something, anything. She would’ve made a joke, or told him to stop messaging her. Something was wrong.
“Okay, “he said to himself, “if we’re playing the role of stalker, then let’s go for the gold.” Xavier went to his computer and did a ping on her phone number, tracking where her cell phone was. What came up was a mobile home park not far from her town.
He immediately had Roland drive him over to the address, making sure he understood that any speeding tickets would be paid for, and any marks against Roland’s license removed. They made it in record time.
It didn’t matter anymore what she’d done, or how she felt about him. She could hate him. That was fine. He just needed to know she was okay. As long as she was angry, but fine, he’d leave her alone forever. It was during that drive that he realized what he was feeling wasn’t actually anger, it was hurt. Her rejection had been so painful, he just didn’t know how to respond to it, so it turned to anger. Now that didn’t matter. Nothing did — only Aimee.
Roland pulled up to the address and Xavier ran up to the flimsy door. Somewhere in his mind he suspected that just knocking would get him some form of STD, but that was just a risk he was going to have to take.
After a quick rap against the door, a large man answered. Her boyfriend. Xavier recognized him from that time behind the restaurant. Now that he saw him up close, Xavier mentally remarked on the vacancy behind the man’s eyes. There was zero thought going on behind those glassy orbs.
“What?” the man asked.
“Is Aimee here?”
“Nope. Haven’t seen her.”
Xavier tilted to the side to try to see past him, but couldn’t see her anywhere. “Really?”
The man glanced to the side, and Xavier saw fresh scratch marks across his cheek and neck. So fresh, in fact, they were still beading with blood. “Yeah man, I said I haven’t seen her. Not for days. Now get out of here, all right? Or I’ll call the cops.”
