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“You ran to your stalker. The stalker who fucked you while you slept. I still have that video. Want the reminder?”
My phone vibrates in my hand, but I can’t make myself lower it to check the screen.
I don’t want to know.
“Why are you doing this?”
He chuckles. “Meet me when you’re back in Denver, darling. I’ll give you the whole story. And you might be surprised at how you ended up in the hospital, nearly dead…”
I can’t breathe. White spots flicker in my vision, and it’s only a miracle that I remain standing. I grip the edge of the bar and take as deep a breath as I can manage, although it feels too much like hyperventilating.
“One more thing,” he adds.
I wait.
“You should look into Wild Oak Art. They’re in Manhattan.”
The line goes dead. It’s only then, without his voice in my ear, do I open the message and click the video he sent.
Past-me is asleep on an unfamiliar bed, in a room I don’t recognize. I’m still—the only passing of time is the little clock in the corner of the screen. Finally, a shadow moves across the camera. It’s Jacob, clear as day. A few years younger. He moves around and strips me, lifting my body off the bed to undo my bra and drags my panties off my legs.
I don’t wake up.
And then he climbs over me and thrusts into me. My body moves with the force of it, but… no, I’m still asleep. I sleep through his orgasm, through him pulling the shirt off his back and slipping it over my head.
It has his name on the back.
He let me wake up like that? Fucked without my knowledge, inhisshirt—
The video goes dark and ends.
Stalker, he said. Even as my ex-husband was stalking me, so was Jacob.
Unfathomable.
Was that before or after he talked to me for the first time?
Jacob admitted to drugging me, and I fucking brushed it off. I thought he was exaggerating, or just..I don’t know. But now I have the video proof, and I watch it again just to be sure. That it’s him and me in the room, in the dark.
My hands are cold. My body is clammy, and I can’t control the sudden trembling that makes it hard to even hold my phone.
What the fuck, Jacob?
What else did Henry say?
Wild Oak Art.
I steady my hand on the bar and type it into the maps, not entirely sure why. I just know that I’d rather solve some mysteries than stew in the ones I won’t get answers to.
It hosts art exhibits. From the online images, it looks pretty fancy. I peek into my purse and eye the handful of cash I still have from Willow. I tried to give it back to her, but she wasn’t having any of it.
And now I have a means of escape.
Jacob has a habit of finding me wherever I go. Except for when he’s playing hockey. Right now, he’s on the ice. This game means so much. He either wins and moves on, or he loses and his team is out of the playoffs. I get it. But also, it’s the greatest distraction I could hope for, and I’d be foolish not to seize the opportunity.
Never mind that Henry wants me to meet with him in Denver. Never mind that he’s setting me up to hate Jacob or drive a wedge between us. Never mind that he’s just insinuated that heisn’tthe reason I woke up after almost dying.
I glance back at the girls. They’re absorbed in the game. The guys are chatting with Jacob’s parents and the other couple we met at dinner last night. Knox’s parents must’ve stepped out, because I don’t see them.
