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I shuck my coat, boots, and socks, and crank the heat up, making myself at home and feeling better already. I rummage through the fridge and find some leftovers from last night’s supper, and eat them standing at the island while I text Nat and Bobby in our group chat about this and that. Bobby is in Canada visiting his grandparents for the holidays and Nat is at some function for her dad’s company, though she begs me to come up with a fake emergency to get her out of it in the next thirty minutes. She hates going to these things and her relationship with her father is…strained to say the least, but she still goes. It was actually at one of these things that she and Rizzo first hooked up, so, I guess they aren’tallbad.
I decide to take a hot bath before the game starts, maybe send a few teasing photos to Connor, but I need a drink first. After I pour a glass of wine, I head towards the bedroom, rolling my head on my shoulders to work out the tension there. I let my mind wander back to the parking garage and the strange feeling. What had it been? I frown as I try to walk through everything: I walked towards my car but nothing looked off. The doors were closed and the windows were up, it was still parked in exactly the same (somewhat crooked) way it had been when I’d come back from a meeting earlier in the afternoon. I’d gotten closer, reaching for the door handle and…
The wine glass slips out of my hands and shatters at my feet. My vision blurs and I barely notice the stab of pain in my foot as a shard of glass slices my skin. I glance downward, but hardly even register the blood pouring over my foot, staining the wood floor. I can’t breathe, can’t move.
I know what had felt so wrong, what had made that unexplainable unease climb up my spine. I try to swallow past the lump in my throat, try to focus over the roaring of the blood in my ears, but I can’t. I can’t do any of it.
Because the reason I’d frozen by the car:
I’d smelled Josh’s cologne.
Chapter Twenty-One
Hattie
I tell myself over and over again that I must have imagined it, but I can’t quite make myself believe it. I read somewhere once that the sense most closely tied to memory is smell. Iknowthat smell and, given how our relationship ended and the months following, that smell was sure as shit tied to my memories and brought with it a fear so acute it was nearly paralyzing.
Normally, you could brush that off, saying that plenty of guys could wear the same cologne, but not in this case. Josh wore Tom Ford Neroli Portofino. It costs almost nine-hundred dollars a bottle and has averydistinctive smell. I can’t even imagine the odds that someone else happened to be wearing it and also had been hanging out near my car.
I didn’t tell Connor about my suspicion. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe partly because a piece of me believes that if I don’t voice the thought, it can’t be true. It’s like when you’re a kid and you think there’s a monster in the closet, but you just pull the covers up over your head thinking: if they can’t see me, then they can’t get me, they can’t be real. It’s stupid, I know, but here I am. I let out a long breath as I drive towards my side of town. I’ll tell Con when he gets back from the trip in a couple of hours, but for now, I need to get a few things from my house.
Just a quick trip and out, ten minutes tops. It’ll be fine, I tell myself. I won’t lie—I’m scared of Josh and what it might mean if he went to the trouble of tracking me down and coming here…but I am also my mother’s daughter and I refuse to let him come into my town, to myhome, and make me afraid of my own shadow. Fuck that shit. I’m going to grab my stuff—grab what I’m fairly certain will give me some pretty hard evidence to take to the cops, if he’s kept up with his old habits—and then I’m going to take matters into my own hands. I will not let him win, not this time.
My phone dings and I check my message while I’m stopped at a redlight:
Connor: Just landed.
I type out a quick response before the light changes again:
Hattie: I’m grabbing some stuff from my place and then heading back to your house. See you in a bit <3
As I pull onto my street, my heart starts to beat wildly. There’s no guarantee that Josh even knows where I live, and even if he does, what are the odds he’s just lurking nearby, waiting for me to come home? I drive past the house the first time, making the block, and watch intently to see if anyone follows me. Nothing.
“God I really am paranoid.”
This time, I pull in the driveway, idling for a few seconds while I scan the house, the yard, the street behind me in my mirrors. I don’t see anything odd or out of place, so I take a few deep breaths, and jump out of the car and up the front steps. I stand just inside the foyer for a long minute, straining my ears to hear the sound of footsteps or breathing, but I don’t hear anything except the low hum of the heater. I swallow past the lump in my throat and force myself to move into the living room.
My lips quirk slightly at the tiny artificial tree I’d let Ollie put up beside the fireplace, momentarily easing my panic. It’s decked out in multi-colored lights, pink tinsel, glittery ornaments, and a crooked star—and I honestly love it. It’s the first tree I’ve had in years and the day she came over and we decorated it was the day I knew that little girl had a piece of my heart that I’d never get back.
I just need to get this done, grab my stuff, and go wait for Connor to get home. He’ll pull me into his arms and make me feel like everything is ok. I stand for a long minute in the middle of the living room, half expecting Josh to step out of the shadows like the boogie man or something. When he doesn’t, I shake myself and grab an old baseball bat out of the hall closet and check every room in the place. Nothing. I exhale roughly and head into my bedroom, propping the bat on the edge of the footboard and pulling an old shoebox out of the shelf in the closet.
I dig around under some pictures and random jewelry and finally fish out my old cell phone. I’d kept it even after I’d blocked Josh and gotten a new number, just in case, though I haven’t looked at it since I moved. I head back to the bed, plug it in, and let it charge for a few minutes. While I wait, I stuff some clothes, my laptop, phone charger, and some new lingerie that I’d bought a few days ago into a weekender bag.
The phone screen glows to life, having enough juice to at least turn on now while still plugged in. I power it up and take a deep breath before I go into my blocked messages. Then I gasp in stunned horror, one hand flying to cover my mouth. There arehundredsof messages. I scroll through, my stomach lurching the more I read.
-Hattie, I love you, come on. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, you know how I get sometimes, but I need you.
-I fucking hate you! You stupid bitch, you'll never find another man as good as me!
-WHERE DID YOU GO?? FUCKING ANSWER ME BITCH!!! HOW DARE YOU FUCKING LEAVE ME. I'LL FUCKING FIND YOU, HATTIE. THERE’S NOWHERE YOU CAN HIDE.
-YOU’RE MINE. YOU’RE NOTHING WITHOUT ME.
On and on. Multiple messages almost every day. I’d been so, so wrong about everything. How could I have been so fucking wrong?? I truly thought he’d finally just move on once I was gone, that the obsessive, possessive claim he had on me would fade away if I wasn’ttherefor him to focus on. If there was no outlet, I figured he’d just…stop. I’d seriously underestimated his mental state, the depth of his feelings, of this sickness in his head. He’d been hiding it all so well. Even when I saw the truth of it, I only saw the tip of the fucking iceberg.
In the last three weeks, the messages had gone from screaming obscenities and threats to calmer messages—but entirely more terrifying.
-You don’t know the mistake you’ve made, Hattie. We belong together. I’ll make you see it. I’ll make you understand. Only you can quiet the loudness inside my head, baby. I’ll find you and we’ll fix it.
