Page 3 of Dark Biker Protector

"Hello?" I greeted whoever was on the other end of the line. I had put out some feelers the last few weeks, and I hoped it was one of my contacts letting me know that one of the stories I had sniffed out was actually going to lead somewhere.

"Hey, Abs," my old friend Rina greeted me. "How are you doing?"

"I’m okay," I replied, frowning. There was an edge to her voice that I recognized at once – Rina and I had gone to college together and spent a few years sharing a crappy little apartment in the city. When you practically had to climb over someone to get to the fridge every morning to make breakfast, you came to recognize when there was something off about them.

"Good, good," she replied. "I... I just wanted to let you know what was going on with...with him."

Ugh. I didn’t want to talk about him. She didn’t have to say his name, I already knew who she was referring to. Everyone in my life did. I hadn’t exactly made it easy for any of them to avoid acknowledging his existence, though I was sure most of them wished they would be able to. I chewed on my bottom lip.

"What about him?" I asked. This last month, I had felt like he had finally lost interest in me – I had assumed, to be honest, that he’d turned his obsessive attention to some other woman, and, though I felt bad for her, at least it wasn’t me, right?

"He’s...he’s gone," she admitted finally, and her breath hitched in her throat as she came out with it.

"Gone?" I asked her. "Gone where? What does that mean?"

"I was in touch with his old roommate," she explained. "You know, just to keep an eye on him, after...after all the shit he pulled."

She didn’t need to say much more than that. I knew what she was referring to. Rina had been there for me through the worst of it, when that asshole had been hanging around outside my apartment almost every evening – waiting for me to come out, waiting for me to emerge so he could corner me and tell me how much he missed me, how much he wanted me back.

It didn’t seem to matter how many times I tried to tell him that there was nothing going on between us; he was insistent that he could make it work. We had dated for nearly a year, which wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but he had acted as though I had shattered his heart in the process – told me that the least I could do was give him a chance to make things right, even though it had been his weird, controlling behavior that had spooked me in the first place.

I wasn’t good at being told what to do. Not that he had come out swinging with that attitude when I had first known him – no, at first, he had acted like he was fine with me going out with my friends, fine with me partying and having fun. He would come with me and stand there in the corner of the club, a rigid grin on his face, making it so I would have to check on him every five seconds to see what his problem was.

And, soon enough, it just became easier not to go out at all. Why would I want to spend a night on the town, where I had to pretty much babysit him the whole time,when I could just stay in? In those early days, he lavished me with attention, and yeah, I had to admit, I liked it – there was something fun about having him run around and do everything for me.

But soon, it got old. Really freaking old. I got restless, wanted to go out and do my own thing again – but he would fight against it, wanting us to spend all of our time together. It didn’t seem to matter how much I reasoned with him, how much I told him that it would be better for us in the long-term if I had my freedom; he would shut me down and brush me off like I didn’t know what was good for me.

And, to my shame, I had gone along with it for a while. I convinced myself that he was just doing it because he really liked me. And, by the time my friends started asking questions, I was ready to defend him, go to bat for him and tell them that he was just doing this because he cared so much about me. That they didn’t understand it, but he was totally dedicated to me, and things were going great.

Until I snapped out of it after the better part of a year when he began raising his voice to me—cornering me in the kitchen when I tried to head out for groceries without him, accusing me of going to meet with some other guy. I couldn’t believe it. After all I had done for him, all I had done to try and soothe his ego, he was still coming at me acting as though I was some whore on the lookout for whatever I could get from whoever I could get it from. It didn’t sit right with me. I kicked his ass out, and I thought that would be the end of it.

And maybe it would have been, for anyone else. Any other guy would have given up then and there and let me get the fuck back to my life again, but not him. Never him. No. He had it in his head that I owed him something, that I needed to give him another chance. And, so, the stalking began.

It had started with him calling me, over and over again, blowing up my phone until I was scared to turn the damn thing on. Then, when that failed, he started turning up at my place, forcing me to talk to him, until I didn’t want to even leave the house.

I figured he would lose interest eventually, and that it wouldn’t do me any harm to get out and see a little more of the state – I told myself I was just seeking out some new stories, given that there wasn’t a whole lot going on in Lilyvale, but, in truth, I knew it was about getting away from him. Putting as much distance between myself and that guy as I could.

I changed my number, my address, all of it, and it seemed like he had actually gotten the message--or at least he’d given up trying to track me down. I didn’t care. I finally felt safe stepping out of my front door again, and I didn’t want to question that too much.

"Have you seen him around?" she asked me, sounding worried.

"No, nothing," I promised her, trying to soothe her obvious doubts. "He’s not exactly subtle, remember? I would know it if he were still following me."

"Still...you should keep an eye out," she warned. "You know how he can get..."

"I know," I replied. Rina had been such a help to me, setting up the move, making sure she didn’t give out my new number or address to anyone but those I was totally trusting of.

"Hey, Rina, please don’t worry about it," I told her gently. "I know you’re worried, but I have nothing to worry about. I haven’t seen him for months now. He’s done. He’s moved on. He has no idea where I am..."

"Yeah, but why would he just leave like that?" she fretted.

"Maybe he figured he needed to get a new start too," I offered. I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t care. There had been a time when I had felt some sympathy for him, knowing how obsessed he was with getting me back and how impossible it seemed for him to move on, but now? Yeah, now, I was well and truly beyond that. He had gotten in the way of me living my life, and I wasn’t going to let myself get distracted by thinking he had it bad. He had chosen to do all of this, chosen to act like he had a problem. If he’d made a mess of things in the process, that was well and truly on him.

"Maybe," she sighed. "Just...just promise me you’re going to be careful, okay?"

"I promise," I replied, smiling slightly at her words. "Now, what else has been going on with you? There has to be some fun gossip from Lilyvale these days, huh...?”

I shifted the subject to something a little more fun, and, by the time we said goodbye, I could tell she was starting to feel a little better. But I would have been lying if I said her words weren’t nagging slightly at the back of my mind.

---