Page 90 of Stalker

“Peyton!” I bellowed as I tore through the house, desperate to get to her. She knew who I was. And she knew that I had seen the video. Fuck!

I shoved the back door open to the guest house and froze right inside the doorway.

She was gone. I could feel it in my bones.

Her things were gone from where I left them when I gave them back to her the night before. The clothes, blankets, pictures, and other meaningful possessions; gone. There wasn’t anything of hers left in the now cold and vacant space. All of Tyson’s electronics still littered the kitchen table, but that was it.

“Baby, please!” I screamed as I searched the house anyway, pleading with any power above to make her show up in one of the rooms. But she was gone.

As soon as I ripped the front door open, I noted her car had disappeared as well. Her absence washed over me, and my knees buckled as I fell backward into the wall, ripping down a meaningless picture on my way down. I landed in a heap on the floor, staring unseeing at the wall as I tried to form a plan to find her and make it all right.

All I had to do was locate her and explain, regardless of her where she was, I had to find her. She said she was mine! She put the fucking necklace on and promised herself to me!

“Linc.” Tamen spoke softly from where he crouched next to me. I blindly looked over at him, hardly able to make out the shape of his face as he held something between his fingers to me.

Blinking and forcing my body to sit upright and focus, the object finally became clear and my heart completely died inside of my chest, once and for all.

Her bloody black necklace hung limply from his fingers, with the skull closure broken and useless.

“No.”

Chapter 32 – Peyton

Icouldn’t get over how different the landscape was here. It was early December, but there wasn’t a single snowflake to be found in sunny Miami, Florida. It made me miss home.

Massachusetts never felt like anything spectacular when I lived there my whole life, but since being gone for over three months, I ached for its familiarity. I ached to smell the crisp winter air with each breeze and the age-old Christmas scents lingering from the trees and decorations as I prepared for the holidays.

My new apartment was bare. No tree. No stockings. There wasn’t a lit string of lights to be found. It was bare.

Like my heart.

Every single day that passed since I left Hartington made my heart a little more unrecognizable. I couldn’t feelanything.

It was as though I was on autopilot, surviving with the little pieces of myself piled in my arms. I was no closer to putting them back together again, because I couldn’t move forward when I was stuck in the past. Instead, I just carried them around with me, balancingthem precariously so I wouldn’t drop one of them, losing it forever and getting that much further from repairing myself back to what I was before.

Or better.

God, I just wanted to be better than I was before.

I wanted to be who I thought I was with Dane.

I wanted that brief glimpse back of the girl that his attention, affection, and dedication had blossomed into.

Before I learned the truth.

Before I saw the video.

Before I walked away from the one thing I wanted, because he was all made up in my head.

The worst part of it all was I missed Dane. I missed him with every single ounce of myself. And part of me missed Lincoln too, now that I knew he was the man I’d fallen for as well. I just couldn’t convince my heart to stop hurting every time I thought of him.

And then I’d remember that he hadn’t reached out once. Not that I exactly left my forwarding address or anything, but still. For a man of his abilities, I thought he would of at least… I don’t know,called me. Maybe thrown in aI’m sorryor twelve.

But there had only been radio silence. And the longer it went on, the longer I had to believe it was for the best.

Because if I didn’t, Olivia was the first one to remind me I was better off without his lying, manipulating, overbearing ass.

Her words, not mine.

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