Page 58 of Stalker

A shadow crossed the doorjamb of my bedroom entrance and I realized instantly that it wasn’t Dane.

He was too tall, if that was possible. His head nearly brushed the top of the doorway as he walked through it.

And I fucking screamed bloody murder.

Chapter 21 – Lincoln

Istepped out of the shower, running the towel over my head to dry my hair as I sighed, exhausted.

I’d been up for almost three days straight, and the shower I just took was the first time I stopped moving that whole time. The fatigue in my bones was so intense that I almost fell asleep standing up.

My brain finally stopped spinning too, it was so tired, I could no longer obsess over her.

Peyton.

I left Hartington three nights ago on a mission to wash her memory from my skin and replace it with blood. I never craved bloodshed anymore, I was a different person than who I used to be when I ran wild with Tamen.

But her rejection burned in my gut in a way that would have eaten me alive if I didn’t find another outlet for it. So I reached out to an old contact, who has a reputation for being the most unhinged man in the game.

Maddox ‘Whisper’ Renner was the worst kind of psycho out there. He had so many screws loose he had no conscious or moral compass anymore. Which served him well in his life, hunting down the worst of the worst and taking them out. He was a mercenary essentially, only taking jobs that promised to be hard for him for the fun of it.

Which meant the jobs he gave me over the last seventy-two hours should have been damn near impossible for me, thanks to being out of the game for so long.

But the level of unrest I’d become in the wake of Peyton’s rejection left me just crazy enough to get them done.

But I was done. I was empty and fulfilled at the same time.

I was calm.

With her back within reach, just a few hundred yards away from me even at that very moment, I didn’t know how long it would last. But I couldn’t stay away from her anymore.

I had made sure she made it back safe after our time together at the maze, and then I went black. I couldn’t look in on her without losing my resolve to stay away.

“Maybe I don’t know what I want then. Maybe I got it wrong.”

Her sweet voice echoed through my brain nonstop since I walked away from her, and it wreaked havoc. She said I wasn’t what she wanted after all. Which meant she didn’t want me, as me.

If I was a normal man who gave her niceties and flowers instead of hand-necklaces and dirt stains on her knees, she’d want me. But that wasn’tme.

That was why I came to her as Dane first, instead of Lincoln. If I had pursued her as Lincoln, she never would have understood the depth of my tendencies and tastes, she’d see the polished businessman and fall without understanding the risks associated with it.

Never mind her own emotional hang-ups, thanks to her family always demanding perfection from her so she could be the pride and joy of their storytelling. Regardless of her own happiness, they expected her to be perfect.

I studied her parents extensively when I started recon on her before I hired her. To be honest, I didn’t think they were bad people. They were simply obsessed with giving their kids more than they had, even going as far as working their own fingers to the bone and breaking their backs to give their kids every chance as success.

It took no time at all to realize that wasn’t what Peyton wanted, though, and I couldn’t understand how they never saw it. Or maybe they did, but they turned a blind eye in the name of greater good for everyone, I don’t know.

Peyton loved them more than her own happiness, that much was clear, so she did as they expected, crafting the perfect life her parents could brag about to their friends. Silently dying a little more inside each day.

That was why I allowed myself to infiltrate her life. Between that and her closet desire for the dark and depraved, it felt right to break her out of the mold of perfection for a little wrong and dirty.

But I was wrong.

I had gotten it all so fucking wrong.

I slid a pair of sweats on in my closet, looking away from any surface she may have touched while I was gone and then pulled a sweater on. Avoidance was only serving for so long, and I had responsibilities to see to that I couldn’t ignore any longer.

Even if all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for the next week straight.

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