Page 58 of Never Say Yes To A Stranger

She could be out anywhere, doing anything with her life.

I haven’t kept tabs on her. I have purposely not invaded her privacy. The only thing I know is she deleted her account on the hot bedding website. I had to make another fake account to find out because I deleted mine before she even learned I betrayed her. I couldn’t think about another man sharing her bed, even platonically, without losing my damn mind.

For the past two and a half months, all I have done is lose my damn mind.

All I have done is think about Ignacia. She haunted me. She haunted me until I cracked and couldn’t take it anymore and had to fly and drive back out here to…to…I don’t even know what.

Nothing, I guess.

If that’s what it takes…

Jesus, how pathetic are we now?

Yeah, I know. I think that’s what happens when a person catches feelings. Alright, I’ve done more than that. I’ll admit it. Right from the start, I knew there was something off with me when it came to Ignacia. I couldn’t keep her out the way I kept everyone else in my world out. I couldn’t keep her from getting under my skin. I couldn’t keep up the cold, hard surface I’ve perfected. I was never emotionless, but I couldn’t tell her because I was also working on a case. It was complicated. But even if it wasn’t, I don’t think I would have confessed. I think I would have run. I would have finished our contract, made some excuse, and gone back to my old life because that was enough to satisfy me before, and I would havemadeit enough to satisfy me again.

The only problem with that is I fucking can’t.

I can’t make it enough to satisfy me.

No amount of work, working out, sleeping or sleepless nights, reading, being busy, or being quiet—nothing works.

I don’t know why everyone says emotions are good things. Feeling nothing? That’s a nice thing. That’s a thing that’s worked for me for years. It got me through when I needed to get through. It’s kept me here, and it’s made me good at what I do. Having emotions? They make you want to die. They make you believe you’re a curse, and then they tell you that you’re being ridiculous and hurting, and you go on to hurt and hurt and hurt, and it never stops. I know that. Because that’s what happened to me after my parents both died. I know the heaviness in my chest now isn’t something I can undo easily. I know it sucks. I also know losing Ignacia is going to keep haunting me for the unforeseeable future, and there’s nothing I can do about it because it’s too late to go back and undo the fact that she’s inside me, and Ifeelit.I damn well feel it.

It’s not possible to move past this. It’s how I’ve felt, and it’s how I feel right now. But I know if Ignacia shows up and taps onthis window and tells me she never wants to see me again, I’ll respect that. I’ll survive somehow, even if it’s not the way I did it before. Because I can’t go back to that. I wish I could, but it’s not a thing for me anymore. It was a piss-poor survival mechanism.

Zero out of five stars. Do not recommend.

Even her silly sayings have burrowed their way into my head.

An hour later, I’m a little bit warmer and hardly any drier, but at least my teeth have stopped chattering. I think an hour is about tops on the time scale for how long a person can sit in someone else’s driveway and not be considered top of the super suspicious and creepy list. I look toward the house, which is so still. Granted, right now the rain is pelting down so hard that I can barely see through the sheets of it, but I think it’s still. There aren’t any lights on. It’s daytime, but it’s grey as hell out here. I don’t think she’s home.

I haven’t gotten this far in life by being an unobservant asshole—just a regular asshole—so I wait another twenty-three minutes.

I’m rewarded for taking a chance on her being home after all and calling the cops to evict me forcefully when a white car sweeps into her driveway. It’s not a cop car. Just a regular sedan.

When I see her get out of the passenger side, my heart nearly leaps out of my chest and plummets to the floor. I know what her family looks like. I had her file. I know that’s her sister in the driver’s seat. I said I didn’t want to violate her privacy, but now, I feel like not doing enough research ahead of time has me at a disadvantage. I didn’t know her sister was out here. Is she visiting? Living here? Living nearby? That car doesn’t look like a rental. It’s too old and too worn in, with too much missing paint on the front bumper and too many cracks in the windshield.

The windows of the rental I’m in aren’t tinted, and it’s clear Ignacia spotted me before she even got out of the car. Now she’s standing there in the rain and staring at me through the windowwith her mouth wide open. She’s getting soaked while I just sit here.

No. It’s too cold for her to be out in the rain.

Her sister may be shocked, too, but she recovers quickly. She has good survival instincts. She wraps her hand around Ignacia’s arm and pulls her away from the side of the car, up the stairs, and under the porch. Then, they stand there together, both of them giving me the stink eye.

I get out of the car anyway. I can’t just sit in here with anoh, no, shit, I’ve been spottedexpression on my face, and I’m not going to roll down the window and try and shout what I had to say.

I practically throw myself out of the car. I can’t move fast enough. Not to get out of the rain but to get toher, this woman who I have thought of every single minute for every single day and night since the minute I met her.

I stop before the stairs. Before the porch. I stop halfway because I just can’t. I have no right. What if she hates me? What if she doesn’t want me here? What if she’s disgusted and—

“Are you insane?” she yells at me over the roar of the rain. “Get under here! It’s raining assloads out there!”

I officially win the prize for the world’s dorkiest grin. I’m also officially soaked again by the time I get under the overhang.

Her sister scrunches up her nose and studies me like I smell bad. I think I might smell bed after a flight and a long drive, but that’s pretty impossible, given how sopping wet I am. “This is him, isn’t it?”

Oh. I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or not. Her bad-smell expression doesn’t change, so probably not so good, then. My hopes sink further and further, and my heart does something I’m powerless against. I haven’t completely made my peace with that, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to being helpless like this.

All I can do is sink to one knee. My shoes and pants squelch unmercifully.

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