Page 3 of Scary Suitor

A lithe movement disappears from my peripheral. The nimbleness taps into locked memories, moments I don’t want to remember, and things I had a sliver of hope to escape from.

In hindsight, I knew the months of freedom were too good to be true. The glimpses of gorgeous sunrises and briskness from waves of people ignorant of the dangers under New York City’s fractured anonymity.

It’s easy to hide in plain sight and easy to be tailed, too.

The stairwell’s door opens silently. I see the familiar ink stretched across an arm, a limb I’ve felt the power and barbarism behind.

Everything around me slows; the prolonged tick of the clock’s hand, the jumbled words being exchanged between Finny and the night-shift lobby attendant, and the dull whirring from the descending elevator.

Cassio, ever so eerily handsome and with a doting smile, steps out from behind the door. Eyes of mamba-green flash, suppressing the dim fluorescent yellow in the stairwell, and a venomous purr of my name slithers down his tongue.

“You should hide better, pretty.”

The air of ecstatic lightning doesn’t bypass his aura of ethereal calmness. Nothing gets done without his permission, and nature is a servant to his unshakable dominance.

I want to go home.

The naïve thought makes me freeze, and a sudden whiplash of sentiments hits me. Soon, the life I built in these couple of months will crumble down with a flick of his wrist.

No more waking up to chirpy sounds, warm breakfast still in my mouth as I’m running late for work, and no more awkwardness of being the third wheel when Finny drags me on dates with her boyfriend.

He was always a good sport about it when I apologized profusely.

“How did you find me?” I whisper, sounding so terrified it’s foreign to my ears.

Cassio’s fingers circle my arm, pulling my limp body through the door and backing me into the stairwell’s wall. The railing’s sour and rustic odor gets eaten by his scent that ignites a familiar surge of fear in me.

I scream in my head, intensifying the dizziness as the concrete stairs begin to swirl. The icy wall cools my heated skin, pelting hotness flares behind my ears, and breaths stumble over my quivering lips.

Cassio says something too soft to hear as my ears ring. But his deep baritone alone doesn’t make me flinch; only when he brushes a loose piece of hair from my eyes does the urgent need to flee arise.

Yet, those deceptively bright green eyes manage to calm me down.

With him and everything he does, it’s a tug-of-war. My survival side is winning, but Cassio has conquered all the hurdles I throw up to repel him. Before relocating here, I did everything I could to avoid him.

I changed my appearance, hid my face with baseball caps, and wore a face mask during flu season as an excuse. I got a different work shift, carpooled with a colleague, alternated routes to places. I was so close to legally changing my name, but I was in the middle of a university semester and an internship.

Then, I moved away, thinking foolishly I could have a fresh start. People rarely spend unnecessary energy on strangers. Cassio is a stranger who knows intimate details about my life. He’s smart to follow me from a distance, never giving me any ammunition to go to the police for harassment.

I don’t know what he wants from me or why he’s so keen on terrorizing me.

Where does he have the time and money to stalk me all day?

I spent days agonizing over my memories to see what I had done to spark his uncanny interest. Searching his name resulted in paywall articles with the same first name, but it would be someone else’s picture.

“I missed you so much,” he purrs, chuckling at my hitched breath. “It pained me to not see you for so long.”

He’s a liar with a condescending smirk against my rosy cheek.

Cassio had to have followed me for some time to know my routine and where I lived. I wouldn’t put it past him to know my new apartment but not when I would return, so he stayed in the stairwell.

“Not in a talking mood?” he murmurs, pecking a small kiss on my temple. “You must be exhausted from work. Why didn’t you call me to come to pick you up?”

His big hand holds the side of my face, stopping me from turning away, and forces our eyes to meet.

“You still have my number, don’t you?”

I don’t. Last year, Cassio messaged me from an unlisted number and asked me about my day. I thought he texted the wrong person. From then on, he’s been permanently etched in some corner of my vision.

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