Page 103 of Get Undressed With Me

Trapped.

Kyle’s voice came through the door, sounding familiar now that he wasn’t trying to disguise it.

“I didn’t want it to happen like this. You have to know that.”

If Brittany wasn’t so terrified, she would’ve laughed.

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

“This isn’t your house. This ishishouse.” There was bitterness in his voice at that, deep and righteous anger, and Brittany knew if he got that door open, she was in real trouble.

“I’m on the phone with the cops right now, asshole,” she lied. “Get the fuck out while you can before they arrest you.”

“You’re not calling anyone. I jammed the signal.”

Fuck, okay. So there was no calling the cops, and no escape unless Brittany felt like jumping out of a four-story window. And, doing the rough math in her head of her chances of survival, she decided that would fall into the ‘stupid’ category.

Brittany went to the closet, searching… and then gasped in relief. A baseball bat. Gus kept a baseball bat in his closet, and she was going to go to so many of his games to thank the universe for this gift.

She just had to survive first.

Brittany peeked out of the closet toward the door. Kyle hadn’t made a peep since he announced he had a jammer. Which was suspicious considering how much her stalker liked to ramble in his notes. Whenever she had thought about a future confrontation, she had always assumed he would be giving some lame villain speech about being misunderstood, but now he was silent as a cemetery.

As Brittany strained to listen at the door, she glanced down in time to see the doorknob jiggle. He was testing it.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Kyle yelled through the door. “Just apologize and open the door. I’ll forgive you. We can move on from here.”

“You’re out of your mind. I’m not apologizing for shit. Get the fuck out of here.”

“You won’t apologize? After all the gifts I sent you. The love notes. The poems. They really mean so little to you? Hell, I even offered you my hotel room to stay for the weekend. And here you are, completely ungrateful.”

Brittany felt her blood run cold. She had always known Kyle was handsy, and he constantly hit on her, but she had assumed he did that with every woman. She should’ve known, really. She blamed the adrenaline that had been coursing through her since she realized he was lying, that she hadn’t had time to put two and two together. But this was her stalker, the guy who had been sending her all the fucked-up things for over a year. The one the police had said they couldn’t do anything about unless he actually tried to hurt her. The one that her mother had hired security to protect her from.

And here she was. Unprotected. Alone. Fucked.

Brittany tried to remember how long ago Gus had left, but she couldn’t. She had been in a post-orgasmic haze and hadn’t looked at the clock. But he would be back eventually. She just had to survive until then. So Brittany gripped Gus’s bat and planted her feet.

She called through the door. “My boyfriend’s on his way back. He’s going to fucking murder you.”

“You’re not understanding, sweetheart. I’m your boyfriend. And if that fucking meathead you’ve been screwing behind my back shows up, I’m going to put an entire round of bullets into his fucking head.”

Well, that wasn’t going to happen as far as Brittany was concerned. She’d leave with Kyle if it meant Gus was unharmed.

As she watched, the doorknob jiggled again… and then the lock turned. The fucker had found the stupid flimsy key, which meant the only thing standing between Brittany and him was the dresser and her backswing.

The door started thumping as Kyle threw himself against it, slamming the dresser away from the door inch by inch. Brittany gripped the bat, trying to remember all the things her eighth-grade softball coach told her, never realizing how it would actually transfer into the real world.

Brittany ducked into the closet. There was nothing to keep Kyle from getting in there, not if he had the interior door key, and there wasn’t more furniture to use to block. The bed was too large for her to move, and the dresser was already on duty. If she survived this, she was going to talk to Gus about living a more maximalist lifestyle.

A shattering noise had Brittany ducking into the closet, gripping her bat tighter as the asshole managed to destroy the lock on the door, leaving only the dresser standing in between him and Brittany.

“You’re making this very difficult on yourself, Brittany.”

“Kyle, you’re a fucking psychopath. You need to have your head examined.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

“Well, it wasn’t nice to send me a bunch of weird paintings you whacked off on, so consider this karma coming back to you.”

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