Page 90 of Texting Dr. Stalker

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Zander

Favour From Hell

“I’M FUCKED.”

“Uh-oh. Now what?” Colin laughed in my ear as I made an emergency call to him. He wasn’t working today, and I didn’t want to risk this conversation in the staffroom where anyone might hear about my stalker-ish ways. I sat in my car in the car park, unable to stop the knotting of my gut or the rush of absolute bone-breaking lust to drive like a maniac back home and drag Sailor into bed.

“She asked me to sleep with her.”

“She what?” He coughed and spluttered as if he’d just taken a mouthful of something. “She actually came out and said that?”

“She texted it, but yes. Those exact words. ‘I want you to sleep with me.’”

He sniffed something non-committal as if weighing his words. “Keep in mind, I’m not a psychologist, but from my work with patients trying to be normal when they have to face anewnormal, they sometimes have to go backward to go forward.” He paused, then said quietly, “Do you know the full details of what happened that night? With a request for sex—to ask you to replace her ex—that means he must’ve—”

“Tried to rape her.” I yanked off my glasses and threw them onto the passenger seat. “Yeah, he did.”

“Well, shit. I’m sorry, man.”

“Why the hell are you apologising to me for?”

“Because she’s using you to heal.”

“That’s exactly what I signed up for.” I groaned. “And I hate that I’m betraying her trust by talking to you about it.”

“Hate to say it, but if you didn’t offload to me, you’d be heading for your own issues. You take on too much, Zan. You take people’s pain personally, and you need to learn how to stop that.”

“I didn’t call to discuss me. What do I do? How do I help her without making her worse?”

“I suppose you have to ask yourself how far you’re willing to go.”

“You’re suggesting I do what she asks?”

“Only if you’re happy to fuck her back to health, knowing that one day she might be done having a masked stranger give her an orgasm and be ready to move on. Because that’s what this is. She’s treating you as temporary. She’s asked you for a favour that most of us would never have the guts to ask for, all because she doesn’t think you’re real. Not in the true sense of the word.”

“So I cut all contact then? I let X disappear. I make her hate him?”

“You could try to cultivate those feelings she has toward you as Zander, not X.”

“She’ll never look at me the same way. I dropped off that kitten this morning, and she almost bolted down the street to get away from me.” I sagged in the driver’s seat, my head about to split open. “Plus, killing off X and making her respond to me as Zander would never work. What if I slip and give away the fact that I was X? The same guy who barged uninvited into her life, then left without a goodbye the moment she has the courage to ask for something she needs?” Agonising humour had me chuckling. “Do you know I’m actually jealous of him? I’m jealous of myself. I’m so fucking jealous, Col, that it’s X who gets to comfort her and not me.”

Colin sucked in a breath. His tone turned stark and serious. “You need to stop this. Right now. Not just for her sake but your own. You can’t sleep with her. We both know you suck at casual sex. You catch feelings, Zan. And you’re already in way too deep as it is.”

“I know all of that. But I don’t want to stop helping her just because I’m the one struggling.” Hanging my head, I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to rub away the indentations left behind by my glasses. “I love the fact that she’s healing enough to want to start speeding up the process. I love that she’s brave enough to evenwantsex after what happened. But just ’cause she didn’t recognise me last night doesn’t mean she won’t when I’m goddamn inside her. That would be rape, right? She’s given consent to a man who’s not who she thinks he is.”

“Technically, I suppose it might be, but if you think about it…almost all of us hide parts of ourselves during those first initial times. We’re all insecure and make up stories. It’s only when we’re comfortable that we drop the act.”

“This is different than me fibbing that I like wine on a date instead of beer. If I tell the truth and she hates me even more, I have to move to Australia, remember?”

“Yeah, there is that.”

I laughed with every ache that’d slowly been suffocating me. “Even if I was prepared to do it, how would I? What am I supposed to do? Get naked with her but keep my mask on?”

“Wait. I forgot to ask. You said you were with her last night?” His voice turned cagey. “Did you dye your hair and wear the contacts like I told you to?”

“I did. I even pinched on that hideous eyebrow piercing.”

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