Page 55 of Texting Dr. Stalker

I couldn’t unravel why his vow made me frustrated as well as relieved.

But…as I checked the locks for the fourth time and headed to bed, my thoughts were of another man and not the one who’d tried to kill me.

My eyes saw X instead of Milton.

And for the first time in a very long time, I slept.

* 16 *

Zander

Stalking is Bad, But Friends Make it Better

“I’M ONE HUNDRED PERCENT GOING TO JAIL.” Throwing myself into the patient chair on the opposite side of Colin’s desk, I snatched my glasses off and tossed them onto his paperwork. Digging my thumbs into my eyes, I groaned. “Do you think they’d let me practice medicine in prison? I mean…I’d be able to provide a better service in whatever hospital they have rather than being a laundry bitch or burning shit in the kitchen.”

Colin laughed from where he stood by his filing cabinet. The folder in his hands was thick with paper, no doubt full of case notes for a specially designed prosthetic. “Should I say my goodbyes now, or are you just being dramatic?” Cutting across the room, he slapped the file on his desk and sat down.

His office had a prime position in the corner of the thirteenth floor. With two banks of windows, the sunlight streaming in bounced over three skeletons dangling from their racks, various diagrams on the wall on how tendons and ligaments operated, along with multiple drawers full of prosthetic pieces, ready to help his patients come to terms with what he called an upgrade in whatever limb or joint they’d lost.

To him, trading a blood-and-bone leg for a top-of-the-line titanium running bladewasan upgrade. In all the years I’d worked with him, I’d never seen a patient leave his office in tears. Even the children came out bouncing with excitement at the thought of being part robot.

“You’re a good man, Col.” I grabbed my glasses and put them back on.

He smirked. “Wow, you truly are going to prison. You wouldn’t give me random compliments if you weren’t.”

“I mean it. You’re great at what you do. You say I’m addicted to helping, but you’re just as bad.” I pointed at the black metal chest on his desk. “How many lives have you saved with that toolbox?”

He frowned a little. Opening the lid, he pulled out a micro screwdriver for tiny fixings on fingers and knees. “About as many lives as you’ve saved in surgery I reckon.”

“Think you can save mine?” I chuckled with black humour.

His blue eyes darkened. “You’re legit starting to scare me.” Tossing the screwdriver away, he headed to the door, closed it, locked it, then sat back down. “Talk to me, Zan. Tell me everything.”

Tossing my head back, I glanced at the ceiling. He even had posters of animals up there with prosthetics. A giraffe with a bionic neck. An elephant with a metal trunk.

“Zander,” he growled. “Spill or I’ll steal your phone again and see for myself.”

“She finally opened up to me. To X, I mean.”

“I thought that was the whole point of this?”

“It was. Itis.I just didn’t expect it to hurt this bad.”

“Hurt?”

I sighed and rubbed my chest. The same crush of agony from last night vised around my ribcage. The tightening of my heart had almost suffocated me when Sailor told me what Milton had done and why. Why she couldn’t bear to be around me as Zander. Why she’d chosen to close herself off to all those she knew.

The second I’d read her message, I’d staggered from my house in a daze. My pulse pounded until it roared in my ears. Milton had almost raped and murdered her because ofme.

By the time I’d looked up from reading her message a thousand times, I was standing in her garden.

“Alright, hand it over.” Colin snapped his fingers. “Give me the phone. Right now.”

Tipping my chin down, I gripped the armrests and confessed, “Apparently, Milton caught her looking into my bedroom. I was in a towel. He thought she was perving on me. He beat her black and blue, then attempted to rape her, all while strangling her to death.”

Silence screeched between us.

Colin didn’t speak.

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