Page 3 of Stalker's Valentine

I might have lost her in the crowd, but I would find her again, damn it.

I have to!

I hadn’t spent forty years living and breathing with what I knew now was only halfway, to lose my reason for living. Curse or not, she was mine, and I was going to find her again. My cutie pie was mine. Even if I didn’t know her name yet.

merritt

. . .

“Okay,”my baby brother sighed, “come on, you finally going to tell me what the hell is going on with you?” Austin asked, never skipping a beat with how he devoured his burger in front of him. I had no idea how the hell he stayed so damn fit. Lucky bastard was eight years younger than me and could still indulge daily.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” I muttered, spearing my fork into the salad I’d ordered. When I brought the utensil to my mouth, I heard my asshole brother laugh.

“Oh, come on, we both know you’re bullshittin’ me.” He wiped his face before picking up a fry. “You’ve been like a damn lion with something stuck in its paw since New Year’s. Something happen at the party?” he asked, and I avoided meeting his jade gaze.

“No,” I lied.

Something had happened, alright. Something big. Huge! Something life changing. But if I told Austin, hell, if I told any of my brothers, they would take one look at me and not know whether to laugh in my face or commit me to a fucking psych ward.

“Right.” I glanced up at him, and he shrugged. “You know that communication is a two-way street?”

“There is nothing to communicate. Nothing’s wrong,” I kept lying. I couldn’t get myself to say the words out loud. Fuck, I barely admitted just how fucking hard I’d fallen for a complete stranger to myself. A woman who I was calling cutie in my head.

“Okay,” he sighed. He was about to pick up his burger again, when his phone pinged, and his smile was hard to miss.

“What’s up?” I asked, trying to act like I wasn’t waiting on pins and needles. He grunted and tapped away at his screen with a shit-eating grin.

“It’s the media company we hired for the party,” he shared, and just like that, a swarm of butterflies started to take flight. I’d never had butterflies. Not once in my life. Not until her.

“Oh?” I noted. My pulse picked up. This was why I had been popping by daily for the last week.

After I lost sight of her and didn’t lay eyes on her again that night, my driver took me home and I hit the bottle. I didn’t usually drink, but that night, I did. The loss I felt had been devastating. No matter how the hell I tried to justify it, none of what I felt made sense.

We had exchanged nothing more than a few words, but in my soul I knew. She was mine! I’d felt how not only my body but my soul had come to life when our gaze connected. It had been like two halves of a whole becoming one. And I had stupidly, idiotically walked away.

No wonder the men in our family are cursed! We are fucking morons.

I’d been showing up daily, talking and hanging with Austin and his buddies in hopes of figuring out how the hell I could ask if they knew her somehow. On the fourth day, one of them asked about pictures, and that had been my saving grace. If shewas in one of them or even the videos, I could ask for her name.Someone has to know her, right?

“The pics and videos from the party are in,” he shared. I watched him while he scrolled through his screen. The tips of my fingers dug into my thighs while I waited. He would show them to me. I knew he would. “These will make great content for the brewery on our social media platforms.”

“Social media.” I sighed. I hated that shit. I didn’t see the reason for it, but even as stubborn as I was, I knew it was a good way to find her once I knew her name. If that didn’t work, I would hire someone! One way or another, she’d be mine, damn it!

“They any good?” I asked, not trying to give away the fact I wanted to see them more than I wanted to fucking breathe. I needed to.

I had nothing to go on for my search for my cutie, and fucking hell, the dark circles under my eyes were proof of the sleep I hadn’t been getting. Every time I shut them, she was there. In my dreams, always close but not enough for me to touch her. To hold her. To ask her name. I’d lie awake thinking about her.Where could she be? What is she doing? Would she give an old guy like me a second of her time?

Everything about her ran through my head constantly. It was worse at work. I couldn’t focus as I stared out my floor-to-ceiling glass window that overlooked the lake of the small mountain town we’d all returned to for some reason.

“Yeah, look.” He handed me his phone just as Onyx, his buddy and business partner, called his name. “Be right back,” he said before hopping off the barstool and walked towards his friend. I grunted in response, not sure if he heard me.

I swiped the images one after another. Nothing. She wasn’t there. Not even the people she had hung out with were in any of the images. I glanced up and noticed my brother was distracted.Without thinking about it, I sent the files to my email just in case I ran out of time. There were over four hundred images, and I wanted to make sure I went through all of them. I deleted the evidence of the email before returning to the pictures.

I was about to lose hope when there she was.

“Fuck,” I cursed under my breath. Hope steadily grew inside of me. Those pretty, dark eyes smiled at me, and I couldn’t believe it. She looked even prettier than she did in my memory of her. There she stood, in that sexy little dress, standing next to whom I had assumed were her sisters… and Onyx.

Onyx.My brows bunched as I watched him talk to my brother.Is she his?I couldn’t,wouldn’t, touch her if she was with anyone, much less one of my little brother’s best friends. Shit. My stomach sank to what felt like my feet as the possibility of my perfect stranger started to fade away. Bash, the third partner in the brewery, came over.

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