Page 74 of Only You and Me

I shrug in response and reach over to grab my phone, unlocking it, then handing it to him to read the text alerts.

I watch his eyes as they move left to right, reading the messages from my alarm company. Then they still, just focusing on the phone for a few extra seconds before he looks up at me.

He clears his throat. “It might be nothing, but I’m gonna drop you off over at Emily’s and then Rachel and I will head out to check your house. I’ll call?—”

“No. I want to go with you.” I dart my eyes up to his. “Please. I don’t want Emily to wonder why I’m coming over unannounced and… and I want to stay with you.”

Ben pierces me with his eyes for several seconds before responding. “Okay. But I want you to ride with me. We’ll get your car later.”

I nod, and he leans forward and places a tender kiss on my forehead. When he pulls back, he takes all of me in and grins. “You’ve got a bit of bedhead there, don’t ya?”

Even though I know he’s trying to lighten the mood and distract me, I smile in response. “I’ll go brush my teeth and I guess my hair, then I’m ready to go.”

Twenty-five minutes later, Ben and I pull up to my house and I see Rachel standing outside her car, waiting for us. As we walk around the outside perimeter of the house, we check the security cameras. My stomach drops when Rachel notices at least one has black spray paint on the lens. This certainly isn’t looking good.

Everything else seems normal until we get to the windows in the office area, directly below my bedroom, along the back of the house. I stop dead in my tracks when I take in the screen tossed carelessly to the side and the window wide open.

“Shit,” Ben hisses, immediately grabbing my hand and guiding me behind him.

Everything is a blur over the next hour as I vaguely hear Rachel calling for a patrol unit to meet us at the house. Eventually, I’m left in the hands of one of Ben’s trusted uniformed officers, Kurt. Meanwhile, Ben, Rachel, and the other uniformed officer who arrived with Kurt check out the inside of my house. While they’re in there, a team arrives to check for prints around my cameras and the windowsill of the open window.

How did this become my life?

Ben hasn’t come out of the house and I’m too worried about him and the others to relax, so I pace anxiously back and forth across my front lawn. Kurt keeps close to me. Is this like the television shows where the partners stay close as they clear the rooms in case one of them gets in trouble? Or is ‘Rach’ leaving Ben alone to fend for himself if he comes across my stalker? I swear if she leaves him alone and my stalker hurts him, I’ll?—

“Ma’am?” I whip my head around to look at Kurt, who has rudely interrupted my revenge planning on Rachel.

“I’m not a ma’am. Jesus, I’m only a few years older than you. What are you, twenty-five? Twenty-six? I’ll have you know that it’s rude to call a woman ‘ma’am’ unless she’s like, I don’t know, your mother’s age. Do I look like I’m your mother’s age?”

Kurt is flushing a bright red as I glare at him. I refuse to break my eye contact with him until laughter I recognize as Ben’s breaks me out of my tirade.

I breathe a sigh of relief when I turn and see he’s okay. But I’m also irritated that my rant apparently amuses him. “What’s so funny, Donley?”

“Nothing. I swear. I was just thinking of a joke, um… a joke Jack told me.” The man can barely hold back a smirk as he lies right to my face.

“Liars never win, Benjamin,” I growl at him. I turn back to Kurt and release a deep sigh. “I’m sorry if I was a bit… harsh.” As I turn away from him, I remember one more thing to tell him, so I glance back over my shoulder at him. “But don’t forget this. Never call a woman under, say, fifty—fifty-five—ma’am. Got it?”

Kurt nods. “Yes, ma’… yes Trina.” Then he practically runs away from me and back to his patrol car.

I sigh and spin to face Ben again. “So?”

Over the next few minutes, Ben assures me it looks like whoever tried to get into the house likely aborted the mission before entering. Something must have spooked him, causing him to leave. After he gets through his update, Ben asks if we can take a few minutes and talk out on the back porch over a cup of coffee. I agree, but I know by his body language that this won’t be a light chat.

* * *

BEN

Trina lifts her mug of coffee and takes a long sip. God, I hope she accepts what I’m about to ask of her without too much of a fight.

Rachel left to get back to the office and start the paperwork, and Kurt and his partner are sitting watch outside the house while the crew dusts for fingerprints, looks for footprints, and anything else that might help us identify Trina’s stalker. Another patrol car is driving the nearby streets to look for anyone suspicious lingering about. Once the forensics team finishes here, we’ll start going door to door to see if any neighbors have any helpful video footage from last night.

I swallow past the lump in my throat. “You likely don’t want to hear this, but I think you should come stay at my house. I’ll move into the guest room if you want, but I’m really worried about you staying here alone and?—”

“Okay.” Her voice is so quiet I almost don’t hear her.

“Okay?” I ask, surprised she agrees.

“Yes.” Trina wraps her hands around her coffee mug and looks out over her back yard before turning her gaze upon me. “Someone tried to break in, and let’s be real. There’s little doubt it was anyone besides the stalker. It’s not safe for me to be here by myself until he’s caught.” I flinch when she acknowledges we haven’t caught him yet, and she narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t. Don’t do that. It’s not your fault. He hasn’t slipped up. But he will.” She reaches across the table and grabs my hand. “And when he does, I know you’ll catch him. In the meantime, I don’t think I’ll feel safe anywhere but with you, and we can’t stay here. I can’t risk him trying to get in again when you’re here and something potentially happening to you,”—her voice catches, and she clears her throat—“because I was too stubborn to leave my house.”

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