Page 26 of Can't Stop Watching
I crash onto my sofa, rubbing my tired eyes while my mind catalogs Langford's behaviors. The predatory smile. The calculated charm. The dead eyes that never quite match his perfect white-teeth grin.
I've seen his type before. My job is mostly catching cheaters—bored husbands with wandering eyes, trophy wives seeking thrills. But sometimes... sometimes I uncover darker shit. The businessman who smacked his wife when he thought no one was watching. The college professor who drugged his students. The youth pastor with a hard drive that would make Satan himself vomit.
Langford has that same look. That same hollow emptiness behind his eyes.
"Are you like them, you rich prick?" I mutter to my empty apartment.
Claire Langford came to me worried about infidelity. Standard case. But my gut's screaming something worse. The way he zeroed in on that NYU freshman—calculated, patient, like a fucking apex predator. The secret apartment nobody knows about. The careful manipulation of his finances.
These aren't just cheater moves.
I pull out my phone, scrolling through the surveillance photos. In frame after frame, Langford's face remains perfectly composed—too perfect. Like a mask worn by someone who studied human emotions but never actually felt them.
We're all wearing masks, playing parts, but his seems printed on high-quality plastic—flawless and yet utterly fake.
I've killed men in combat. Watched through my scope as life drained from eyes that looked a lot like Langford's—cold, detached, soulless. The difference is those men were holding weapons. Langford's weapon is his respectability, his Brooks Brothers suits, his fucking wedding band.
"Psychopaths walk among us wearing Rolex watches," my old CO used to say.
The thought of Brian luring that college girl—Sarah—to his secret apartment makes my stomach knot. What if Claire isn't just dealing with a cheating husband? What if she's married to something worse?
With a sigh, I drag myself off the couch, my back cramping from hours hunched over surveillance equipment. My muscles scream from inactivity, a familiar warning that I'm letting myself go soft. Can't have that. Not in my line of work.
"Fuck this," I mutter, stripping off my jeans and grabbing basketball shorts from a drawer. I pull on a gray t-shirt with a faded Marines logo—one wash away from disintegrating—and lace up my cross-trainers.
The building's gym is in the basement. Small but adequate, and at five-thirty in the morning, guaranteed to be empty. Just me and the weights and the demons circling my brain.
The elevator ride down gives me ten seconds to stare at my haggard reflection in the polished doors. I look like shit warmed over. Dark circles under my eyes, stubble approaching homeless territory. "You're a fucking mess, Wolfe."
The gym door opens with a satisfying metallic squeal. The smell hits me first—rubber mats, metal, and disinfectant. Paradise.
I drop into a familiar routine, warming up with push-ups until my shoulders burn, then moving to the bench press. I load the bar with more weight than I probably should, given my lack of sleep, but the strain feels necessary—a penance for sins both committed and contemplated.
Three sets in, sweat darkens my shirt. My muscles start to loosen, blood flowing, brain chemicals finally doing their job. This is therapy cheaper than the hourly rates those head-shrinkers charge.
Between sets, I wonder if this is how normal people feel. People who were raised right and don't spend their nights watching strangers through scopes. People who don't jerk off while watching women who've explicitly rejected them.
Civilization is just a thin veneer over our animal nature. We pretend we're evolved, superior, educated—but scratch the surface, and we're all just animals with smartphone plans and credit scores.
I move to pull-ups, counting reps until my biceps tremble. The physical pain drowns out the mental noise—Lila's soft moans, Claire's worried face, Langford's dead eyes.
For these few minutes, I'm just a body in motion. Nothing more complicated than muscle, bone, and will.
It won't last, but it's something.
After showering away the gym sweat, the recollection hits me like a sniper round between the eyes.
She was waiting for me!
I replay her conversation with this "Tess" person through my mind. "No, he didn't show up again... I don't know why I even care..."
The words stick in my brain, refusing to dissolve. She was looking for me. After turning me down, after making it clear she wanted nothing to do with me, she still checked the door each time it opened.
I let out a harsh laugh that bounces off the bathroom tiles. Isn't that the cosmic joke of existence? We're all just waiting for someone to walk through the door—someone who might hurt us, but we hope won't.
The mirror shows a man I barely recognize.
"You're reading too much into it, Wolfe," I tell my reflection. "She's not waiting for you. She's waiting for the idea of you."
