Page 44 of Perfect
Daniel, however, posts about her. He calls her “Bunny” and seems to like showing her off. There are photos of her in the kitchen making Thanksgiving dinner, her smile strained as she holds up a perfectly roasted turkey, photos of her surrounded by his nephews and nieces in a pool, photos of her in a tight white dress posed perfectly in front of a ten-foot Christmas tree in their giant, charming house that I doubt he afforded on a cop’s salary.
There’s a series of glossy Christmas photos with his family from over the years, and Alex always looks perfectly happy, unless you line the images up against the ones of Christmas with her parents.
Then, she looks downright miserable.
I sit back, reeling, watching Alex sleep. No wonder she’s not adjusting well. She probably has huge fucking trust issues and isn’t ready for such a serious relationship yet. If I had known about her marriage, I would have known Ineededto follow my plan and take it slow. I knew she probably had a fake identity, and I should have looked into it before. I was in her apartment, I had access to all of this, and I overlooked it.
God, I’m a fucking idiot.
I don’t know everything that happened, but I’ve got enough missing pieces to start making assumptions, and none of them are good. She can fill in the details later, but right now I need to recalibrate and figure out how to get her to trust me. Getting her to see our connection is going to take alotlonger than I thought.
I push my hands back through my hair, sighing harshly. I can’t keep being a fuckup. She deserves better, and I canbebetter. We’ll start this over. I can fix this.
I just need her to not fucking run away from me first.
I look down at the money, the ID, and the ring, and I start thinking. I can just keep everything, which is what Iwantto do, but it’s not a great option because she’ll get upset and never want to trust me. Ishouldput everything back and find another way to prove that she doesn’t need to run, but I have to know I can find her if I do that.
We’re definitely connected, because I prepared for this before I knew it would be a problem.
I grab the unopened packages from the attic and set them next to Alex’s things on my desk. I was going to put a few trackers in her things anyway to help me keep her safe, I just have to go a little bit farther now. I don’t want to do something this drastic, but I know enough about her past now that I don’t trust her not to run. This way, if she tries, I’ll know where she is and if she’s safe.
I can’t believe I’ve fucked this up so badly.
It’s fine, I can fix it. We’ll take this slower. I’ll scrap my plans of having dinner with her every night. I’m still going tomakeher dinner, though, but I’ll let her have a few nights to herself. I’ll stop giving her the gifts I buy for her until she’s better adjusted and we’ve had a long talk about love languages. I have no idea what hers are, but I’m sure her rejecting the gifts is just her adjusting poorly.
I havenoidea what to do about the sex.
That was supposed to be the easy part, but even that’s complicated. This morning was amazing, but the way she lay underneath me after she initiated tonight, her face blank and her body non-responsive, makes me viscerally uneasy. That whole situation was really fucking concerning, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
Everything about this relationship is going so differently than I thought it would, but I know this works.
It has to.
I grab the packages and Alex’s stuff, trying to calm down as I head down to my car.
I can fix this. I just need to try harder.
***
I start by slipping small GPS microtracking chips into things she owns. Seams of coats and jeans, her purse and backpack and wallet, her suitcase, her shoes, a few scrunchies. I pop the back off her phone and slip one in there just in case she finds and disables any or all of the location tracking programs I’ve downloaded onto her phone.
I pull up the tracking app and label each tracker with the item I put it in, and after two hours, the app shows about fifty little flags in Alex’s apartment.
It’s a little over the top, maybe, but couples share locations.
I’d give her mine if she asked.
I stare at her, longing roiling inside of me. We’ll be so happy together once we get this figured out, and I’ll spend the rest of our lives making up this one little thing to her, whether she ever finds out about it or not. She’s going to have an easy, happy life with me. She’ll go back to being spoiled, sheltered, and adored the way she deserves. If she wants, we can have a family. I justneed to make sure she can’t run before she sees how good we are together.
Alex is dead asleep while I set up, and a tiny lick of guilt curls in my stomach. Ideally, she’d know about this. She’dwantthis, maybe even ask for it. I tell myself it’s just temporary. I won’t tell her about it, and I’ll take it out when things are better.
I roll her onto her stomach and swab the skin between her shoulder blades before I prep the syringe and inject a local anesthetic. She’s so passed out that she doesn’t even flinch, but she still doesn’t deserve to feel any pain. After a few minutes, I take the larger implantation needle, pinch a fold of skin and slowly push the needle in, injecting the small tracker. I pull the needle out and rub her back with an alcohol swab, holding a piece of gauze to the injection site for a few minutes. It’s injected shallowly enough that you can feel it if you push hard, so I’ll be able to find it when I need to take it out, but it’s very small and placed in the area of her back that’s a little hard for her to reach, so she probably won’t find it accidentally.
I clean up, throwing everything back into the box and tucking it into my backpack to throw away at home before I turn off the lights and strip down to my boxers, sliding into bed next to her. I lay on my back and gently pull her into my arms, tucking her head into my neck and pulling her arm across my chest.
This isn’t even that bad, really. It’s just an extension of us location sharing, and I’ll take it out once she’s adjusted. It’s fine.
I lay awake for another hour holding her. All relationships take work, and ours just might take a lot more work than I initially expected. That’s fine. She stirs briefly, her arm moving up around my neck and her thigh slipping over mine, her small, soft body pressing flush against me. I relax into her, letting her even breathing lull me to sleep.
