Page 90 of Stalked
I reach up, cupping his face. "You magnificent, obsessive bastard." My thumb traces his cheekbone. "Only you would buy an entire apartment just to watch me sleep. But you must know that’s fucked up."
“I won't apologize for wanting you,” he growls. “For doing whatever it took.”
We stand there, the truth of our relationship laid bare between us—his obsessive need to possess against my desperate grasp for autonomy.
“I like that side of you,” I whisper. “But I’m not a puppet whose strings you can pull.”
Something shifts in his expression. He runs a hand through his hair, looking away.
I step back as Vane's expression darkens. The space between us crackles with tension, heavy as storm clouds before lightning strikes.
“Do you have any idea what it was like when you disappeared? One day, you were mine, and before we could even really speak, you vanished without a word.”
His hands clench into fists, knuckles white with restraint. “I waited at that bus station for three hours after you'd already gone.”
“Vane—”
“No.” He cuts me off, closing the distance between us with deliberate steps. “You don't get to brush this away. You gutted me, Lia. You took something vital from inside me and carried it with you to New York.”
His eyes shine with an intensity that makes me shiver. Not anger—something worse. Raw, unfiltered pain.
“Every night for fifteen years, I've dreamed of your body under mine. Every morning, I've woken up with the ghost of your scent on my sheets. Do you know what that does to a person? To want someone so badly you can taste them in the air even when they're miles away?”
He presses his forehead against mine, his breath warm on my face. “The boy you left behind died that day at the bus station. What rose in his place was something darker—something that would do anything, become anything, to have you back.”
His fingers trace my jawline with surprising gentleness. “Yes, I watched you. Yes, I orchestrated your return. Because losing you once nearly destroyed me, and I refuse to experience that again.”
A tear slides down his cheek. “I became this version of myself—controlling, obsessive, depraved—because it was the only way I knew how to survive without you. The only way I could bear the waiting.”
His hands cup my face, thumbs brushing away tears I didn't realize I was shedding. “Judge me if you must, hate me if you need to, but understand this: everything I've done—every manipulation, every dark deed—was born from the wreckage you left behind when you walked away.”
Despite the emotion in his voice, I can't just let this go.
“Vane, you've been invading my privacy.” My voice trembles but doesn't break. “And you expect me to be okay with that?”
He takes a deep breath, his eyes never leaving mine. “No, I don't expect you to be okay with it.”
I wait for an apology that doesn't come.
“But you don't need privacy from me.” His voice softens. “Not when I'm the shadow to your light, the echo to your voice. Not when every beat of my heart has counted seconds until your return.”
He takes my hands in his. “There's no part of you I haven't memorized, no secret I wouldn't keep, no wound I wouldn't bear for you. Privacy is a wall between souls, and ours have been intertwined since that first day we met.”
His thumb traces circles on my palm. “Stars don't hide from the night sky that holds them. The ocean doesn't conceal itself from the moon that pulls its tides. And you—you don't need to hide from the man whose existence orbits yours.”
Tears well in my eyes, blurring my vision. I want to be stronger, to hold onto my righteous anger. But when he speaks like this, when he lays his obsession bare as poetry, something inside me fractures.
“Goddammit, Vane.” Tears spill down my cheeks. I grab his face and pull him to me, kissing him hard. When I break away, my breath comes in shuddering gasps. “I can't stay angry with you, no matter how fucking crazy your actions are.”
I press my forehead against his. “This isn't normal. You know that, right? What you've done—what we're doing—it's not normal.”
Vane's lips curve into that familiar half-smile that's haunted my dreams for fifteen years. “Normal?” He traces the outline of my lips with his thumb. “Normal is for people who've never felt what we have. Normal is settling for less than what sets your soul on fire.” His voice drops lower. “Normal is overrated, wildflower.”
I can't help it—I laugh. The absurdity of it all crashes over me like a wave. Standing here in his penthouse, surrounded byevidence of his obsession, hearing him dismiss normalcy as if it's a concept beneath us.
“God, you're right.” I shake my head, still laughing softly. “Normal was never going to work for either of us, was it? I spent fifteen years trying to build a normal life, and it never felt...”
“Complete,” he finishes.
