Page 4 of Deviant Desires

I won’t be getting back to sleep anytime soon. It’s going to be a busy day. The dean of K-State is retiring and everyone wants to send him off with a bang, including the staff he’s spent the last two decades cherry-picking for every department. He didn’t specifically hire me after I graduated from college eight years ago, but my boss all those years ago said that he weighed in on the candidates. Dean Simon was the school’s most involved dean since the school’s start.

I climb out of bed and head for the shower, stripping off clothes as I go. The curtains are drawn and the bedroom door is closed, providing minimal lighting in the bedroom’s interior. The shock of the bathroom light turning on causes me to cover my eyes against the harsh illumination. It takes a few seconds for me to adjust as I turn on the shower and wait for the water to get hot.

In summer, I like to open the windows and let the morning breeze in, but the high today is only 52. Fall has come to Manhattan and I love looking out the bathroom window to see the trees dropping their colorful leaves.

As I shower, I think about the little things I need to take care of. I go over the conversations I need to have with certain students and what I need to do to make sure everything runs smoothly tonight. At one point my thoughts are interrupted by the sound of something falling. I shut off the water and throw back the shower curtain, grabbing a pocket knife hidden in the toilet paper holder sitting on the back of the toilet. As I hold it aloft waiting for the intruder to find me naked and afraid in the bathroom, a handful of minutes pass before I realize that nothing fell at all.

I’m coated in shame as I turn the shower back on, place the knife on the edge of the tub, and quickly wash my hair and the rest of my body. I try to pretend that it didn’t happen as I get out, dry off, and dry my hair. Makeup hides my natural blush, replaced with a false rouge that makes me feel like crazy.

When I head downstairs to grab breakfast, I make a stop by the front door first. The state-of-the-art security system that I had installed two years ago is working perfectly. The green light is on, which indicates that the system is on and working perfectly.

“It was just your head playing tricks on you,” I mumble to myself. “Nobody came in the house. The alarm would have gone off.” I hadn’t even thought of that when I was scrambling to shut off the shower and grab a weapon. All I could think was that someone was in my house and that someone was probably Mateo.

My stomach churns as I step into the kitchen. If I had a counter on the wall, it would be reset to zero.It’s been zero days since I thought Mateo had broken into my home and forced me to keep my promise to marry him.The highest that counter has ever gotten was 52 hours.

The coffee I scheduled to come on this morning waits unbrewed in the machine. When I go to grab a cup and see that the scheduling function has been turned off, I tell myself that I just forgot to turn it on last night. I press thebrewbutton and let it do its job.No more crazy theories about Mateo,I tell myself. “And no more thinking about Mateo,” I add aloud.

Manhattan is a small town, but it’s large enough that I’ve managed to avoid my ex-fiancé for the last two years. After he called me nonstop that first week he got out, I was terrified that he was going to show up at my front door with a gun and force me to marry him. Every day since has been a testament to the opposite.

But just because Mateo didn’t show up at my house with a wedding ring and a preacher doesn’t mean I haven’t outfitted myself for safety. One call to my brother and sister had them both standing on my porch trying to figure out how to install a doorbell security camera when neither of them was particularly tech-savvy.

My father paid for the home’s security system. He told me to call it my birthday and Christmas present and made sure a professional company from out of state came in to install it. “This way those damned Valentis can’t pay a local tech off to get your information, baby girl,” my dad grumbled over the phone. But the downside to his plan has caused me to spend hours on the phone with a security technician in Nebraska trying to figure out why the light would sometimes blink orange instead of stay a steady green when it’s on or red when it’s off.

I have knives in every room of my house. They’re carefully hidden in random drawers that guests shouldn’t be rifling through or in the cushions of my couch. I don’t think a knife would stop Mateo if he actually broke into my house, but it might slow him down.

I hate to say that I’m afraid of the man I once loved, but what other words can I use to describe it? Five years ago we were going to move in together and get married. Then I walked in on him killing a man.

Fine, the defense fought the claim that he’dactuallymurdered someone by saying that there was no victim for the alleged crime. But I know what I saw. I know what the rumors around Manhattan said about Mateo Valenti and his family. He was always sweet and gentle with me, but I knew better. I knew the truth.

The man I was going to marry was a cold-hearted killer. I didn’t care at first because I never witnessed it with my own eyes. I liked that I was with someone who was a little dangerous, who was suspected of doing a few dastardly deeds. But everything changes when you see the person they’re choking to death look at you with real fear in their eyes.

The coffee machine lets out a ding when it’s finished and I jump a foot in the air. Thinking about Mateo always puts me on edge. “Stupid Valenti,” I mumble under my breath as I grab a mug and pour myself a cup.

Don’t give him space to live in your head,the little voice says.It’s been two years. He probably doesn’t even care about you anymore.

3

MATEO

She still lives in the house we bought together. I bet she thinks she’s safe in there with all her security measures, but she’s never been more vulnerable.

How many members of the family know how to hack a security system? Half a dozen, at least. But I asked Vincente, a young tough whose skills in front of a computer were just as good as his fists in a back alley. Built like a linebacker with the brain of a tech wizard; he knew exactly what I needed the second I told him what I was looking for.

He could turn on and shut off Bambi’s security system with the flick of a switch. He was reluctant to show me how to do it myself, but everyone has a price. Vincente rolled over for a few thousand dollars to pay off some gambling debts.

Getting access to Bambi’s doorbell camera was even easier than cracking her security system. In no time at all, I had full access to her house.Ourhouse.

I saw her keys hanging by the front door, the chain carrying a slim bottle of pepper spray. I knew she had another buried at the bottom of her dresser.

When she was at work, I took my time going through every inch of her home. I stole her dirty panties to revel in the only piece of her that I could have. I laid in her bed and took in the scent of her. I imagined our lives together in this home; what should have been and what had happened instead.

Bambi moved on without me. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. As I spent the last two years watching her, I saw a handful of men move in and out of my home. Men that lasted a few weeks. Men that lasted a couple of months. All of them defiled the home that I bought with my hard-earned money. I bet they rooted around in my girl until they came and left her wanting.

I’ve spent two long years watching her from afar. Passing her in the grocery store, desperate to catch the slightest brush of her skin against mine. Going to her work events and lurking in the shadows, making sure that she never saw my face. Sitting in the house across the street from hers with surveillance cameras showing me every inch of her home.

Raniero told me to give her space; so I did. But the time for space is over. The time for letting her be has passed. I’ve been away from Bambi for five years and I’m done putting space between us.

“You know this is a bad idea,” Luca says with a bored drawl.

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