Page 8 of Saved from Obsession

“Maybe… if I had gotten a new number…” My throat gets thick, my nose prickling. “Maybe he would have lost interest…”

“No, Georgia.“ Hayden’s tone is quietly commanding. “If it wasn’t your phone, it would have been something else. None of this was your fault.”

“She’s right.” Leo tilts his head at me, his handsome features creased with sympathy. “It wasn’t your fault, Georgia.”

Cole and Rylan are nodding along with him, and it gives me the courage to continue.

So I tell them about the strange gifts that started showing up: black roses, broken mirrors, creepy jewelry decorated with skulls and eyeballs. All things that weren’t overtly threatening—nothing dead or bloody or dangerous—but they definitely scared me.

I tell Leo about the letters that came almost daily by the time a month had gone by. All with the same sinister messages. About how I went to the police with the letters and gifts, and they told me there was nothing they could do. Without a return address or any identifying marks, there was no way of knowing where they came from.

When I tell the men about how the police officer suggested the gifts were innocent tokens from my fans, Rylan bites out a low curse, Cole’s expression goes thunderous, and Leo’s jaw could cut glass.

Then I start to talk about the night of my attack, and I have to stop halfway through to compose myself. My pulse is roaring in my head, my heart fluttering so fast I feel light-headed. It takes a full minute of deep breathing to wrestle the rampaging memories back under control.

I tell them how my attacker was caught by the police, thanks to the emergency alert from my watch. It actually worked as intended and the police captured the man just as he was leaving my apartment building—the blood on his knife was the proof they needed to arrest him.

If only all the other evidence I gave the police had been as effective.

Tears are pressing at the back of my eyes, but I ruthlessly push them back. If I start crying now, I’ll never get through the rest of it.

I know my face is contorting in awful expressions as I keep trying not to cry. Hayden takes my hand under the table, the warmth of her skin soaking into my chilled fingers. Leo’s features are hard, and his jaw is working, but his eyes are kind as he looks at me.

“Can you tell me the rest, Georgia?” His words are gently encouraging. “You’re doing so well. I think it will be easier if you just get through it in one go, but if you need a break, that’s completely okay.”

I don’t want to, but I make myself do it anyway. “Okay.” My throat is so dry, the word barely croaks out. Rylan hops up from the table and grabs a water bottle from somewhere, opening the top and sliding it in front of me. “I don’t need a break. I want to finish this.”

In a rush of stuttered words and pauses, I push through the rest.

The hospital. Plastic surgeries. Leaving my apartment and moving in with a friend outside the city because I couldn’t bear to look at the hallway where I was attacked. Then two months of recovering and trying to figure out how to piece my life back together.

As I look into Leo’s hazel eyes, a kaleidoscope of greens and bronzes, I tell him about the letter I got last month. And the dozens more since then. Everything happening just as before, except my attacker is still in jail.

My jaw clenched so hard it’s shooting pains down my neck, I force out the rest. “I went to the police again, and they thought I was imagining things. That it was probably just PTSD making me overreact. And then they actually suggested that I was sending the letters tomyself.”

“I couldn’t put my friend at risk.” Sniffing hard, I clutch Hayden’s hand under the table. It’s the same reason I refused to move in with Hayden and her husband. I’m not going to let anyone else get hurt like I was. “So I found a rental house further upstate.”

“I had hoped maybe the stalker wouldn’t find me… but a week after I moved, the letters followed me there. And now—“ my voice wobbles, “I don’t know what else to do. I don’t have enough money left to hire private security or an investigator. And I’mso scared. All the time.”

“Gigi.“ Hayden’s voice is a pained whisper.

“Hey.” Leo leans over the table, his tone rough, the expression in his eyes intense as he looks at me. “Weare going to help you. We’re going to figure this out.I promise.”

CHAPTERTHREE

LEO

Meeting Georgia is nothing like how I had expected it to be.

I went into the meeting feeling sympathy for her, knowing the trauma she’d been through. That she isstillgoing through.

Just like the other clients we help, I was angry at the circumstances that sent her to us. No woman should be terrorized like that, brushed off by the police who are supposed to help her, left on her own and terribly injured.

And I was determined to get whatever information I could to help this woman. To protect her from being hurt again.

But I wasn’t expecting to meet a woman likeher.

I had seen photos of Georgia before she arrived. First, the carefully posed modeling shots, and then the awful images from the police report taken after her brutal attack. Neither of them prepared me for the woman sitting across the conference table, so beautiful and vulnerable and brave and selfless, it makes my heart hurt just looking at her.

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