Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 89032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Shoelaces. A used tea bag.
I stare at hundreds of little treasures.
Some I don’t recognize, but I know they’re mine. Small things from my life, taken from my suite, things I probably never even realized were gone. How many times did he visit me in the middle of the night? Are each of these from a single visit or are they from more?
I move through the room, touching shelf after shelf. I feel sick, sweaty, and deflated. It’s one thing to suspect he’s my ghost, but entirely another to see the evidence.
He’s been collecting all this stuff for years. Some of these items go way back to the beginning.
That pen, for example. It was my favorite until it disappeared. That might’ve been the first thing he took.
I stand in the very back of the room. There’s one last shelf. It’s more like a niche, recessed into the wall. There are candles stolen from my closet, but they’ve clearly been lit. More of my items are arranged around a single old diamond ring like it’s the focal point of a shrine.
A bitter sob escapes my lips. I can’t even help it. I reach out and pick the ring up, staring at it. My heart’s racing so hard I think I might pass out.
I can’t believe this is here.
Anger swells in me. Anger and fear. I’m so busy freaking out that I don’t hear it when he steps into the doorway. It’s not until he says my name that I look over and find him watching me with a curious expression on his face.
Like he’s not upset, only interested.
“Why?” I manage to say, my voice twisted by my sobs.
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t.” I shove the ring at him. “Why this?”
His eyebrows raise. “That’s what you’re upset about?”
“It was my grandmother’s,” I snarl at him. “I looked for it for weeks after it went missing. Don’t act like you didn’t know! Look at this place!” I’m shouting at him, gesturing all around us, waving the ring in his face. “You knew how much this mattered to me!”
“Bianca,” he starts saying softly, but I cut him off, furious.
“You knew and you kept it. You made a little shrine from it because you’re so fucking crazy you can’t possibly imagine someone might find this important. I wanted this back! I was so upset when it went missing!”
“This isn’t about the ring.”
“It’s about all of it!” I’m screaming now. I’m totally out of control. I feel dizzy, like I’m going to float up to the ceiling. He keeps staring at me, but now he seems concerned. “You’ve been breaking into my house for years, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” he says quietly. “I have.”
“You’ve been taking things from me. You’ve been watching me! God, Cormac, this is so fucking crazy!”
“I know.”
“Why do you have all this? Why did you do all this?”
“Feather—”
“Don’t call me that!” I scream at him, and when he tries to touch me, I shove him away. His face shuts down. A strange bleakness comes over him as I skirt around the room, keeping distance between us. “Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me. This is too much.”
“You knew,” he says, watching me carefully but not following. He’s doing that stillness thing again, like when he was in my office. He turns into a statue. “Why does this change anything?”
“Now I’m seeing it and it’s all hitting me at once. You’re my ghost. You’ve been invading my life for years. You’ve been… you’ve been…”
I back away, breathing hard. Hyperventilating. Some calm part of my mind is like, you’re having a panic attack, babe. But that part of me isn’t in charge anymore.
There’s only the blackness now.
Cormac’s that dark evil. He’s that yawning horror. I married a psycho, a crazy stalker, and he’s going to destroy me.
I fucked him! I liked it!
Oh, god, oh, god, this is so fucked up.
I bolt out of the room, knocking over a shelf as I go. Little objects clatter to the floor. An eyedropper rolls past me, clinking against some nail polish. Pieces of my life collected like trophies.
“Bianca!” he calls after me as I sprint away, careening down the hall. I can’t think of anything but get away, get away, get away. “Feather, wait!”
“Oh, god, please god, please help.” I should’ve reacted like this sooner. I should’ve run away screaming from the start. Instead, I let myself sink into him. I let him corrupt me.
Now I’m afraid it’s too late.
I reach the front door and yank it open. The city’s there waiting. The rush of traffic and strangers on the sidewalk. I sprint down the stoop and keep running. Cormac might be coming after me. He might be shouting for me to wait.
I don’t care.
Seeing my grandmother’s ring finally broke something in me.
All the carefully constructed walls are suddenly gone.
And I can’t ignore the sheer horror of the man I married anymore.