I shook my head and took the card back from her again. “I…no. Godrick has been great.”
She smirked. “So something is happening with him because you just called him by his first name.”
?
??No.” I nodded. “I mean, no.” Then I shook my head to not contradict myself. I couldn’t think straight. I held an envelope that scared the shit out of me. Who knew what it held? Nothing surprises me anymore with Brian. I truly believed he would go to any extent to get to me. “This is from Brian.”
“Who is Brian? You’ve never talked about him before.” Maria pulled out a chair from the dining room and turned it backwards. She sat on it and laid her arms on the top of the antique wood. “I have a feeling this card isn’t a good thing. Should we be worried?”
“We?” I asked, lifting my eyes from weight in my hands to look at Maria.
“Um, yeah, we. Like I’m going to leave my best girl alone if there is someone scaring her. Who is Brian?”
“He’s my ex-boyfriend.” I rubbed my forehead with my fingers and tried to calm my panic by taking deep breaths.
“Ah, the typical ex that can’t let go. He is trying to win you back? Look at you, having all the men worship your feet. I need to take note.”
“No,” I whispered. I wanted nothing to do with Brian for as long as I lived. The only person that knew everything about this situation was Logan because he was there for all of it. No one knew all the details, not even Godrick when he asked. “Not exactly. You asked me when we first met why I moved here, and I didn’t tell you the entire truth.” My eyes watered, and my back hit the edge of the counter when I fell backward, my legs unable to keep me up by themselves, tired from constantly running from Brian. “Brian is my ex. We dated for ten years, but then I walked in on him cheating on me.” I have told the story one too many times. It was getting old. “Anyway, he wouldn’t leave me alone. He broke into the house, and Logan was home; that was when I put a restraining order against him.”
“Oh my god, how does that make sense? You just moved here.”
“I went to Poppies the other night, and he was there.”
She was in front of me so fast; I barely saw her leave the chair. “What?”
“He followed me to New York City, Maria. He got handsy with me at Poppies, Godrick was there, and Logan got a few good punches in. I thought he was in jail. Godrick’s friend said he was going to make sure he stayed in jail, so if he is in a cell, why the hell am I getting gifts?” I felt so lost. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I knew I had to call the cops and let them know I received gifts, but there’s nothing they could do about it, not until he got physical unfortunately. It was a shame that law enforcement had to wait because what if it was too late? What if no one could save me at that point?
Maria grabbed the flowers, slammed her foot on the trashcan, and was about to throw them away when I stopped her. “Don’t. I need to take pictures of this. I have to keep track of everything he gets me.”
“Well,” she reached into her back pocket and grabbed her phone, pointing it at the flowers. She snapped a few pictures, and when she was done, she pressed the black button on the trashcan and tossed them. “Done. Now all that’s left is…” her eyes fell on the envelope in my hand.
Fear clawed at my throat as I stroked my name across the paper. The blue ink smeared. It smeared. It shouldn’t have smeared. “Oh my god! It wasn’t delivered. He was here. He was here! It should have been dry. The ink is wet.” Blue stained my thumb, and I felt marked, but it wasn’t like Godrick marking me, which should have made me feel dirty, but it didn’t, but this made me feel filthy. I wanted to scrub my body clean. My life wasn’t mine anymore.
Maria opened the front door with so much ferocity that the breeze made her hair fly in tendrils reaching for the sky. She looked left and right, seeing if she saw him, but the hallways were empty, and the only thing left was the elevator. He could be going down it right now. “You need to open it. You need to see what it says.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I want you to. I need to know how serious this is. We need to call your brother, and maybe you need to call Godrick.”
“I’m not calling him. It’s fine.” I flipped the envelope around, and it was sealed shut, which meant he licked it. I made my way to the kitchen knives and slid one of the blades through the paper. Tears fell off my face the closer I got to pulling out the message that waited for me. “It smells like his cologne.” And the smell was making me sick to my stomach. It was cheap and musky. Godrick’s cologne was rich and light, like and air and the ocean. His was an effortless scent while Brian’s was so thick it smelled like he was covering something up instead of adding the cologne to his wardrobe like Godrick did.
A man’s scent was an extension of him.
That didn’t say much about Brian.
With a deep breath, I pinched the paper between my fingers, and with my other hand, I tugged the envelope, releasing the yellow piece of notebook paper from its confinement.
“It’s going to be okay,” Maria soothed me, rubbing calming circles between my shoulders. “I’m here for you.”
I lifted my head, nodding, and the motion caused tears to break free from my bottom eyelash line. The paper was smaller than I thought it would. Unfolding the paper square, I closed my eyes for one second before gathering the strength to open them again.
When I did, the breath left my lungs in shaken, battered pants. I covered my mouth with my hand and cried. He’d never let go. I’d play this game for the rest of my life.
“What? What’s it say? Let me see,” Maria snatched the paper out of my hand and read: “Do not worry, my love, for I am here. I am in the shadows; I blend with the night. You never have to search for me, for I am here. I will watch over you until you see my love is why I am here, for I am here for you, my love.”
“That’s not creepy,” Maria muttered under her breath sarcastically. “Can I ask what you saw in this guy? He seems insane.”
I sat in the chair that Maria left vacant a few minutes ago. His play on words scared the hell out of me. “He wasn’t like that. It wasn’t until after we broke up that he got like that.”