Page 5

Diletta

M y heartrate hasn’t settled into a normal rhythm in days. My mind is a mess of intrusive thoughts, and my body feels like ground zero for the nastiest natural disaster to have hit in a century.

“Miss Haley, I have to go bathroom.” Ami, a sweet girl with bright red hair, who is currently covered in paint, tugs at my hand.

“Okay.” I assess the situation. I don’t want to leave my class alone for any amount of time. There’s no telling what twenty-two kindergarteners can get up to when they’re unsupervised for even a second. “You go ahead, sweetheart. I’ll get the door. You run down the hall and don’t worry about the paint marks on the doors. It’s washable and I’ll come after you and clean everything up.”

“Thank you.” She smiles at me so sweetly that my heart melts before she races off through the door and careens down the hall, her flashy light up shoes blinking pink and purple all the way.

Those lights remind me again of the shoe store six days ago.

Christ, it’s almost been a week since I set eyes on him .

I felt a primal draw to him the way that women who are naturally attracted to dangerous men do. The lizard part of the brain might be sending off all sorts of warnings, but there’s also a big part of that reptile thinking that would make a woman want to draw close to a man who is obviously a natural born protector.

“Miss Haley?”

“Yes, sweetheart?” Jason rushes across the room, blue paint streaked all down his face and not in that way that said he tried to do it to himself either.

Oh, dear.

“Tommy threw paint all over me!”

I’m all for creative expression, but Christ on a cracker, was it really my best idea to get everyone working on a self-portrait right before recess? I should have kept that activity for after.

Jenny wails from the back as Jason bursts into huge tears. “Audrey painted all over my paper!”

A maniacal laugh sounds off at that declaration. If there’s ever been a bully in training, it’s Audrey. She has six older brothers. It really shows. She’s rough around the edges and not afraid to throw punches.

I put my hand on Jason’s shoulder and stifle a sigh. I could really use a teacher’s assistant, but the school doesn’t have much of a budget and funds have been allocated elsewhere. It’s my own fault. I assured Linda Evans, the school’s principal, that I could hack it when I was first interviewed. Back then, I was desperate for a job. I needed to fit in, but more importantly, I needed to find something to fill the empty, aching, long hours ahead and wash away the horrific memories of being kidnapped.

We have sinks in the back of the classroom. So I’m thankful for that at least.

“Audrey, would you help Jason wash up in the back, please?”

Audrey jumps up, muttering what is probably curses under her breath, but she grabs Jason’s hand a little too roughly, and takes him to the back. I do my best to get Jenny calmed down and then I walk around, complimenting all the bright blobs and dabs and smooshes of paint that pass as people.

I’m not faking it. I truly, truly am amazed at the creativity that children are capable of. I’m here as a teacher—which scared the shit out of me for the first few days because I’m not legit certified—but being here unlocked something inside of me I never even knew I had.

I’ve always loved kids, but just like my mom doubted her ability to be a parent, so did I. It was one reason my parents had me so late. My mom didn’t want to bring me into a world of violence and terror, but then she got pregnant by major accident at nearly forty-five, and there I was.

There was never a child so cherished as I was.

My mom had a heart attack when I was fourteen and passed away, which was the worst thing that I have ever experienced. Ever . She and my father loved me fiercely. She did what she could to protect me from the life, but at the same time, they never lied to me. I wasn’t sheltered like some kids who grow up in crime families. I knew what my father did down to the smallest details, but obviously most of that was kept from me until I was adult enough to deal with it.

I was also home schooled. My father didn’t want to take a chance on me being outside the house for extended periods of time. It couldn’t be risked that I’d become a target, or that I might say something, in my innocence and naivety. So, being in a classroom for the first time doubly scared me when I was suddenly supposed to be a teacher. If my methods are slightly unconventional, it’s never been pointed out. Luckily with the age group I teach, it’s more about getting them settled in the education system and getting them excited to learn, rather than having to teach a subject like English or math.

After another ten minutes, I clap my hands to get everyone’s attention. “I love, love, love that there are so many amazing paintings. You are all so very talented and I am so proud. Let’s set the paintings at the back to dry, get cleaned up, and get ready for recess!”

There’s a huge cheer because of course recess is always going to be the highlight of any kid’s day.

“After that, we’ll have a story with puppets!”

Another cheer. Puppets or not, I don’t think there’s a single kid in my class who doesn’t love our reading circle time.

Within a surprisingly short amount of time, all the kids are decently clean, have shed their little paint aprons, and have laid out their artwork neatly. The bell rings for recess and it’s a mad dash outside.

I have five minutes where I can just sit and catch my breath before I have to start getting out puppets and getting the books ready.

I’m overheated and my feet are starting to ache from the pink platform wedges I’m wearing. There’s no teacher’s desk here, but there is a big office chair that I often sit in for reading. I sink down into it now and rest my feet on one of the bean bag chairs.

Instead of taking a breather, my asshole intrusive thoughts go straight back to my stalker. Once, I could pass it off as some creep or just some punk fucking around in my yard, but twice in just a few nights doesn’t feel like an accident.

And fuck, the guy could fight.

It doesn’t matter if he was twice my size, I was the one with the gun. I should have had him. He was just one man. Not seven.

After he leaped the fence without nearly taking his arm off the like the first time, I went inside, locked myself in, shut all the blinds, and sat with my gun facing the bedroom door where I’d barricaded myself in with a chair under the handle. I relived that night, five years ago, for a good hour, debating with myself whether whatever was happening counted as emergency enough that I needed to break my silence and call my father on the special number he’d given me.

When I’d calmed down, I realized two things.

Firstly, the sheet of cookies that I’d put in the oven and forgotten to set a timer for, were practically on fire. I’d been meaning to replace the smoke detector in the house for months and by the time I realized that shit was going down in the kitchen, the whole place was so black and smoky that I had to open all the windows in the house.

No one came through them and attempted to kidnap me.

No one tried to kill me.

Secondly, if the Rossis still cared where I was or if they were going to break their word to my father, then they would have done it. They wouldn’t send just one man to creep on me. A man who continuously made mistakes and gave himself away. They weren’t sloppy like that, and honestly, I’ve been so out of sight and mind for so long, I’m sure that no one even gives a shit about me. Romeo Rossi can have whoever he wants. I was just a passing fancy.

I’m ninety-eight percent sure that the man in my backyard is someone else.

But who? And why?

The only image my mind keeps playing back is that man from the shoe store. The size was about right. The height was absolutely a match. The black clothing made the stranger in my yard look leaner than the biker bodyguard, but that could have been a trick of shadow and night.

It’s easy to let your thoughts run wild, so I try to stick to the facts.

Whoever was in my yard was in there a minimum of twice, though I’m willing to bet it was more than that. How many times, I have no idea.

He told me he was leaving and that he was sorry, and that husky tone was so different than the voice in the shoe store, but he could easily have moderated it. I’m no voice expert, but I did look up a few things about stalkers and obsession. I don’t really get it personally, but Hart is a small town. All it would take is one time and the guy could have grown obsessed. He could have followed me and found out where I lived. Not all stalkers are straight up crazy. Some are quite harmless. Some get their rocks off just from the act itself. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the guy wanted to harm me.

Right, that’s why he was dressed entirely in black and had a huge knife in his boot that he knew how to use. He was fast and deadly, and that means trained .

I put my hand in my hands and massage my aching temples. I haven’t slept much these past few nights. I went out and bought better cameras and installed them at all the windows and both doors, as well as facing out into the backyard and front yard. There’s now an alert that gets sent straight to my phone for any motion more violent than a tree branch swaying in the wind. I could set the range, so that meant that I wouldn’t get pinged every time a vehicle drove by on the street, or a person walked down the sidewalk. Even with the cameras, my obsessive reading, and my rationalizing that if someone wanted me dead, I already would be, I have to admit that I’m unnerved.

Not scared.

Maybe I should be, and I probably would be out of my mind wild with fear if I hadn’t grown up the way I did, with bleeding men walking to and fro in the house at all hours of the day and night, or armed bodyguards accompanying me everywhere I went.

Maybe it’s the fact that my father is the boogeyman, or he would be to a lot of people. And yet… he’s my father. He’s the man who loved me, was tender with me, who listened to me and taught me, who bandaged scrapes and read me stories and always listened.

So, no, I’m not afraid.

I don’t know who my stalker is, but I don’t believe that he’s gone or that he won’t be coming back. If there’s anything I’ve learned in life, it’s that once someone makes you their obsession, they can’t just leave.

I could either wait and let the worst come to me, or I could go on the one gut instinct I have and take the fight to him.

If that biker is my stalker—it’s a huge leap, I know—but if he is, then could he just leave? Would his club even let him do that? Could he leave for a time and come back? They’d probably allow that if he did it under the guise of some kind of club-related business. Then again, he’s supposed to be guarding that little girl and her mom, and families don’t get guards like that unless they’re high ranking. Again, another assumption, and one based off my own life, but what else do I have to go on?

And if that biker isn’t my stalker, then he’s still a good guy to know if you have a pest problem and you can’t call the cops to deal with it. I need vermin control and who should I go to but someone who looks like he could tear the limbs clean off a man? I have money. I could pay. In cash. If I went to that guy and he was willing to take the job, we could set a trap together, or he could ask his club to get involved and then…

Yeah. Not my finest idea, but that’s where my mind’s been taking me. Tunneling down darker and out of control paths. Anyway, how does one approach a dangerous biker if one would not like their own limbs rearranged?

The bell rings and I snap up out of the seat. Puppets. Merda , I haven’t got a thing ready for the story.

I scramble around the room, snatching out the hand puppets, all of them, even though I was going to pick and choose, and grabbing the first book I could find. It’s a big job getting everyone assembled and calmed down, especially after they’ve been out on the playground running their faces off at full speed, getting all amped up, but it’s a skill I’ve mastered. Turns out, all I have to do is pick up the puppets and the scrambling for a seat on the carpet starts and after one goes down, the rest usually follow.

By the end of the day, I’m utterly exhausted, but I can’t deny that I’m happy. Teaching makes me fulfilled in a way that I have to admit that nursing never did, even though I thought I wanted to be a nurse more than anything in the world.

I never would have expected the answer to all my unanswered thoughts to come from a rambunctious five-year-old boy.

While helping everyone with their backpacks and changing out school shoes for outside shoes, I overhear Dean talking to Owen about a cookout coming up on the weekend. He’s super excited because his mom just started dating someone who rides a big bike. It’s really loud and the guy promised Dean that he could have a ride sometime. Anyway, his mom is taking him to a community cookout at the clubhouse where all the other bikers and all their bikes are.

Long after the kids are all out of the school, onto the bus, and dispersed for pick up, or walking home in groups or with older siblings, my stomach remains twisted in knots and filled with butterflies that I can’t honestly ever remember feeling before.

That cookout is the perfect solution.

Whoever my stalker is, I’m bringing the fight to him, one way or another.