Page 24

B ack at the rental, I started sleeping with the lights on. Not because I believed they’d protect me; hell, I knew they wouldn’t. But because it felt like the dark made Angie stronger.

The crazy bitch wasn’t just watching from the shadows anymore. She was in the walls. In the hum of the fridge. In the creak of the floorboards. Sometimes I swore I could feel her crawling under my skin, whispering through my molars like radio static.

For the first time since I woke up in this new life, I wondered if there was a cost to being pulled backward through time. Some invisible toll taken on the soul.

Whatever cruel and sadistic god decided I was worth dragging out of that wreckage hadn’t done it for redemption. No… it was clear they wanted carnage, and I was their chosen puppet, spinning in the center of the chaos like a coin.

Was I losing my mind? I pondered at a dozen different explanations for Angie's behavior, for her obsession, for why she was so erratic and different in this new life.

Had I truly changed her this much with my choices?

Had the fact that I had been inside her when I woke up in this new life done something to her, broken her mind somehow?

Had I brought some thing back with me that just looked like Angie?

The questions chased each other through my skull, relentless, looping, and snarling. I paced the rental's halls like a trapped animal, each step echoing too loudly, each shadow stretching too far. The house felt off-kilter, as if the bones of it had shifted in my absence.

There was a new crack in the hallway mirror, jagged and crooked like veins. Was it new? Or had it always been there, and I'd never noticed it until I was so on edge and hyper aware that I was noticing everything?

Two nights after the envelope was left at Sloane's, I saw Angie.

It had been a long day with the kids, and Sloane asked for some space.

Reluctantly, I headed back to the rental: away from my home, my kids, my wife.

I showered and was getting ready to lay down when I saw movement outside the bedroom window.

With my pulse pounding despite frozen veins, I pressed my back to the wall, slid to the edge of the window, then peered out through the glass.

Angie stood close to the rental, her face blank and emotionless. She was holding… something? Another note? A gun? My bedroom was dark, I knew she couldn't see me, so I moved further into the window to get a better view of whatever was in her hands.

A camera. But not just any camera. Sloane’s camera.

The old Polaroid I’d given her on our third anniversary. The one she used to capture the quiet moments: sun-drenched Sundays, sleepy-eyed smiles, the kind of peace I’d destroyed.

How does the bitch have Sloane's camera?

Had Angie broken into our garage? Gone through our things? Rifled through our memories as if they were simply junk to pawn? My fists curled into tight knots as I stood there, unable to blink or breathe .

Then Angie lifted the camera, aimed it at the rental house, and took her time to adjust the lens. That's when I knew the bitch wanted me to see her. She wanted me to know that she was in control of the situation.

The bright flash felt alien in the dark moonless night. My vision filled with spots.

She stood there, her face still a mask of emptiness, as she shook the Polaroid picture.

When she examined it, her eyes widened and her lips curdled into that same, crazed, too-wide grin from the other night.

Her head snapped up from the photo and she looked directly into my eyes with an obscene intensity that caused me to step back from the window.

I could still see her. See the way she giggled, waved, then turned to walk away. No hurry. No fear. As if she owned the night.

I drew a shaky breath as cold air bit against the dampness of my skin. I didn't even realize I had been sweating until Angie was gone.

Gone? No, she wasn't gone. She had momentarily receded like the tide, but she would be back.

My phone buzzed and I jumped. No caller ID. A private number this time. Ah, fuck. I answered.

Angie's voice slid through the phone, as sweet and unsettling as poisoned honey. “Levi… let's skip the formalities. You picked up knowing it was me." A shuddered breath from her as she continued, "By the way, do you know the little gray sweater? The one with the tear at the sleeve?”

My throat clenched, mouth dry, and I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

I knew that gray sweater well. It was Sloane’s emotional armor: soft, frayed at the cuffs, stretched at the sleeves.

She wore it after our worst fights, the kind where we didn’t talk for days but still passed each other in the hallway like strangers.

I remembered her curled up on the couch in it, silent tears soaking the collar, refusing to look at me even when I begged her to.

She wore it when she was pregnant with Liam and again with Violet.

When her body hurt, when her back ached, and when the weight of motherhood was crushing her.

I’d given her that sweater casually, thinking it was just another soft thing to warm her. But she had treasured it for years. Hell, she'd worn it through everything.

“She wears it when she cries,” Angie went on, savoring the words.

“Did you know that, Levi? Last night, she curled up on the couch in it. The poor thing was shaking. Whispering your name like it hurts her.” Angie let out a soft, mocking tsk .

“Then she tossed it out in the garage like it was trash. That pathetic little cunt.”

My vision went red and the line went dead before I could respond.

To hear her disparage my wife, to call one of the most selfless and thoughtful people I'd ever known a cunt?

If Angie had been in front of me, I would have ripped her to bloody pieces.

A decade of therapy would not have saved her from my bloody knuckled rage.

Deep breaths, big guy. In and out.

I forced myself to breathe, to slow my heartrate. Anger was what Angie wanted me to feel. Anger meant I would do something rash, something stupid. I waited until I'd calmed myself before I sat on the bed to think.

The garage. Obviously, Angie had gotten into our garage.

It wouldn't be that hard to slip in for someone as unhinged as she was.

The garage was where we kept the things too sentimental to throw out, but too painful to keep close.

The in-between space. Our memories in storage bins.

Sloane's childhood keepsakes, the kids’ old toys, that damn sweater folded neatly beside a box of anniversary cards we'd stopped reading years ago .

It's also where we keep the trashcan, smart ass. Maybe she was throwing it out.

In the wake of her taunting phone call, a suffocating silence settled over me. I'd heard her words, but it was what Angie didn't say, what she'd left unsaid, that I kept playing over and over in my head: "I'm watching her Levi and there's nothing you can do about it."

A deep ache gnawed at my chest, threatening to consume me.

Angie had gone too far. The thought of her filthy, greedy hands touching anything of Sloane's disgusted me, of course.

But the worry that Angie might be dangerous?

That she might actually try to hurt Sloane?

I hadn't considered that a real possibility until then. Something about Angie breaking into our garage made me realize that she wasn’t just a scorned lover anymore. She was a genuine threat.

Sloane deserved better than this. She deserved to feel safe, to feel secure, and I wasn’t going to let some psychopath ruin that.

This bitch doesn't realize who she’s dealing with.

No one hurt Sloane. I would bury Angie under concrete if she did.

I let out a breath through clenched teeth. I shot a text to Sloane, my fingers zipping over the screen.

Do you still have your gray sweater with the torn sleeve?

I was met with silence. Obviously, you idiot. It's past midnight. I doubted Slone was awake.

Desperate for an ounce of control, I paced the room while I cataloged the years I could remember I'd spent with Angie.

She'd left me two years into our relationship, right around the time mine and Sloane's divorce had settled. Master Builders Inc. and our home had been sold, the proceeds split down the middle, and I paid a lump sum of alimony towards Sloane.

I had tried to start anew with Angie. She was already gorgeous when I'd met her, but she'd transformed herself into an absolute bombshell. Her body was built in a surgeon’s office: carved, sculpted, and suctioned into existence with my money I pissed away. Every time we fought, I imagined those stacks of cash I’d burned to pump fat into her ass and freeze it under her skin.

Her forged beauty became a grotesque monument to every stupid, disgusting choice I’d ever made.

Her fake lashes fanned dramatically, drowning her eyes in plastic glamour. She became a parody of seduction.

Was she always this fucking crazy, though?

Had there been signs? I ran through every moment, every interaction I could recall with Angie.

The flirtation, the smiles, the fights, the hints that I was too blind to see her for what she was.

In my previous life, was she really this unhinged and the Old Me had never noticed?

Or had some fragile thing snapped in her after I woke up in this new life?

Is she this insanely obsessed because of how I fled, terrified, from her?

I couldn’t shake the unease gnawing at me. The pieces were all there, scattered and jagged, coming together in a way I could no longer ignore.

Our last interaction burned in my memory, sharp and unforgiving.

We were staying at her Dad’s place in preparation for a party.

Angie had lost her shit on me because I couldn’t take her to Key West for our anniversary.

After two years of gifting her with anything and everything she'd ever asked for, with that one cancelled trip the carefully painted facade of our relationship cracked open to reveal what had always been underneath: sex, control, and money.

I gave her what she wanted, when she wanted it, and if I couldn't? What use was I, then?

We screamed at each other, her mascara streaming black tears down her face as rage coiled in every syllable.

That fight stripped everything between us bare.

I saw myself in the shattered mirror of that moment, standing in the wreckage of a life I had built on ego and lies.

I had nothing. No dignity. No home. No family that trusted me.

But it was her final words that branded themselves into my spine.

“You are nothing without me, Levi,” she spat. Her voice shook with a furious hunger. “You are mine and if I can’t have you, then believe me… no one will.”

She slammed the door on her way out. I stared at it for a long time, listening to the silence crawl in around me before I packed my stuff and left. I blocked her, cut her out of my life, and made sure I would never hear from her again.

After Angie, I abstained from alcohol and other women. That's around the same time I'd started therapy. Hell, I did everything I could to turn my life around.

I finally saw Sloane for the miracle that she was and, for the first time in a long time, I tried to live a life worth living. After I'd lost Violet and watched Liam bounce in and out of juvenile detention centers, I'd desperately wanted to lead a more selfless life.

There were a few women who came and quickly went for the remainder of my years, but never more than one or two dates at the most. It was as if they could sense the rot within me, the sins I'd committed, the wreckage I'd left in my wake.

If there had been a world record for 'number of times ghosted' I would surely have held it.

I stayed single for the rest of that life and was content being a friend to Sloane whenever she'd let me .

A bing sounded as my phone lit up, pulling me out of my memories of my previous life.

I think it's in the garage. Everything ok?

I tried to be calm. I didn't want to alarm her.

Missing you madly and wishing I could see you. I hope you haven't had to wear it recently.

Silence greeted me after that, the implications of my words evident to us both: I hope I haven't made you cry recently.

I buried my face in my hands, the pressure doing nothing to stop the downward spiral in my mind. Angie was bleeding into every corner of my life, our home, my marriage. She was a parasite feasting on our suffering.

Then, a knock. Not at the door, but from the bedroom window. Three soft taps.

Anger surged, flooding my veins. I remembered her voice over the phone earlier, calling my Sloane a cunt, and I clenched my teeth until my jaw ached.

I am going to murder this bitch.

There in the darkness of the bedroom, I sat with my arms wrapped around my knees and listened to my breath turn ragged. I practiced my deep breathing, rocking back and forth on the bed, fighting to contain the boiling rage within me as I repeated a mantra over and over in my head.

She wants you to snap. Don't go out there. If you go out there, you will kill her. If you kill her, you will lose everything. Do this the right way. For Sloane.

At 4 a.m. I found the envelope on the patio table .

The handwriting had changed, become more erratic and almost illegible. The red lipstick smeared across the paper; each letter evoked its own sense of screaming.

I still want us to go to Key West.

W hat in the actual fuck?

I stared at it as a flicker of confusion teased at the edge of my memory. Had I already invited her to come down to Key West with me? Had we already discussed vacationing there?

Then the stench hit me, that cloying, sickly-sweet perfume of Angie’s. It clung to the paper thick and chemical, crawling up my throat. I gagged, stepping back instinctively, bile rising. My hands shook as I held the note away from me, like it might burn through my skin.

This wasn’t simply stalking. It was an obsession.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to sit still and stay in control.

But fuck me, she was crazy. So crazy, I think it was time to get the police involved before I did something irrevocably stupid.