Page 8

8

BELLE

Tears streak my cheeks and I’m sure my heart is about to burst as I race through the night, every step taking me farther from the pier. I ran down to the beach and circled around the tourist rentals, hoping to escape with a route Conrad would not anticipate. Still, I keep glancing over my shoulder, expecting to see him hot on my heels at any second.

After all, he was a Marine. He has training beyond anything I could anticipate. There’s a good chance he’ll find me. But what else can I do but run?

People keep gawking at me as I pass them. What’s wrong with this girl? They must be thinking. I’m sure I look panicked or wrought with despair like my boyfriend just broke up with me and I’m chasing after him to beg him to take me back. When in reality, I’m the one being chased by a dangerous, dangerous man. How could I have been so stupid? So trusting?

Conrad called in the bomb threat.

He’s also been stalking me for weeks. Who knows how long?

Pink pillowcase. He gave himself away with that one. He may have driven me home before, but he’s never been inside my bedroom. At least, that’s what I thought until moments ago when those words slipped from his mouth.

“Thinking of you alone at your house, away from my protection, resting your head on your cute little pink pillowcases…”

Just replaying that statement in my mind now sends shivers up my spine. This whole time that he was pretending to be protecting me, safeguarding me, he was simply scheming to get close to me. Keeping me from leaving his sight. All that game of helping me prepare for my husband–that was just an excuse to touch me, to get me to open up to him so he could get inside me.

Oh God. I gave my virginity to my stalker.

This is sick. Conrad is demented.

I would never have expected this kind of lunatic behavior from a former Marine. Then again, how do I know Conrad even is a former Marine? He could have been lying about that too. And what about that incident with Barry back at the manor? Did he orchestrate that whole thing just to keep anyone from suspecting him?

I’m sick to my stomach as I order a ride on my phone while I continue to run. I put Police Headquarters under the destination. I have to report this maniac before it’s too late. Before he’s able to take cover, or go dark, or whatever terminology they use in the Marines to indicate that he’ll be impossible to find and apprehend. Which in turn means I’ll have to spend the rest of my life in constant fear, cowering behind alarm systems and locked doors, wondering when he’ll reappear and what he’ll do to me.

I reach my pickup spot and hide myself in the shadows of a pizzeria, watching my ride approaching on the map on my phone. The seconds tick by painfully as I glance around, panicked that at any moment, Conrad will appear out of the black, racing after me. And I would be helpless against him. His strength, his speed, his prowess. I simply can’t compare.

I’m debating calling 9-1-1 when my ride arrives. I leap out of the darkness, nearly twisting my ankle in the process, and leap into the backseat of the sedan.

“Um, are you…Belle?” the man asks.

“Yes, yes! I need you to drive, please. Now!”

I’m quivering as the man throws me a questioning glance in the rearview mirror, then pulls away from the curb and drives off into the night.

“Take it from me…We like girls who know what they’re doing. If a girl doesn’t know how to please her husband, how long do you think that marriage will last?”

That’s what Conrad said to me as he manipulated me and convinced me that somehow, he was doing me a favor by getting me ready to be with my future husband, when in reality he was just tricking me to get in my pants. And I fell for it! I basically gave myself away to him like a tourist handing their passport to a scammer on the streets, only to never get it back again. And yet, I still can’t think about our moments together without a tingling sensation returning between my legs. Conrad introduced me to things I knew nothing about. He changed me.

And the entire time, he was lying to me.

He called in a bomb threat to stop my wedding. And he must have broken into my house too if he knew the color of my pillowcase. Who knows what else he’s been up to.

Conrad is a stalker. And now I’m on the way to the police station to report him.

“Almost there,” my driver says to me cautiously, as though I’m the twisted one. Sure, maybe I was behaving a bit erratically when I dove into the back seat like I was escaping a war zone, but if he only knew what was really going on and causing me to behave like a wild woman.

I’m fidgeting with my fingernails as he pulls up in front of the station. I can see a male officer sitting at the desk behind a sheet of glass, scrolling through his phone, a bored look on his face.

Get out, Belle. Go report the son of a bitch before he has a chance to escape!

I’m shaking like I’ve been out in the freezing cold for hours, and yet there’s still something stopping me from getting out of the car and racing up the steps to the uniformed man. But why? It’s not like Conrad and I have known each other for decades and I finally just discovered some awful truth about him. It’s only been weeks since we first met, and a couple days since things got really…personal.

So why am I hesitant? Why am I thinking back to what happened in the back kitchen at the manor? To how assertive he was with me, how strong he was when he held me in his arms? Why, at the same time that I’m thinking about leaving him, am I thinking about my life with him?

The man is a stalker! An unhinged liar!

It’s impossible for me to know what else he’s done and hasn’t told me about. And I want to know it all. All there is to know about him . He could have chosen any girl to do this to, but he chose me.

“Listen, girl, you gotta get out of my car now,” the driver says, clearly annoyed. “Or order another ride.”

“If you could just give me a second–”

“Out!” he shouts, shoving the rear passenger door open. “Now!”

“Okay, okay,” I mutter, dragging myself across the seat and stepping out onto the curb. Without a second’s hesitation, the man snatches his door shut and speeds off, leaving me standing beneath the cold blue of a street light, my eyes on the police station.

What can I actually tell them, though? That Conrad called in a fake bomb threat of which I have absolutely no proof? That he deceived me by pretending to protect me, while the whole time he was stalking me? Again, I have no way of proving that either. And was he never actually not protecting me? He never let me out of his sight–that is, until I tricked him at the pier. And I did feel so safe around him…

My God, what am I even thinking right now?

My nipples are hard beneath my shirt. I’m still soaked from our encounter on the Ferris wheel. And despite the chill in the air, I’m flooded with heat. I take one more glance up at the officer behind his desk and think about how our conversation would go, then turn my back on him and pull out my phone.

“You are such an idiot, Belle…”

I scroll through my recent calls until I find Fitch’s contact. I hesitate. If I make this call, things will get very complicated. Not like they already aren’t, but this will change how the rest of my life unfolds. There will be no going back if I do this.

“What I can do is take you into the shadows behind one of these shops, pin you up against the wall, and put my cock back where it belongs–inside you.”

His words ring in my head, making me aware of just how badly I wanted that back at the pier. How badly I still want it. I feel like years have passed with Conrad. I don’t even know who I am anymore. My thinking is no longer rational. I’ve fallen for him, utterly and completely. But I’m also terrified by him.

So what do I do now?

I want to believe he won’t hurt me. In fact, I know he won’t. But how can I possibly think that? Am I just being as na?ve as I was when I first fell for him? Despite all my anger from being lied to, my fury for being manipulated, my fear from realizing he’s been stalking me, I still cannot resist his passion, his strength, his dominance that he asserted in the way he commanded me.

He makes me feel wanted. A feeling Fitch has never given me. A feeling my own parents have never given me, who are happy to sell me off like an old dairy cow. But none of this changes the fact that he lied to me. He hid who he truly was from me, and who knows what else he has yet to reveal?

He’s going to have to understand that.

He’s going to have to feel the way I feel now before I let him take me back. You can’t build a house on a weak foundation, and if Conrad and I are going to have any kind of relationship at all, we need a foundation that can hold the world.

I look down at Fitch’s name on my phone, take a deep breath, close my eyes, and press it with my thumb. He answers on the first ring.

“Hello, Belle? Is everything okay?”

I’m on the verge of a panic attack. But somehow I’m managing to keep it together.

No. Everything is not okay. But I keep my cool and even put a smile into my voice when I reply, “Everything is not okay.”