Page 6 of Hide From Me

For the innocent girl next door? I chose to try to get her out by someone else’s death.

I was getting too close. The invitation had just been delivered, as had the dress I wanted her to wear. I couldn’t touch her. No one was allowed to touch her.

Fuck. What was I thinking? I’d seen the pictures over the years. I’d watched her grow up from a distance. But her here? She was even more in person, and it fucking pissed me off.

I parked my bike a block away and checked my phone again. She should be pulling up to her walk-up apartment any minute.

It wouldn’t have mattered if I missed her. The building had my cameras and my security. It hadn’t been chance that she’d gotten such a good deal on a place that was far nicer than she could afford. She didn’t know it was at the very edge of Spector territory and far, far away from the others. There wasn’t much around here that would be neutral. The police were allowed to operate until they weren’t. Her job offer? Well, I wasn’t her fairy godfather. Rather, I was the devil with a need to control things.

Her car pulled up and parked directly in front of the building. Of course she would. No one here would go against my direct instructions that this spot was for this car. Even the small coffee shop under her apartment knew to make sure that spot stayed empty. Of course it helped my gran ran the Dove. A little perk of being in charge if you asked my gran, who was the only person I would allow to be this close to Rylee.

I could have hidden in plain sight around here, but I chose to stick in the shadows. She didn’t need to know. Not yet. I still hadn’t figured her out. Why had she come back here?

Fuck. Why had I invested my time in making sure she was safe all these years?

Answers I didn’t want to know still tried to wiggle their fucking annoying presence into my mind.

I stopped the spiral of my own thoughts as she got out of her car. Fuck, she was so much more beautiful. The years had been kind to that sweet little girl, and now she wasn’t so sweet anymore. Her curves had become the front and center of my fantasies, and I needed fucking therapy.

This is what anyone would have called obsession, except no one would dare tell me that. No one would tell me I was anything except for scary.

I let out a breath as she picked up the package, pulling the card out. Right now, she was reading the details of my art show. She would see the zero’s attached to a freelance gig tonight.

I liked the confusion in her eyes. I fucking got off on the way she turned to look around like she knew I was there. I wasn’t always the one watching her, but it was always because of me, and I liked that she was more than aware of my presence.

I loved that I was around to protect her. The latest asshole was taught a very expensive lesson for messing with my beautiful little blossom. She didn’t know, but when she’d moved into my hood, she been the single bloom of hope, like my spring in a constant winter, and I couldn’t let anyone crush her bloom. Not even me.

She didn’t see me and turned back to the package. I knew how the next few moments would play out. She would go inside her apartment. Up the stairs and straight to the kitchen table. She always did, and I would wait.

I would always wait until I couldn’t wait anymore.

I shifted, crossing my arms over my chest as I leaned into the brick of my hidden hole in the wall.

I smiled to myself when she came into my view. The drapes were open as she placed the box on the table. She seemed to be overthinking, like the damn gift would bite. It wouldn’t, but the giver might. I smirked. If she only knew. She’d come back to me. I’d set her free. I’d let her go. But now? She was back in the snake pit, and it was her choice this time.

The rest were mine.

THREE

rylee

I gently placedthe box on my table and pushed it to the center. Something felt very different about this. Over the years, strange things had shown up at my aunt’s house. Mostly money, and I’d assumed it was always my father’s contacts taking care of the daughter he’d left an orphan. I didn’t see why any of them cared. They hadn’t cared when I’d sat on the porch with a shiner. They hadn’t cared when he’d murdered my mother.

No one had ever told me who had killed her, actually. The man I was supposed to call father said it was a suicide, but my mom wouldn’t have left me. She loved me, or she loved me the best she could. And then she’d died somehow, and my father was there to pick up the pieces. The issue? I wasn’t the piece he wanted to pick up.

One thing in my life I was used to was that people would randomly disappear anytime I’d gotten close to them. It started with mom. My father though? He was no accident.

Something always felt wrong about him. The day I was dumped on his porch might have been the first clue. He hadn’t even waited for me at my mom’s funeral. He’d waited for child services lady to bring me by. Something told me he was pissed there had been no money left behind.

Not that he would have used it to fix up the dump he’d called a house or feed me for that matter. I’d come a long way since then. I was no longer broken, much.

So, did I open the box? There was only ever one person that had protected me and this? Well, for some reason, I know it was from him. It had to be. Who else would have left me a gift? There had never been any gifts like this though.

On the top was an invitation to the hottest art gallery in the area. That was strange enough. The design though. It was strange and familiar at the same time. Barbed wire.

I reached for my shirt, clasping the thing against my chest, pulling at the ring that hung there. It was made of barbed wire. The sharp edges were mostly twisted and broken off by now. The paint he’d painted it with, chipped away. It had never been high quality. Someone else’s trash, some spray paint discarded along the piles of shit that decorated the yards in place of lawn ornaments. But he’d made something beautiful from the broken things.

I finally dropped the invitation. I couldn’t ignore the handwritten bit of paper that had demanded my photography skills in exchange for a thousand dollars. What kind of place could afford that?