can’t stand men like that. Hate them, really. Want nothing more than to laugh while they choke on the blood bubbling up their throat after I’ve crushed their ribs in and made mincemeat of their organs.
Grant Cabot is not the type to fight fair, and for that reason, neither am I.
Hacking into his home security system was child’s play. After lying that my phone was acting up during the dinner I suffered through at his house, I’d asked for his Wi-Fi password.
Grant happily gave it to me, not realizing that he’d also given me access to all the cameras he had set through his house, one in each room, excluding the bathrooms, but including the guest bedrooms.
It made me wonder if he was as big a stalker as me, and did his guests know they were never truly alone in a house with pinhead monitoring devices throughout?
I can’t complain, though, because it gives me an unobstructed view into the private life of Adeline and her husband, a view that has only served to make me angrier with each passing day.
Adeline’s sleep issues are in full swing again, a point of contention between her and Grant that I’m sure isn’t helping matters.
Unfortunately, it’s a never-ending cycle of cause and effect. He comes home in a foul mood, she internalizes it and takes the verbal abuse, she fights and cries in her sleep, and his mood becomes worse.
It’s a powder keg waiting to explode, a ticking bomb that is difficult to watch without intervening.
But Adeline needs to remember how to throw a punch, needs to find the person she once was long ago and reclaim the spitfire attitude of a girl who once gave the finger to the world.
He hasn’t physically hurt her, though, so I keep my distance, only answering his calls every so often and giving noncommittal answers when he asks if I’m ready to invest yet. I’m sure that only makes the situation for Adeline worse, but my guilt for it is absent.
She doesn’t need a hero to swoop in and save her, she needs a villain who drags out the hero she has within herself.
I’m more than happy to oblige.
As for tonight, however, I have a formal event to attend, a few hours I’ll use to evaluate Adeline’s progress on her path back to who I know she is.
During the day, she works on her photos, both at the cemetery and her house, a model that looks surprisingly like me accompanying her. I only know that because I’ve pulled the hoodie from my closet, sneaking around to watch when I know she’ll be distracted and so aggravatingly oblivious of everything around her.
Letting her find me in the mausoleum had been a mistake. Not that I hadn’t intended it, just that it was a moment of weakness I shouldn’t have given into.
Keeping my distance is a battle within myself. The need I have to be near her a growing compulsion every day. I barely satisfy it by watching from a distance, and I keep myself in line with the promise that it won’t be forever.
She looks for me, though.
That I’ve noticed.
Her blue eyes tracking the scenery as if waiting for me to arrive.
I never do, of course.
Not as far as she can tell.
But she will see me tonight, that thought in mind as I run up the steps of the hotel while buttoning my jacket, the doorman inclining his head as he opens the door and allows me through.
A sign is set up directing guests to the ballroom for the company event, the low din of conversation filtering out as the door opens and closes, the soft hum of music that I know is not what Adeline would have chosen years ago.
Stepping inside, I scan my gaze over the growing crowd. Every person in here bleeds money, the show of it stitched into their designer tuxedos and sparkling gowns, the flash of fine jewelry adorning women who hang on the arms of powerful men.
I hate being social. A lot of people say that, but I mean it. People bore me the majority of the time, every one of them saying and doing the expected things, acting with a hive mindset, very few ever striking out with the audacity of being different.
That’s what drew me to Adeline, her audacity, the splash of color she becomes in any monochrome setting. That mischievous fucking grin of hers when she knows she’s doing something wrong.