have hands laid on them in anger or torture, and a man who makes my world complete. There’s nothing else I could imagine wanting to make our life the best it can be.
Epilogue
Kim
I’M SITTING AT my desk at home working on a few cover designs when my phone rings. Usually, I look at the caller ID, to I decide if I’ll answer it or not while I’m working. The only ones I answer for are Gwen and Fox. They’re important to me and I’ll never ignore them if I can help it. Unfortunately, that’s not the case this time.
“Hello?” I question in the phone.
“Kim, it’s good to hear your voice. I’ve missed you,” Rusty says into the phone.
Immediately my body fills with goosebumps and I want to toss my phone across the room. It wouldn’t take Fox much to get me another one. However, I need it for work and making sure Gwen always has a way to get a hold of me. Especially now that she’s a mother. You never know when you’ll be needed. Not that I have any experience of being a mom.
“What do you want, Rusty?” I question him, not keeping the hostility out of my voice.
“Kim don’t be like this. You know you’re my favorite team member. I’m calling because I have a job that needs to be done. It’s a big one and you’re going to work on it,” Rusty informs me. “I’m in town and we’ll see one another very soon.”
There’s no doubt about the threat in Rusty’s voice. He hangs up before I can tell him I’m not doing any work for him. Before I met Fox and moved to Benton Falls, Rusty started stalking me. He’d ask me out on numerous occasions, not hear me when I told him no, broke into my house more than once, and called me every hour of the day. When I tried to get a restraining order against him, I was denied. There wasn’t enough evidence for one apparently.
I changed my number right after court and kept my doors locked at all times. Everything in my house was locked up tighter than Fort Knox honestly. I’ve never been so terrified in my entire life. Have you ever felt like a prisoner in your own home? I did once Rusty started his shit. No one knows about it; including Gwen. If anyone could understand how I felt, it would be her.
Placing my phone back down on my desk, I try to regain my focus on the project I’m currently working on. Plus, Sam will have some things for me to look over and double check in a little while. She does amazing work but really doesn’t have confidence when it comes to designing book covers and other graphics. We’ll have to keep working on it.
Anyway, Rusty has always given me the creeps. Until court I’d never seen him in person. All of our interactions were through social media messages or emails. Somehow he found my number and eventually address. I’m not even sure what exactly gave me the creeps about him. There was never really any one single thing. It started out as him trying to talk to me longer and not about the projects. Then it turned into him messaging me on a daily basis about nothing at all. While some might be flattered, he didn’t stop when I told him I was seeing someone. I really wasn’t, but he didn’t have to know that tidbit of information.
He turned into a guy who was my client to someone I wanted to avoid at all costs. Especially when he started calling me babe, sweetheart, darling, and a ton of different other pet names. Names that don’t belong in a business relationship. That led to him showing up everywhere I was. Yeah, I had a routine down for a while and that shit all went out the window once Rusty started showing up. I went from trying to let him down easy to turning into a complete bitch. Even that didn’t deter him from everything he was doing to me.
There is no way I can concentrate on the work I have to complete today. My mind is firmly stuck on Rusty and the shit he’s pulled in the past. Now, I’m also thinking about what he’s going to do this time. There’s no point going to the cops because he knows exactly what to do so they don’t do anything to him. Not once did they ever