Our conversation was everything I had ever dreamed of and more. So much more, because Delilah was right there in front of me, warm flesh and blood, and I got to see every reaction of hers, every twitch of her eyebrows, every shy smile, all the different ways her eyes lit up when we stumbled upon a subject that excited her. And it was all for me. I wasn’t just an observer anymore, watching her through her window or on my laptop. I was participating directly in Delilah’s life.
The drive home was too short. We never stopped talking, our conversation flowing so easily, it was like we were old friends picking up right where we left off. All too soon, we were parked in front of her house.
I’d told myself that I had to go at her pace, and so when I turned off the engine, I did not reach over to take her hand or kiss her or anything that might freak her out, even though I wanted to so badly, even though the smell of her had been distracting me the entire way home—almonds and flowers—and I could only look at her in small doses. Her lips were so plump, so kissable.
I focused on a spot right below her ear and said, “I had a great time today.”
“Me too.” Delilah bit her bottom lip. Then, before I could react, she reached over, caught my shirt in her hand, and tugged me to her.
Our lips met in one beautiful, heart-stopping crush. My thoughts went haywire. I was kissing Delilah. My Delilah. This was really happening. The weight of it was so intense, my throat closed up with tears. Nothing like this had happened with Sophie. Even in my wildest dreams, I never thought things would progress this well, everything clicking into place beautifully, like streams flowing downhill to join a river, everything was meant to be. I was so delirious with the touch of her, the scent everywhere around me, that I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Delilah pulled away from me.
“What?” she said.
It took me a moment to gather my senses. “Hm?” I mumbled.
“You said ‘I love you.’” Her eyes were so wide, I could see the whites all around her irises. Her breath was still rapid from our earth-shaking kiss.
It hit me then, what I’d said, those dreaded three words that were so incredibly true. “I—I don’t—”
And then the small voice at the back of my mind suddenly became a big voice, impossible to ignore. Well, why not? Why shouldn’t I be honest with her? We were soul mates. Surely, after today, after everything, after the way we talked, we kissed, we connected, she’d feel the same way. I reached out and took her hand, firm, in mine.
“It’s true, Delilah. I love you.”
She continued gaping at me.
“I’ve loved you ever since I saw you the first day of school.”
She recoiled. “But—that was months ago!”
“I couldn’t just ask you out. I had to make sure everything was perfect, and the wait was worth it, wasn’t it? You felt it too, I know. The way you smiled at me, the way you looked at me, maybe you don’t know it yet, but you’re in love with me too. Today was so…” My voice came out a hell of a lot calmer than I felt, but I had to talk slow so she’d understand, so she’d get how fucking important this was.
Her lips twitched into a smile, but it wasn’t a happy one. It was an I’d-better-smile-so-this-psycho-won’t-kill-me type of smile, and she tugged her hand free from mine.
“Um. Thank you for the really great day. I’m pretty tired. I think I’m gonna go in now. I’ll see you at school, okay?” she said, her voice brittle, close to breaking. She reached for her bag.
I was losing her. Panic burst through the endorphin-fueled fog I’d been in since our kiss. I couldn’t lose her, not now. If she got out of the car now, all I’d be left with was the faint scent of her, which would only linger for a few hours. By tomorrow, all traces of her would be gone, and I’d only have awkward glances at school and the knowledge of the most perfect relationship ruined before it could even begin.
Delilah got out, and I scrambled after her. Already she was on the pathway leading to her house.
“Please, Delilah, just… Please give me a chance.” I was doing it all wrong, I knew even as I begged her. My voice was too raw, too desperate.
“It’s been really great, Logan,” she said. “But I think it’s probably best if we just stay friends?”
“But—the date went so well. It was perfect, you know it was.”
She hesitated. “Yeah, but…”
“And that kiss. There’s something here, Dee. You know there is.”
For a second, I thought she might relent, give in to the inevitability of us, but then her face hardened. “I’m sorry, Logan. I don’t think this is a good idea. I’ll see you at school.”
“Wait!” I practically screamed it. Calm. Down. I didn’t trust myself to talk again, not for a while, so I just took out my phone. Before our date, I’d saved another copy in it, aside from the one I wore around my neck. Maybe even then, part of me had known I might need this fail-safe, in case things took a bad turn on our date. I found the file I’d saved in a hidden folder and encrypted with a password, the one I’d watched over and over again the whole of last week, knowing this video would change our entire lives. Delilah as a Valkyrie, raining vengeance on the man who’d made life hell for her and her mother. I held up the phone so we could both see the screen.
Delilah was already on her doorstep, the polite smile completely gone, and I hadn’t wanted to go down this route, really, but I was about to lose her, and I couldn’t let that happen, not again.
“I really should go—” she said.
I pressed play. The screen lit up, showing the interior of Delilah’s garage. Brandon’s legs sticking out from under his car, one of his feet tapping away, probably to some music. Delilah’s entire body went rigid. She turned back to face me, and her eyes slowly crept to look at my phone screen. Her mouth dropped open, but no sound came out for a few seconds.
“This is—”
I smiled sadly at her. “Yes, Delilah. This is a video of you killing Detective Brandon Jackson.”
Chapter Nine
Delilah
I could only stare, frozen, as the screen showed me the garage—my garage—Brandon’s legs sticking out from under the Camaro. The sight of him was so wrong, so eerie. Then it got worse. The back door opened, and I saw myself walking in, my hands cupped around my elbows, my shoulders rounded, my head low, trying to make myself as small as possible. Bile burned through my esophagus.
“That’s—stop the video,” I croaked.
Logan didn’t answer.
“Logan, stop the video.”
I watched as I walked around the car and bent over to squeak at Brandon in my impotent, small-person voice. Oh god. In less than a minute, I would watch as I stalked back toward the house and stopped, pondering, calculating, and then, and then—
“Stop the video!” My voice came out in an animalistic scream. I swiped at the phone but Logan jerked it out of my reach.
Then, to my surprise, he tapped the Delete button and said, “I’m deleting this copy. I can’t risk anyone coming across this on my phone. But I’m keeping a master copy somewhere safe.” Even as we stared at each other, chests heaving hard, part of me wondered if Mom might have heard me scream. Or maybe my neighbors. I couldn’t let any of them find us, not like this. We had to talk about it. I had so many questions. But where could we talk? Inside his car? A full-body shudder ran through me. No way in hell was I getting back in there with him. I gestured to Logan to follow, and we briskly walked down the street. Only after we turned the corner did I stop walking.
“How do you—I mean—why—” Coherent sentences were beyond me. I didn’t even know where to begin with my questions.
Logan took a deep breath and tugged at his necklace. When he finally spoke, his words came out in a rush, his eyes shining with fervor. “I did this for your sake, Delilah. That time I talked to you, when you were on your way to the su
permarket to get ice, I got the impression he was doing something bad to you, and I wanted to protect you. Obviously if you were being abused, you couldn’t report it because he was a cop, so I thought: What if I catch it all on video? They wouldn’t be able to ignore it then. They’d have to take him away. I went to your house whenever I could and recorded a couple of instances of him beating you and your mom. I thought I should gather as much footage as I could, over multiple occasions, so he couldn’t claim that it was a one-time thing or whatever. I was recording him working on his car that day, and…”
My head was a whirl of images. I thought of Logan skulking around the house—my house—with his camera phone brandished in front of him, trying to capture the worst moments of my life to save me, and I wanted to scratch him, feel his flesh peeling under my nails. “Why are you showing this to me?”
“Delilah, when I said I love you, I really meant it. This isn’t some shallow teenage crush. I love you, and that means I love everything about you, even this part of you.”
I gaped at him. Everything was going too fast and too slow and I didn’t—couldn’t—understand anything. “I don’t understand.”
“We’re meant to be together,” he said, with so much passion and belief, like a pastor making an announcement to his congregation.
“You don’t even know me.” But even as I said it, I knew what he was going to say. How he’d spent the last few months observing me, and—god—following me, picking up information about me to add to his sick collection.
“I do know you, Delilah. I know you better than anyone else. This video proves it.”
“This video proves nothing. Aside from me—” Even now, I couldn’t say it. “Brandon’s death,” I finished lamely.
Logan’s face was shining with sincerity as he leaned close to me. “I know everything there is to know about you, and I still love you. Can anyone else say that?”
A black pit of dread had yawned open deep in my stomach, a feeling that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to me. It was the way I’d felt after the first time Brandon hit me, the sensation of standing at the lip of a crevasse, knowing monsters lurked in the deep and the dark. The sensation that things were about to get a whole lot worse. “What do you want, Logan?”
“I want you to know that we’re meant to be together.”
“So you’re blackmailing me,” I said flatly.
He looked scandalized by the statement. “Of course not. I’m not a monster. I wouldn’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”
Despite myself, I allowed a flicker of hope to come to life. Maybe he really didn’t want anything. Maybe… I shook my head. “Then why show me the video?”
“To show you we’re soul mates. I don’t want the love of my life behind bars.”
“And if it turns out I’m not the love of your life?”
He shook his head forcefully, looking more earnest than ever. “There’s no possible way we’re not meant to be together. I was meant to protect you. Look how Detective Jackson hurt you all this time and I was the only one who noticed it. I was the only one who thought of a solution. You have no idea how many bad guys are out there. The world is a fucked-up place. You need me. If you left, I’d have to find you, and if I have to get the cops involved, well… I’d do anything to keep you safe, Delilah.”
The hole opened up and swallowed me whole. It was hard to breathe. I sucked in a lungful of air, but my chest still felt like it was being crushed by an iron fist, as though I were drowning. I knew what drowning felt like because Brandon had once pressed my head into the pool for knocking a glass of water over his keyboard. The expression “my skin crawled” was more than appropriate here; I could practically feel my skin try to walk off my flesh just to get away from Logan. I tightened my hands into fists. I couldn’t spiral back into my shell. Being trapped with Brandon, living under the crushing weight of his badge… I couldn’t go back to living under someone else’s thumb.
“That sounds like blackmail to me,” I hissed.
Logan reached for my hand, but I snatched it away. “Why don’t you give us a chance? What have you got to lose? Be honest with yourself, this was the best date you’ve been on. You gave me so many positive signals. You liked me. You were the one who kissed me.”
I couldn’t stop my upper lip from curling with disgust. A caustic retort was already fizzing its way up my throat when a small voice told me he had a point. Up until he showed me that damn video, I had regarded this as the best date I had ever been on. Not that I’d been on many, but there was a connection here, something special that made conversation between us flow effortlessly.
Yeah, that’s because he’s a stalker who dug up everything he could about you.
Before I could say a word, Logan spoke up. “I know right now it feels like you’re being pushed into doing something you don’t want to do, but over time, I promise you’ll realize you need me as much as I need you. And I swear we can progress at whatever pace you’re comfortable with.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m comfortable with us going backward, to a time when we didn’t know each other.”
Logan laughed. “I knew you were going to say that.”
I opened and closed my mouth, feeling ridiculously outmatched. He knew everything about me, and I knew nothing about him, nothing that could help me in this situation.
“Sleep on it,” he said. “I know you won’t ever find a boyfriend as dedicated as me.”
I walked away in a daze, everything around me muted and slow as though I were underwater. Halfway to the house, I turned my head. Logan waved at me from inside the car, handsome face pulled into a smile fit for magazine covers. If he hadn’t shown me the video, if I hadn’t found out about how he’d stalked me, the sight of his face would have given flight to butterflies in my stomach. Now, it only made me sick. My skin throbbed with revulsion. And the word my mind spat out—stalked—sat painfully in my gut like a piece of flint, all hard, jagged edges that pierced my insides. Stalked. I had a stalker. I’d gone out on a date with him. A pretty awesome date, if I were to be completely honest. I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. I tore my gaze from Logan and lurched away.
Mom was in the living room watching TV when I came in. She jumped up and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw me. I guess I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t quite used to Brandon being dead.
“How was the date?” she asked, turning off the TV. She twisted around and rested her arms on the back of the couch, smiling expectantly at me.
It was great, up until he showed me a video of me killing your boyfriend.
“It was okay.”
Mom groaned. “Don’t go all surly teenager on me. Come on, I need details. Tell me over a hot chocolate. I got the good stuff from Ghirardelli.”
Despite myself, a small part of me whined to stay down here with Mom, sipping hot chocolate so thick that it had the consistency of melted ice cream. I wanted to spill, to sob out every single lurid detail, down to the puddle of blood reaching toward my feet from under Brandon’s car. I wanted Mom to hug me and tell me it was all okay, that she didn’t hold Brandon’s murder against me, that I had saved us, saved her, and she was so grateful, and everything would be okay.
But another part was furious at Mom. It was a part that screamed, You didn’t protect us! You let Brandon into our lives, you let him strip you of your power, your strength, and reduce you into a blubbering mess with zero confidence. I killed him for our sake, and now it’s my life on the line. It took all of me to keep from lashing out at her. And I knew it wasn’t fair, but I couldn’t totally quiet that part of me.
I managed to choke out a nonconfrontational “I’m too tired. Maybe tomorrow?” before trudging upstairs into the bathroom. First, a shower so hot it felt like I was stripping off my skin as I lathered up. I took my time rubbing shampoo into my scalp, soaping every inch of my body, letting the suds and
water scald away the grime of the day, wishing it could be this easy to wash out everything that had to do with Logan. After my shower, I felt a little bit less like I was about to explode into a million teeny shards.
My phone beeped with a message from Aisha.
Aisha [9:17 p.m.]:
How was it?????
Delilah [9:18 p.m.]:
It was ok. I’m tired. Ttyl!
I turned my phone to Silent and switched on my laptop, my head humming with thoughts of Logan, of Brandon, of Mom, of the things Logan had told me in the car. Out of habit, I opened Instagram and scrolled through it listlessly, looking at pictures of my friends blowing kisses at the camera, showing off their footwear, their food, their nails. The frivolousness of their posts jabbed at me. I wanted to put my fist through the screen.
My fingers moved across the keyboard and typed Logan’s name into the search box. He and I had followed each other months ago, but I hadn’t paid that much attention aside from a casual glance through some of his pictures. My skin crawled when I realized he’d been looking through my pictures with sinister purpose, digging out information about me for his sick obsession. Logan knew my darkest secret. Did he also know other secrets I carried?
No. I couldn’t let my mind go there. Not right now. I’d completely lose my shit. I had to focus.
There was nothing out of the ordinary about his pictures—mostly Logan with his buddies, all of them tall, broad-shouldered, healthy, all-American types with good looks. Wholesome. Happy. I didn’t even know where to begin trying to glean useful information out of this, like how the hell do I get him out of my life?
I looked through his pictures until I couldn’t stomach the thought of him anymore. Slamming my laptop shut, I burrowed into my bed and nuzzled my face into my pillow. Despair sucked me in, wrapped its claws around me, and entrapped me in solid, unforgiving terror. I’d escaped from one maniac only to run straight into another. What was it about me that attracted these men, these predators? Was there something wrong with me, did I have PREY printed across my forehead? Had Pa’s death broken me to the point where anyone could see I was vulnerable and ripe for the picking?
The Obsession Page 9