by Jillian Dodd
Dawson: no shoes./'
Keatyn: Where are you?
Dawson: gurl bed partzy
I can’t help but shake my head as I hand her back her phone. She deserves so much better than this.
“Um . . .” She looks at me, like she expects me to say something reassuring, but I can’t. I just feel bad for her.
And I wish that she knew I would never treat her like that.
I watch as she texts.
Keatyn: Your brother is “druk,” can’t find his shoes, and is in a “gurl’s bed at a partzy.”
Riley: Shit.
Keatyn: Yeah.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
“Not really. Have fun with the harem. I’m heading back to my room.”
“I’ll walk you. The harem will wait.”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m fine,” she lies as tears form in her eyes. She turns around and runs through the trees.
I run after her. When she gets to her dorm window, she closes her eyes, leans against the side of the building, and starts to slide down into the grass.
I’m there to catch her. I pin her against the brick wall, slide my leg between hers, and push my chest tightly against her, holding her up.
She looks up at me, taking in my lips like she wants to kiss me.
I just shake my head, wrap my arms around her, and hug her.
Just hug her.
Which causes her to start sobbing. “I’m never, ever telling a guy I love him again. It’s like I’m love cursed.”
I nuzzle my face into her hair and whisper soothingly, “You’re not love cursed. You just aren’t—” I stop myself from saying it. I don’t want her jumping from him to me just because she’s upset.
“Just aren’t what?”
I sigh deeply, barely believing I’m doing this again. “Maybe he’s just drunk at the party. If he was hooking up, I doubt he’d stop to text you.”
“I think the hooking up is over, and now he can’t find his shoes.”
“So you don’t trust him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, when he left, did you trust him?”
“I did. He told me over and over not to worry. To trust him. That he loves me.”
“If he really loves you, he won’t cheat on you. Even if he’s drunk. You should have faith in the people you love. Maybe if you did, they wouldn’t let you down.”
She pulls out of my embrace and turns her back to me. “I’m going to cry alone in my room now. Thanks for your kind words,” she says, but then she swings back around. And now, she’s pissed. “So it’s my fault if he cheats?! That sounds like the kind of zen bullshit the Keats guy would tell me. I didn’t expect it from you. But I should have. It fits your whole player thing. The whole it’s-never-my-fault, take-no-responsibility-for-your-actions-because-it’s-easier-to-blame-fate, or cosmic forces, or someone else, than it is to admit that you just suck. Good night.”
She needs to chill out. I run my hands down the sides of her arms, trying to calm her down a little.
“Boots, I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that—” I shove my hands through my hair, trying to figure out the best way to say it. “Maybe the guy you’re with isn’t worthy of your love.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Her phone starts buzzing and buzzing.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“It’s Riley,” she says, answering. “Hey, Riley.”
She’s still close to me, so I can hear their entire conversation.
“Where are you?” Riley asks.
“About to go in my room.”
“Cam wants to talk to you. I’ve got him on conference with me. Say hi, Cam.”
Cam says, “Don’t be mad at him.”
“He’s texting me from a girl’s bed!” she shouts into the phone. And I can’t help but love it. Because she’s right. It’s bullshit.
“Yeah, a bed that he’s in alone,” Camden counters.
“No offense, Cam, but Riley told me about you. How you didn’t think Dawson should have a girlfriend. I get it. You’re a player. You want to have fun and not be tied down.”
He laughs. “Actually, I’d love to be tied down.” I hear him yell out to whoever is at the party. “Anyone got any rope? I want to be tied up.”
“I said tied down,” Keatyn says.
“Close enough,” he replies with another laugh.
“It’s been great talking to you,” Keatyn says, still pissed. “Tell your brother when he sobers up not to bother calling me.”
Go, Keatyn!
“And you need to cool your panties. He didn’t hook up with anyone. In fact, he sucks as a wingman now.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“He won’t shut up about you. It’s hard to pick up girls when one of us is all panty-whipped and talking about his amazingly hot girlfriend. So I did what I had to do. Got him drunk. Put him to bed.” Shit.
Keatyn lets out an audible sigh and tears of relief flood her eyes. “He’s really alone?”
“Yes. He’s crazy about you. I’m not gonna let him screw that up. At least not until I meet you. I gotta go. Just got a taker on the rope.”
Riley lets out a loud laugh. “You okay?”
“Do you think Cam’s telling the truth and not just covering for him?” she asks.
“Yes, I do.”
“Then, yes, I’m okay. Thanks, Riley.”
She hangs up, and I look at her expectantly. Like I didn’t hear what just transpired. I want her take on it.
“His brother said he’s a bad wingman,” she says. “That he kept talking about me in front of the girls. So he got him drunk and put him to bed.”
I can’t believe she’d forgive him that easily.
I cross my arms in front of my chest and clench my teeth to keep from going off. “Well, that’s great.”
“I’m going to bed now,” she says as she climbs in through her window. Once inside, she sticks her head back out. “Thanks for following me. Checking on me. Trying to make me feel better. I appreciate it, Aiden.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
She gives me a sassy grin. “You just did. But yes. Ask away.” At least she’s smiling again.
“What you said today in French. Do you think true love is bullshit, or do you believe in it?”
She looks up and sighs. “I really want to believe in it.”
I want her to believe in it, too. I want her to allow herself to feel what’s in her heart—her soul. But I realize in this moment, here, staring at the moon with my perfect girl, that I’m still not worthy of her.
A Keats’ quote immediately pops into my head. ‘I am profoundly enchanted by the flowing complexity in you.’
Which so describes her.
Everything about Keatyn is so complex.
I never thought earning her trust would be so complicated.
I never thought she would test my patience at every turn.
I need to stop trying to force it—just relax and be myself.
Let it evolve—and in the process, learn everything I can about her.
When we’re together in moments like these—everything seems so simple.
But it’s not.
There’s another Keats’ quote that goes like this: ‘Two souls but with a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.’
I can’t think of a more perfect way to describe how she makes me feel, because my heart has been beating for her since the moment we met.
I just need to be patient.
And, as much as I want to, I can’t allow myself to sleep with her.
Not until she tells me the truth.
When we’re finally together in that way, I want everything to be perfect.
She’s looking up at the almost full moon shining above us.
“The moon is really pretty tonight, isn’t it?”
She doesn’t reply, seemingly lost in thought. The enchanted look on her face tells me that regardless of what she
says, she does believe in fairy tales.
In fairytales, the prince always has to do something to earn the maiden’s love, which means that I can’t worry about her relationship status with anyone else. I’m going to have to woo her if I want to be her knight in shining armor—her prince, her true love, her fairytale.
Because what I want more than anything is for us to be able to look back someday and say: And they lived happily ever after.
But I can’t tell her any of that just yet, so I just smile at her. “Don’t let my sister go crazy shopping tomorrow.”
She laughs. “I won’t.”
“Night, Boots.”
VINCENT SHARPE
“I knew Vincent was the stalker right away.”
This sentence was occasionally used in a negative way regarding Stalk Me. Some readers seemed to think I wanted the fact that Vincent was indeed the stalker to be a big mystery and that I wanted everyone to be surprised when he was revealed as the kidnapper.
Truth: I didn’t. I wanted you to know Vincent was the stalker. I wanted you to develop a relationship with him much like Keatyn did. If it were a movie, when Vincent came into the scene, the bad-guy music would start playing. I wanted you to feel on edge when he was around. I wanted you to feel sad when his grandmother died. I also wanted you to be attracted to him even though you knew you shouldn’t be. I wanted you to constantly question your assessment of him. I wanted him to become more than just a creepy stalker, because I knew Vincent’s relationship with Abby and Keatyn was, and would become, so complex. (However, I do hope you were surprised that he tried to kidnap Keatyn at her birthday party.)
What you are about to read is a combination of information on Vincent’s backstory and character profile, then you will find out what was happening behind the scenes regarding Vincent during the series. This part features commentary on what Vincent is doing and feeling, includes new scenes, and layers in actual scenes from the books. All of the scenes from the series are in italics, so you can differentiate them. You also will get some insight on what goes on between Vincent and Abby during Keatyn’s time at Eastbrooke. Things you didn’t get to see or hear in the books, since it was all told from Keatyn’s perspective.
A little about Vincent’s character profile. He has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. On the outside, he appears normal. He could be your colleague, your neighbor, your friend.
He has a kind of glow or charisma that makes him charming and interesting. He appears to be spontaneous, intense, complex, and sexy, which makes him tricky.
Cats often play with a mouse before they kill it. It’s entertaining to them. They don’t consider the terror the mouse feels. Some clinicians have compared this to the concentration with which a predator stalks his prey—much like Vincent does throughout the series. It’s both an obsession and a game to Vincent.
We’ll start with Vincent’s backstory.
Some of this was included in the series, some was not.
His given name was Thaddeus Samuel Kingston. He had a lousy childhood. He never knew his father, and his mother was not a good mother. There were a multitude of different men in and out of her life—mostly, low-life scumbags. As a child, he lacked any kind of stability. As he started into adolescence, he realized what was really going on. His mother was a whore.
When he was a young teen, there was an incident with one of the men. The man got rough with his mom, and he tried to protect her. This man was a scumbag, but he was wealthy, and his mom didn’t want to lose him. The man hit Vincent and told his mom that if she didn’t get rid of the kid they were over. His mother ran to the man, rather than her son. Thaddeus knew she had made her choice.
He was understandably upset, ran away from the house, and ended up in a movie theater.
It was in an old part of Hollywood, near his grandmother’s home. When his mother left town with one of her many men, Vincent would get to stay at his grandmother’s. He wished he could live with her all the time, but his mother wouldn’t allow it. She seemed to hate her own mother and he could relate—that’s an emotion he understood.
He, however, thought his grandmother was perfect. She wasn’t a whore like his mother. She was the actress Viviane Sharpe and lived in an old Hollywood Hills mansion. She was graceful, a lady. She took him to see old movies at this theater. Black and white movies, artistic movies. She said that movies used to be works of art.
When he stormed out of his house that day, he went straight to that movie theater. He didn’t care what was playing. He just bought a ticket.
When the movie started, there she was. One of the most beautiful and innocent faces he had ever seen. A girl who reminded him of the way his grandmother looked in her movies. Her name was Lacy and he fell in love with her.
He stayed and watched the movie, A Day at the Lake, three times in a row. It was a horror flick where a group of friends went to a lake house for sun and partying. A crazed killer starts killing off his dream girl’s friends. At the end of the movie, Lacy manages to survive by shooting the killer with a harpoon. The ending of the movie disturbed Thaddeus. It was obvious to him that the killer did what he had to do. He and Lacy had history, were in love, and the only reason he killed off the partygoers was to help Lacy achieve her dream. He should have been commended for what he was doing for Lacy, not shot with a harpoon. Thaddeus would have killed her jerk of a boyfriend, too. He didn’t support Lacy.
He and his grandmother had often dissected movie plots. She taught him what elements made for a good story. Thaddeus knew if he had written this script the story would have been very different. After the killer took out Lacy’s friends, she would have been grateful, kissed him, and they would have left on the boat while the sun was setting.
Thaddeus understood what motivated the killer. He would kill for Lacy, too. And he knew it couldn’t be a coincidence that the killer’s name was Vincent Sharpe—Sharpe also being his grandmother’s last name.
He went to his grandmother’s house that night and slept on her porch, where he dreamed of he and Lacy. Grandmother found him in the morning, and later in the day, his mother signed over all rights to him and left with the man.
Thaddeus found out from the credits that the actress’s name was Abby Johnston. Like many fans do, Thaddeus wrote a letter to Abby. This was her first movie and she didn’t get much fan mail back then, so she replied personally. She sent him back a letter, thanking him for liking her movie. She included an autographed photo of herself as Lacy and signed it, Love Abby.
In his mind, there were two kinds of women. Women like Abby and his grandmother, and women who were whores like his mother. Life with his grandmother was much better than life with his mother. She was old and a bit distant, but she gave him the best of everything. She raised him in the manner he deserved. He went to an exclusive academy. He didn’t always get along with the other students, but eventually he lost all traces of his rough upbringing and learned to act like he belonged.
His grandmother fostered an obsession of old movies. He told her he wanted to remake the classic films. He believed that people were tired of the blockbusters, the special effects. He felt that in these harsh economic times that people wanted to see love—not sex. He would never do a movie with sex scenes. All you need is one dramatic kiss. His dream of remaking A Day at the Lake drove him. His grandmother helped him financially, but it wasn’t enough.
By then, his mother had tried to come back into his life. She married the man who had hit him, and during their marriage, the man had gained more wealth. And Thaddeus was their only heir.
It was really quite sad when they were killed in a random mugging.
Not that he went to their funerals.
He changed his name to Vincent Sharpe and bought a small production company—the one who originally made the movie A Day at the Lake. Grandmother was thrilled he was taking her name and fully supported him.
Abby married a pretty-boy model. Vincent didn’t think it would last. He followed A
bby’s career, but he understood the difference between life and art. He was in love with the character Abby had created, not Abby, herself.
Vincent is handsome enough to be an actor. He has money. Lots of women want him and he comes to appreciate their place in the world, strictly for his sexual release. None of them ever mean anything to him.
Abby’s career skyrockets, and he follows it closely. She became America’s sweetheart by acting in roles beneath her. The roles were way too commercialized, but at least they were chaste—mostly sweet, romantic comedies with happy endings. While Abby was doing all that, Vincent was making a name for himself, buying up old classic film rights and heavily investing in movie futures.
Vincent had been at events over the years where Abby attended. He didn’t always have actual contact with her, but they were often at the same place at the same time. She was even more beautiful and graceful in person than she was on screen. A rarity.
At one such event, Vincent overheard Abby and her husband having a fight about their daughter. Her husband had a traditional upbringing in Texas, and he wanted that for his daughter. He wanted Abby to give up acting, or at least take a hiatus. Abby suggested he give up his career. Her husband had very old-fashioned values regarding gender roles, and her comment didn’t go over well. It was clear to Vincent what needed to be done. He had to protect Abby. With only a few phone calls, he was able to discover her husband’s schedule as well as his mode of transportation. Vincent was quite pleased to learn that the plane carrying Abby’s husband had crashed and all aboard had perished. And it had the added bonus of Abby throwing herself into her work and putting out more movies, which he greatly enjoyed.
A few years later, Abby had a whirlwind, highly publicized romance with action star, Tommy Stevens. They quickly married and had four daughters. Honestly, Vincent liked her with Tommy. He seemed to bring out the best in her acting abilities and coupled with good film choices, her career rose to new heights. He idolized Abby and wanted nothing but the best for her. He also hoped to someday remake her first movie with her blessing but, so far, Vincent had never found an actress who could even come close to filling her shoes.