There’s no way that I can call the police. They won’t do anything, just like last time.
“I’m calling the police right now,” I scream down the hallway.
There’s no answer.
I wait a couple more seconds before timing each step that I take.
“I’m coming in and I’ve got a gun.” I need every advantage that I can take.
When I break the threshold of the loft, shards of broken glass crunch under my shoes. Every foot further inside reveals a little more and more of the damage. Broken dishes and mugs scattered on the floor. Torn apart pieces of clothing. The couch cushions stuffing on the carpet. Splintered wooden chairs.
Nothing’s survived that monster’s touch.
Just like before, I flick on every light in every room. Going through and assessing the damage, while also keeping my guard up. When it’s obvious that there’s nobody here, I lean against the wall in the entrance.
Everything that I built over the last year is ruined. My art pieces lay torn at my feet. All the mementos and trinkets I’ve built in Portland lie in shambles.
Slowly, I fall down to the ground. My hands curl up into fists and I smack them against the back of the wall. Tears are welling up in my eyes and I can’t hold it back anymore.
“Why won’t you leave me alone?” I yell, my voice bouncing off the destroyed loft.
Broken and ruined.
That’s the definition of my life right now.
Chapter 7
It takes a couple minutes to regain my composure. When I gather myself, I call everyone that I know.
Nobody picks up.
Marina is probably fast asleep. And Jean is probably to drunk at the bar to even hear his phone.
There’s only one person that I can turn to. There’s no one else for me to go to. In all these years here, he’s still the only person that will help me out no matter what.
My index finger hovers over the old ornate doorbell. Part of me hopes that it’s too old to work. That I’ll need to go back home to my broken apartment and gather myself. And try to move on.
The other part yearns to see him. Those devilish blue eyes of his and that smirk.
The only problem is that I’m a complete mess. Dry makeup down my cheeks and blood shot red eyes.
I don’t want him to see me like this. But, what other choice do I have?
Everything back home is destroyed and it’s probably no longer safe to be there. The freak seems to have no problem getting in and out of my place. The police won’t do anything just like last time. He’s the only person that I can turn to.
I swear under my breath and press the button. There’s a soft buzz inside. I hold my breath and a couple seconds later, the lights above the front entrance turn on and I can see my reflection in the small window on his door.
I’m a mess. My wavy brunette hair is nothing; but a big poof ball. There’s streaks of dried makeup running down the side of either cheek. My eyes are bloodshot red and my fake eyelashes are barely holding on.
King walks down the steps, his head craning down to see who it is. He’s wearing a white wife-beater that hugs his barreled chest. There’s a scar running down from the end of his neckline, getting lost underneath his shirt. A couple of old and new tattoos cover his body. I’ll have to ask him about them some time, preferably when I’m not being chased by some creep.
Even after everything I’ve been through, I can’t help but get turned on by his sight. All I can think of is being wrapped in his arms on my couch once more. The couch that now lies in the middle of my living room, turned over.
When he pulls the door open it slams against the inside wall. And before I know it, I’m in his arms. I feel the hard beat of his heart underneath his shirt. He looks up and down the street before pulling me inside.
And I just give myself to him. I let his warm embrace take over me.
“Cami, what are you doing here?” he says, a worry in his voice. He leans back and looks me over, his thumb wiping away the dried makeup. He smiles at me for a moment and I mimic him.
I don’t know why I was so worried about coming to him. If there’s someone that can take care of me, it’s King.
With a heavy head, I press into his chest and take him in. The familiar smell of cigars and old oil. He’s been working on the cars all day.
Something inside of me bursts. I raise a finger in the air and wave it in front of his face. “Was it you? Were you the one who destroyed my loft?” I scream.
I don’t know if it’s the lack of sleep or not being able to trust anyone that I see, but I unleash on him. As much as I want to trust him, I don’t know if I should. Everything about my instincts and feelings are out of whack. I don’t know what to believe anymore.
King stands there for a moment, listening to my accusations. He runs a hand through his hair and shakes his body. “I can’t believe that you’re accusing me of this right now. What do I have to do to convince you that its not me? Didn’t I just fucking chase off the guy who followed you tonight?”
I watch him for a moment.
He begins to pace around the hallway, waiting for me to answer him. When he sees that I won’t, he turns around and looks me dead in the eyes.
His hands shoot out in front of me, and his fingers curl like they’re about to grab at me. At the last second, he pushes his hands pass me and slams them on the wall behind me. He leans his body over me and drops his head low, bringing his eyes away.
“Do you honestly believe that I could do something like that to you?” When he lifts his head, I can almost see a small trickle of water come down his cheek. I want to bat it away and tell him I’m sorry, but I hold back. “Cami, I love you so much. Years ago, I made the dumbest decision of my life. And there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about it. But, I’m trying to make it right now.” He pulls away and paces back and forth around the narrow hallway. There’s barely enough room for the both of us, so there are moments where he brushes against me.
There’s a deep intensity to him. One that I hadn’t seen in the longest time. Something that was missing during the last year of our relationship.
The sound of cracking drywall brings me back to reality. When I look up, King’s fist is through the wall and there’s a white powder covering his body.
The wall crumples as he pulls out his white ashed hand. He opens and clenches his hand, wincing for a millisecond in pain before putting his tough guy face back on. Only someone like me, whose been with him for years, knows how stubborn and manly he tries to present himself at all times.
I walk over to him and take his hand. He looks down at me, but doesn’t say a word.
I take the scarf from around my neck and bandage his hand, doing my best to relieve some of his pain. I might think that he’s an asshole, but that doesn’t mean I want any physical harm to come to him.
“Thanks,” he mumbles, his other hand grabbing onto my waist and pulling me in. The breathe lifts from my chest and I’m left staring into his eyes.
There’s a stillness in the room. The force of his punch has the light bulb, which hangs from a loose wire, shaking and casting shadows on every wall. His grip is tight around my waist, and for a moment, we get lost in each other’s eyes. The anger from before has dissipated and there’s only the thumping of our hungry, lonely hearts.
I clear my throat and he loosens his hold on me. It’s getting too hot and heavy for me right now. And besides, there’s other matters that need to be taken care of, thinking back to my destroyed loft.
“My loft.” I struggle to get the words out, his eyes still on me. “He was back at my apartment.”
King’s eyes open wide and he nudges me aside, bounding up the stairs three at a time. Before I can ask what he’s doing, he’s already back. Flying down the stairs. A dark metal barrel glistens from his non-injured hand as he whisks by me, his injured hand grabbing my wrist at the last second. He opens the passenger door to the Camaro and waits for me to hop in before he
slams it shut. He slides off the hood and slinks into the driver’s seat.
The engine purrs awake and a thrill of adventure runs through me. That’s until I see what’s in his hand. He opens the middle console and places the silver revolver inside.
“Are you sure that’s necessary?” I shout over the roar of the engine as he presses down on the pedal, his hand shifting through the gears as the car peels down the road.
He turns around to me and looks at me as if I just asked the dumbest question in the world. “A couple hours ago, he was trying to run you off the road. I think we are past the point of formalities and talking this out.”
I reach over my body and grab the seatbelt, tugging it firmly across my body just as he takes a sharp right at the corner. I’m thrown to the side, his hand cushioning my whiplash. My shoulder stays in the palm of his hand for a second longer before he dips it back down to the shift stick.
It’s two in the morning and there’s not a car on the street. Every couple feet a halo of light illuminates the inside of the car, reflecting those ocean blue eyes of his. I can’t help but bite down on my lip.
It’s been so long since I’ve been in his Camaro. The purr of the engine, his strong hand on the stick shift, and the smell of burnt rubber. My body’s getting hot just looking at him, but I clear my throat and focus on the task at hand.
Chapter 8
I’m right behind him as he climbs up the stairs. His body hugs the railing, hands clutching the gun in front of him. I can see his index finger right outside the trigger guard.
At the top of the stairs, he holds his hand up. “Wait here until I check inside,” he whispers.
King takes a breath, his taut shoulders rising and falling. He leans over and turns the doorknob, throwing the swinging door to the inside. He turns into the room, gun in front of him. He checks for a couple minutes before waving me inside.
“The coast is clear.”
I follow him inside and take another look at the disaster that is my loft. Nobody’s been in here since I left, so I guess that’s a good sign.
With the lights on, I try my best to avoid every broken shard and splinter of wood. It’s going to take hours to clean all of this up and thousands of dollars to replace it all.
King kneels down at the corner of the room and picks up a picture frame. He takes the picture out of the broken frame, which clatters to the floor, and looks at it for a moment. I walk up behind him to see which picture it is.
It’s of my graduation day. The day that should have been a momentous occasion for us. Instead, he had been pulled away by officers, and I was left standing between my parents with a broken smile on my face.
His hand trembles for a moment and he sets the picture down on the kitchen counter. I watch him walk around the room, his eyes scanning the nearby windows. He checks the lock on each of them and pulls on the handles. All of them are locked.
Then, he walks back down the hallway to the front door. He kneels down and looks at the handle and door-frame. He runs a finger down it and nods to himself before turning to me.
“None of them were forced open. There are no entry marks on any of the windows or front door. Whoever got in here had a key.”
I kneel down next to him and look where he points, running a finger along the groove. He’s right. There’s no sign of any forced entry into the apartment.
“Who else has the key beside you?” He lifts himself and walks back to the kitchen, sending shards of glass into every direction. He always had a bad habit of sliding his feet and not lifting them. He always told me that it took too much energy to lift them. It was his way of teasing me.
He heads to the closet in the kitchen and opens it, pulling the string and grabbing a broom and pan. He starts to work his way around the kitchen. I hold back laughter. For some reason, even through all of this, seeing a man in all his riding gear kneeling over and sweeping up broken plates and mugs is amusing to me.
There are only two people who have a key to my loft. Myself and Jean. “I have a key and so does Jean. But it couldn’t be him since he was at the gallery with me all day.”
Jean would never do something like this to me. Besides, I really wasn’t his type anyway.
I walk around the room, assessing the damage to the loft as King continues to sweep. I don’t understand how someone could do something like this.
I kneel and grab a couple of loose underwear off the floor, pushing them into my pockets before King can see. There’s no saying how many pairs of underwear he took this time. He could have taken anything from my loft and I probably wouldn’t know for a long time.
“Whoever did this was really angry.” He holds the broomstick in front of him, the bristles at the bottom bending at his weight. “You must have done something to piss him off.” He sweeps the jagged shards of glass into the pan before dumping it in the trash.
“You think so?” I ask, trying to figure out what had changed in the last couple weeks. Everything’s been so consistent for the last couple months. It’s only recently that this stalker has escalated everything.
“I know so. Just look at all this damage.” He holds his hands out in front of him and does a little spin. “There’s nothing normal about this. Whoever did this has some serious locksmithing skills.”
Lock-smithing?
It’s like a light bulb goes off in both of our heads. “Tommy,” we both scream at the same time.
He smiles at me, giving me credit for figuring it as quickly as he did. I run toward him and give him a high five, realizing that it’s the break in the case that we need.
“It all makes sense now. There was something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. And it was almost too convenient that I happened to find his poster outside my loft,” I ramble, trying my best to remember every little feature of his.
There’s a weight that lifts off my shoulder as I walk over to the overturned couch and lean against it. King props the broom against the wall, leans next to me, and drapes a hand over my shoulders.
“The last couple months have been hell cause of him,” I say. And that’s an understatement. Him stalking me has affected every part of my life. I can’t even paint anymore because my hands are too jittery half the time. That’s when I come to a realization.
I ball my hands into fists and start to drum them against my forehead. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid,” I mutter. I’m halfway to knocking my senses out when King’s hands grab my wrists. I look up at him and want to cry. “I owe you an apology.”
He lets go of my wrists and walks away, wiping his hands on his dark blue jeans. He grabs the broom and dustpan and starts to sweep, making subtle eye contact between each swing of his shoulders.
I hold back a smile. He was never good at taking my apologies. He said that was always because he didn’t know how to react to them.
In foster care, he never got any apologies from anyone. He was always the one to blame. It made him uncomfortable when someone apologized.
“Still haven’t gotten over that, huh?” I say, peeling myself away from the sofa and making my way toward him. I drag my feet across the wooden floor, fingers twiddling with each other.
I was never good at making apologies, but I owe this one to him. I wrap my hands around him and stop him mid-sweep, pulling his back hard against my chest. “Words can’t describe how sorry I am. I shouldn’t have blamed you.”
He grabs the back of his neck and massages it, clearly not handling this whole situation well. “Don’t worry about it.”
It’s almost adorable.
“Will you at least turn around and look at me?” My hands stay on his body as he spins around slowly, his beefy body pressing against mine. He holds his hands out to the side like he doesn’t know what to do with them. “Can you come down here so I can tell you something?”
He bends over, my mouth next to his ear. My lips touch the side of his cheek and I give him a small peck. I let go of him and walk away, feeling his eyes on my ass. I take a look back to
see the signature gloating smile of his.
“What was that for?” he asks, following behind me.
“It’s the only way I can make sure you take my apology.” I wink at him, taking in that smirk of his.
“I’ll always accept your apology. Anyway, how about we get you some new locks?”
Lucky for us, there’s a Home Depot still open at midnight. We are in and out in minutes, King guiding me through the basics of the best locks on the market.
We decide that it’s too dangerous for me to stay at my loft for now, so we check me into a hotel down the block from his garage. The kind that has a doorman and security at the entrance. There’s no way that Tommy would ever get in here. Not without security ringing me upstairs before they let him through.
We double back to the loft so that King can install them. I watch over King as he does it, handing him the odd tool here and there, while my other eye looks at the door. There’s a strong chance that Tommy won’t walk through it, but you never know. Him being crazy and all.
When he’s done replacing every bolt in the house, the sun rises in the distance.
“These are yours. Don’t be giving them to anyone else.” He drops the keys into my hand. The trouble that these little things can cause. “These locks are the best on the market. Even Tommy won’t be able to get through them without at least busting down the door.”
I close the door behind me, not looking forward to the fact that I have to come back and clean up this mess.
King drives me back to the hotel. When we pull up to the curb, everyone’s rushing down the sidewalks. I raise my hands to the roof of his car and stretch. “I could really use some shut eye right now.” The only thing that’s keeping me going is knowing that in the next five minutes I’ll be wrapped in fresh, clean sheets inside my room.
I open the door and have one foot out of it when King’s hand touches my back. “I know a way that we can deal with Tommy.”
My ears perk up and I turn around. “How?” At this point, I’m pretty much willing to do anything to get rid of the creep.
Double Heat: Menage Firefighter Romance MFM Page 19