by Hannah Ford
When we reached the third floor, Noah talked to the receptionist, who said she would go find the doctor.
Noah waited about thirty seconds for her to come back before apparently deciding he’d had enough. He walked past reception, heading down a long hallway that had examining rooms leading off of it.
“Noah,” I said, following him. “Slow down.”
A doctor with grey hair and a beard was walking toward us from the other end of the hallway.
“Are you Mr. Cutler?” he asked when we met in the middle.
“Yes,” Noah said.
The doctor nodded gravely. “Please come with me, Mr. Cutler.”
I started to follow them, but the doctor turned and stopped me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’m not authorized to talk about Lilah’s case with anyone but Mr. Cutler.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m part of her legal team.”
“This isn’t a legal matter,” the doctor said, admonishing me. “This is a health matter, and because of confidentiality laws, I can only speak with the people Lilah has authorized me to talk with.”
And then I got it. This wasn’t part of Lilah’s case, at least not technically. She wasn’t here to be evaluated by an expert witness who would speak to her mental state at the time of her boyfriend’s murder.
She was here to be evaluated for whatever it was she was struggling with in this immediate moment. This had nothing to do with the case, and everything to do with her personal mental health.
“I’ll be back,” Noah said to me, and then he was following the doctor, leaving me there in the hallway.
I wasn’t sure what to do with myself, so I sat down on one of the cedar plank benches that lined the walls. The air in here felt stale, as if it had been sitting for a while. I guessed that the psych ward probably didn’t allow their patients to have their windows open, which probably accounted for the fact that the air felt so still.
I could hear the soft murmur of voices coming from the different rooms, which all had heavy steel doors, some of which were open. Somehow the soft voices were more eerie than if there had been screaming and moaning, or banging and freaking out.
My skin felt itchy, and I reached down and scratched my leg.
I had a lash across my ankles, a mark from where Noah had whipped me. That, along with the marks on my wrists from last night, were sore and raw, and looking at them left me with an unsettled feeling.
After Force, Noah had been so soft with me, almost like he was afraid I was going to break if he was rough with me. But now he’d gone the opposite way. It was almost as if he’d gone to a different level, taking his frustrations out on me sexually. If we were going to keep going there, we were going to have to make sure we figured out a way to hide the marks he left on me.
The thought of having to hide that made my stomach flip. How was that okay? That my fiancé was leaving marks on me during our sex sessions? It made me uneasy.
“You have my journal.”
I looked up. Lilah stood there, wearing a hospital gown, her chestnut hair piled on top of her head in a messy topknot. Her blue eyes were wide. There were scratches on her cheeks, but they did nothing to distract from her innocent beauty. If anything, they only made her look more vulnerable. When I’d been told she’d scratched herself, I’d imagined the scratches as deep gashes, the kind of gashes that were ugly and made you want to look away.
But these scratches were thin and dainty, and they made her look as if she’d gone crawling through some brush instead of scratching herself while sitting in a movie theatre.
It made me instantly more mistrustful of her. She’d obviously been able to control herself enough to make sure the scratches she’d put on herself weren’t that bad. And if she was able to have that kind of control, didn’t it shed some kind of shade on her motivations? Like perhaps she was more in control than people thought?
Although it didn’t matter what I thought. As soon as Noah got done talking to the doctor, we would know more about what we were dealing with.
“You have my journal,” Lilah said again. I followed her gaze to where the top of her notebook was sticking out my bag.
“Yes.” I made sure to keep my voice devoid of emotion, to not give her any reason to think that I thought what I’d done was wrong. “You left it in the hotel room.”
“Did you read it?”
“Some of it.”
“Did you like it?”
“Excuse me?”
She gave me a knowing smile, and I felt a shiver of fear run through my body, from the top of my forehead all the way down to the tips of my toes.
“Did you like what I wrote in there?” she repeated. “About Ryan, about the things we did?”
“I found it very interesting,” I said.
“Really? How so?” Lilah pulled her hair out of its topknot and redid it, carefully gathering the strands before twisting them and replacing the hair tie.
The gash across her forehead was still there, but it must have been restitched or fixed, because the zig zag stiches were gone, replaced with a bandaid that covered everything. This, too, did nothing to take away from her attractiveness, and instead just made it seem like she needed to be whisked away and laid down on a feather bed to recover, like a heroine from a Victorian novel.
“I just found it interesting that a girl who claimed to have killed her boyfriend because he was making her do things she was uncomfortable with sexually would pitch a fit because he didn’t want to have anal sex with her.”
She didn’t reply or react to my statement in any way.
Instead, she just stared at me.
She didn’t ask for her journal back.
She didn’t yell at me for reading it.
She didn’t acknowledge the fact that I was basically calling her a liar, or at least seriously calling her story into question.
It was unnerving.
She leaned her head against the wall, a small smile playing on her rosebud lips, her blue eyes faraway, like she was remembering an especially good memory.
Then she straightened back up and looked at me.
On the sides of her head, around her ears, were tiny tendrils of hair, almost like duck fluff, the wispy strands too short for her to pull back into a ponytail. She gripped one of them and yanked, pulling the hair out of her head and letting it fall to the floor.
She grabbed another strand and did it again.
It was horrible to watch, but I kept my eyes on hers.
I wasn’t sure why – she was obviously disturbed, and yet something inside of me told me she was testing me, daring me to look away, or tell her to stop.
She wrapped her fingers around another tendril of hair, this one larger than the last, pausing for a moment before she yanked, her eyebrows slightly raised as if to say, “I can do this all day, can you?”
The hair floated to the floor in a lazy back and forth pattern.
She grabbed another strand, and I bit the side of my mouth to keep her from telling her to stop.
A nurse was the one to finally put an end to the stalemate.
She stepped out of the room across from us, a look of exasperation coming over her face when she saw Lilah standing there.
“Lilah,” she said, putting her hands on Lilah’s shoulders and guiding Lilah gently back into her room. “Come on now, honey, you need to get dressed, you’re going to be released soon.”
The door closed behind them and I heard them speaking in muted tones through the walls before the nurse came out of the room by herself, shutting the door softly behind her.
I checked my phone.
It was five-thirty.
There was no way we were going to be able to drop Lilah back off at Loft 37 and get all the way up to Harlem by six.
I typed a quick text to John, telling him I would be late.
His reply came a few minutes later.
One word.
‘Lameuix.’
Lameuix? What the hell did that mean?
Was it some kind of typo or autocorrect? I waited a moment, giving him a chance to send another text letting me know that the first one was a mistake, but he didn’t.
So I typed a quick line of question marks to him.
I was still waiting for his reply when Noah reappeared a couple of minutes later, walking from the other end of the hallway, his footfalls echoing through the stillness.
He looked perturbed – not annoyed exactly, or anxious, but more like he was on high alert.
“So?” I said, standing up. “What did the doctor say?”
“Where’s Lilah?” he demanded. “They said she would be ready.”
“She’s in there.” I pointed at the closed door. “I think she’s getting dressed.”
He nodded, then began to pace.
“Noah,” I said. “What did the doctor say?”
But the door to Lilah’s room opened and she appeared. Her hair was loosed around her shoulders now, and she wore a grey Henley shirt and a pair of jeans.
“Are you ready?” Noah asked her shortly.
She nodded.
The car ride back to Loft 37 was silent, the tension in the car almost palpable.
When we pulled up in front of the hotel, the sun was starting to set, and the fading light reflected off the front of the building, blinding me if I looked at it straight on.
“You have your things?” Noah asked Lilah, looking at her in the rearview mirror.
“I don’t have any things,” Lilah said.
I tensed, wondering if she was going to bring up the fact that I had her journal, but she didn’t.
“Aren’t you coming in with me?” she asked.
“Clementine will bring you back to your room,” Noah said. “And you and I will discuss this tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Lilah said. She opened the door and stepped out onto the curb. She got out of the car but then dipped her head back in. “Mr. Cutler?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry.” She slammed the door before she could wait for his reply and then ran to the lobby, where I saw Clementine waiting to usher her inside.
“How do we know she’s not just going to run away again?” I asked.
“Clementine will make sure of it.”
Great. Now Clementine was back on the payroll.
“What address are we going to, Charlotte?” Noah asked as he pulled the car back onto the street.
I rattled off the address that John had given me, watching as Noah’s jaw set into a hard line as he was reminded just how far away the address was, how far into Harlem.
“You let him know we would be late?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll have your number changed tomorrow,” Noah said.
“Noah --”
“What?”
“What if…” I licked my bottom lip nervously. “What if he needs to get in touch with me again?”
“Then he can have my number.”
“Noah!”
“Charlotte, this is not up for debate.”
I turned it over in my mind, frustrated. How was I supposed to live my life if everything Noah didn’t like wasn’t up for debate? First the meetings with Dr. Cartwright and now this.
“So what did the doctor say?” I asked as Noah sped through the city. He was driving faster than normal, and we were getting lucky, hitting green lights on the way.
“Charlotte,” Noah said. His voice was soft, which made me instantly suspicious.
“What?”
“The doctor was only authorized to speak with me.”
“So?”
“So, Lilah asked that her medical records not be discussed with anyone else.”
“That only applies to the doctor,” I said. “You’re not a doctor.”
“Yes, but there’s attorney/client privilege.”
“But I’m working on her case,” I said, confused.
“That’s true. But she’s asked that certain things not be discussed with anyone but me.”
I turned to look at him sharply. “Lilah said that you can’t discuss her medical records with me?”
“Yes,” he said. “Right now that’s what she’s requested.”
I inhaled, a sharp intake of breath that I held in my lungs, not trusting myself to speak without screaming. The air burned my chest as I held it as long as I could, until my head started to feel slightly woozy and I was forced to blow it slowly out of my nose.
“If she won’t let me know the details of her case, then she’s basically saying she doesn’t want me on the case.”
Noah didn’t say anything.
I turned and looked out the window, biting back my tears. I was frustrated and annoyed, at him and at her. Why wouldn’t she want me on her case? Was it because she could sense that I didn’t believe her story? Was it because I had questioned her yesterday while she was still being held in jail?
I wanted to scream at Noah, to yell at him, to tell him to give up the case. But how could I? It was amazing for his career, for our firm. Any of his successes were mine now, too.
The scene through my window began changing gradually, the shininess of the Upper West Side becoming duller, the buildings becoming more and more rundown, the sidewalks chipped, the windows broken, the railings hanging on for dear life or completely non-existent.
“This is it,” Noah said finally, as we pulled up in front of a fading green duplex, the paint peeling, the stone steps crooked and sagging, as if the earth had thought about pulling them under but then had somehow thought better of it.
I pulled my phone out and checked it, frowning when I saw there was still no reply to my row of question marks.
“Charlotte?” Noah asked. “What is it?”
“Nothing. It’s just that when I told him I was going to be late, he replied with the word ‘Lameuix.”
“Lameuix?” Noah repeated. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Noah sighed and shook his head, opening his mouth to talk, no doubt to lecture me again about how much of a kook this guy was. But before he could talk, I put my hand on the door handle.
“No,” Noah said. “I’ll go first. You wait here until I’ve decided it’s safe.”
But I was through giving him his way. “Yeah, right,” I said. “You’ll never decide it’s safe.” I got out of the car before he could lock me in and headed for the porch.
“Charlotte,” he called after me warningly, but I ignored him.
He caught up to me easily, and for a moment I was afraid he was going to insist I get back into the car.
But he only stepped in front of me, and he didn’t protest when I followed him up the stairs.
There were two front doors at the top of the porch steps, one for number 51 and one for number 52 – John’s address was 52, and the screen door was shut, but the heavier front door behind it was open. Through the screen I could see a set of stairs that led up to a landing with another door at the top of it.
Noah rang the doorbell, then walked inside and up the stairs without waiting for an answer.
“Noah! You can’t just walk into someone’s house!”
But he didn’t reply.
There was a strange odor coming from the top of the stairs, something metallic mixed with the smell of Chinese food and stale cigarette smoke.
The door at the top of the stairs was open and through it I could see a tiny kitchen with dingy linoleum counters and a circular wooden kitchen table with only one chair. The table was covered with papers.
The sound of a TV came from somewhere deep in the apartment.
“John?” Noah demanded, knocking on the open door before striding into the apartment. “John, are you home?”
He shook his head and looked around at the seemingly empty space.
“Asshole isn’t even here,” he said. “He was fucking with you, Charlotte.”
“No.” I shook my head. There was no way John would have done something like t
hat, especially not with the look I’d seen on his face, the way he was talking about Mikayla. “He must have just run out for a minute.”
Suddenly, a frantic scratching noise came from a door off the kitchen.
Noah moved toward it and turned the knob.
A orange tabby cat came running out, giving me a meow before rubbing against my legs.
“Fuck,” Noah swore, as he looked into the bedroom. He rushed through the door and I followed him.
I stopped in the doorway, bile rising in my throat as I took in the scene before me.
John lay on the bed, naked on a dirty mattress, porn magazines spread out before him.
There was a plastic bag wrapped around his neck, each end tied with sticks.
His face was red, his eyes bulging grotesquely from his head.
“Jesus,” Noah said, shredding the plastic bag quickly with his hands in order to remove it.
He put his fingers on the side of John’s neck, his other hand already tipping John’s head back, ready to begin CPR.
But a few seconds later, Noah’s shoulders tensed and he let go of John’s wrist.
He looked at me.
But I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“He’s dead.”
END OF BOOK SEVENTEEN – LOOK FOR BOOK EIGHTEEN, COMING SOON
In the meantime, please turn the page to enjoy the first three books of Hannah Ford’s OBSESSED WITH HIM series, included here as bonus books.
***
Some promises are meant to be broken…
Twenty-year-old Olivia Reilly has promised herself to one man and one man only – her best friend and soulmate, Declan Keene. And she’s kept that promise, through countless foster homes and moves across state. She’s never even kissed a man – all because of a vow she made to Declan years ago. There’s only one problem. She doesn’t know where Declan is.
Enter Colt Cannon. When Olivia starts working for the sexy and dangerous bad boy, she asks him to help her find Declan. Surely someone with Colt’s money and power will be able to track him down. Colt agrees, but he also demands something of Olivia in return. Something dark, sexual, and dangerous that will test her will and push her self-control to its limits.