“And how do you figure we do that?” he asked.
“I’m glad you asked.” Seraphina leaned back in her chair and smiled. “We’re going to find you a girlfriend.”
2
Noah
Noah Stone slammed her back against her door, digging her heels into the stained carpet. She shut her eyes tightly, trying to block out the pounding on the door. It vibrated against her body, rolled through her like the earthquakes she experienced every now and again living in Southern California for her whole life.
But this was much scarier than an earthquake. Earthquakes were nature; this was personal.
“I know you’re in there, Noah,” the familiar voice barked.
Her shoulders jumped up to her ears and she shuddered. She shook her head once, twice, but she couldn’t seem to get him out of her ear. He was like a spider, crawling on her bare skin, causing her to tense and squirm. She was never able to pull him off of her, even if she wanted to.
“You can run, my friend, but you can’t hide. You knew I’d come looking for you.”
Noah swallowed but it did nothing for her dry throat. Her head started to throb with how hard she clenched her teeth together. She needed to make sure he couldn’t hear her breathing. Part of her wanted to cover her mouth with her hands but she couldn’t risk releasing the door. She knew she wasn’t the heaviest of women; in fact, if she didn’t have a deadbolt specifically in place for this sort of thing, she highly doubted the door would have held. The hinges were rusted and she didn’t know the last time Juanchez replaced anything in this shitty apartment.
Please just go away. Please just go away.
“I’m coming for you, princess. I know where you live. Maybe not today, but I’m coming for you. Remember – you’re mine.”
Noah held her breath, waiting. The door stayed still. When nothing more happened, she popped open one eye. Her body was still tense. She didn’t trust that he was gone. It couldn’t be that easy.
She released a breath after another minute rolled by and nothing happened.
“Okay,” she said to herself, so soft she wasn’t sure if she actually spoke at all. She just felt her lips move. “Okay.”
She closed her eyes again, focusing on any sounds she could hear that might hint at the fact that she wasn’t alone, that he was still waiting outside for her to make some sort of jump. He had a tendency to wait until she was comfortable, until she let her guard down, before pouncing.
After another moment, she pressed her palms flat on the door and pushed herself up. Her toes uncurled and she winced. They had bundled so tightly together that she hadn’t even felt them until now.
A siren wailed outside. Someone whistled. A street vendor called out something in Spanish. Kids laughed at the apartment complex across the street. These were all sounds Noah had gotten used to, living in downtown Santa Ana. But she wasn’t listening for the familiar, she was waiting for the outlier.
Okay, I think he’s gone.
Noah pushed off the door, shoving her shaking fingers into her pockets and batting her eyes. She didn’t care if she cried or not, but she didn’t want to waste any more time on feeling sorry for herself.
So, he found her. So what? Sure, that made her life infinitely more complicated. She would have to move out immediately. It would suck because she finally learned her neighbors’ names and thought the three-year-old who watched Paw Patrol on repeat from one to three o’clock in the afternoon was adorable, but she expected that something like this would happen. It was why she packed light since moving out of her mother’s places.
Noah closed her eyes, shuddering. She didn’t want to think about what had happened to her mother. Because of her.
“Nut up, buttercup,” she said, the words re-energizing her and helping her focus on the task at hand.
She headed to the sink in her kitchen and opened the storage container where she kept her trash bags before walking into her bedroom. If she knew Aaron, which she did, she knew he’d be back within the next forty-eight hours. She didn’t have much time.
Noah opened her sliding closet door and began to shove all of her clothes into a trash bag. She didn’t have anything fancy, couldn’t afford something as simple as a suitcase. After she finally left Aaron, she left everything behind, including the locket her Nona had gotten her for her tenth birthday the month before she passed away as well as the prom dress her mother had saved up for, for three months just so Noah could wear something new to the prom last year.
Now is not the time to think about that.
What happened, happened. That was in the past. She would not wallow. Wallowing never helped anyone move forward and all she wanted to do was move forward, start over. Hell, if she was able to start over and forget everything, she would. Until that was possible, she would always take one step forward and then another and deal with the memories at night where they haunted her dreams.
When she finished emptying her closet, she went into her bathroom. She looked at what she had – lotion, a candle that smelled like vanilla and lavender, a couple of towels, some old makeup, a toothbrush, some Q-tips. She had a couple of sandwich bags she could fit those things in without worrying it would get all over her clothes.
After a quick dash to the pantry to grab the plastic bags, she went back to the bathroom and grabbed her toiletries. She tried to make everything as neat as possible but knew that that probably wouldn’t happen.
A thump caused her to nearly bang her head on the toilet. She hissed and looked behind her, waiting. Maybe she had celebrated too soon.
