Loving A Moretti - THE OBSESSION

Chapter NINE

I called Jennie as soon as Larkin left.

Not because I had suddenly become the kind of person who reported every suspicious thing to my friends, although according to Jennie I should have become that person about ten days ago. I called because standing on a crowded sidewalk with two messages saved on my phone felt different from sitting alone with them later and convincing myself they weren’t as bad as they looked.

She answered on the second ring. “What happened?”

“Why do you always answer like that now?”

“Because you never call me anymore to tell me something normal.” I heard a glass clinking from the other line.

“That’s not true.”

“The last time you called me for no reason was to ask if I thought your neighbor was stealing packages.” She huffed.

“He was.”

“He was collecting his own package, Isabelle.”

I started walking again, keeping to the busier side of the street. “Okay, well, this time something actually happened.”

Jennie went quiet. I heard movement on her end, then a door closing. “Tell me.”

I gave her the short version: Larkin, the bookstore, the walk, the first message and second message.

Jennie was quiet for a moment before asking where Larkin was now. When I told her he had already left, her voice sharpened. “You just let him go?”

I shifted the phone to my other ear and glanced back toward the intersection where Larkin had disappeared. “What did you expect me to do, Jennie? Grab him by the sweater and tell him he wasn’t allowed to leave? Performed a citizen’s arrest because somebody texted me while he happened to be standing there?”

“I didn’t say arrest him.” I heard something thump on her end, followed by the scrape of what sounded like a chair being pulled out. “I’m saying the timing is weird.”

Of course it was weird. I had known that the second my phone buzzed, and I knew it again now that Larkin wasn’t beside me looking genuinely disturbed by the messages. The problem was that weird timing wasn’t evidence. If anything, receiving them while I was with him should have made him less suspicious, not more. He hadn’t touched his phone once.

“I was standing right next to him when both messages came in,” I said. “His hands were visible.”

Jennie made a skeptical sound. “Messages can be scheduled.”

I stopped walking.

A man behind me muttered something when he had to step around me. I moved closer to the storefront and pressed the phone harder against my ear. “Why would you put that thought in my head?”

“Because it’s true.”

“I liked you better when you were making fun of him.”

“I can multitask.”

I looked back toward the intersection. Larkin had disappeared into the crowd several minutes ago, and there was no way to tell which direction he had taken after I turned away. The sidewalk looked ordinary again. Too ordinary, maybe, but I had started thinking that about every street.

Jennie continued, “I’m not saying it’s him. I’m saying don’t use he didn’t touch his phone as proof that it isn’t.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were about to.” I hated that she knew me well enough to be right.

By the time I got home, Dean had been informed, the screenshots had been forwarded to both of them, and I had promised to send them to the officer who had taken the previous report. I also promised Jennie I would lock my door immediately, which was insulting because I had been locking doors without supervision since childhood.

My apartment smelled faintly like the strawberries I had forgotten on the counter that morning. I threw them away, changed into an old shirt, and checked the curtains before doing anything else. Across the street, the laundromat was busy. Someone had parked a bicycle against the awning where I had once seen a man step backward into the dark.

Nobody was standing there now.

I sent the screenshots to the number the officer had given me, added the times, then put my phone facedown on the kitchen counter.

It stayed there for six minutes. Then I picked it up and opened the messages again.

You’re getting comfortable.

You shouldn’t trust strangers so easily.

Strangers.

I sat at the small table by the kitchen and read the second message until the word started looking wrong. The obvious interpretation was Larkin. I had been walking with him. Talking to him. Laughing with him. Whoever was watching had seen enough to know I was comfortable around a man I barely knew.

Unless Jennie was right.

I opened my conversation with her.

ME: hypothetically how easy is it to schedule a text

Three dots appeared immediately.

JENNIE: NO

JENNIE: absolutely not

JENNIE: i refuse to participate in whatever spiral you’re starting

I typed that she was the one who had introduced the idea, which earned me a phone call I declined.

The truth was simpler than the version my brain wanted to build. I didn’t know enough. Larkin had been in the lobby footage or someone who vaguely resembled him had. He had been at the first bookstore. Maybe outside the restaurant. I had seen dark hair and a black coat enough times that the combination had become practically meaningless.

But Larkin had also accepted every boundary I gave him.

He hadn’t asked where I lived after I refused to tell him. He hadn’t pushed when I gave vague answers. When I told him to stop two blocks from my apartment, he stopped. When I said someone was following me, he hadn’t used it as an excuse to insist on knowing where I was going.

None of that proved anything either.

I hated that.

***

The next morning, I woke to no messages.

I checked before getting out of bed, then hated myself for checking before getting out of bed.

By ten, I had decided I needed groceries again because apparently buying food while distracted resulted in owning pasta, dish soap, wine, and almost nothing that could reasonably become breakfast. I chose a market farther downtown and deliberately left through the back entrance of my building.

Halfway there, I realized I was doing exactly what the stalker had trained me to do.

Change the route. Check the glass. Notice the man behind me. Cross the street. Check again.

I bought enough food to avoid another trip for several days and spent too long choosing cereal because the woman beside me kept blocking the one I wanted with her cart. Nothing happened. Nobody appeared. My phone stayed quiet.

Outside, I stood beneath the store awning adjusting the weight between two bags when someone said my name.

I turned so quickly that one bag hit my knee.

Larkin stopped several feet away.

“Sorry.”

My heart was already beating too hard. “Jesus Christ.”

“I said your name.”

“From behind me.”

He seemed to process that, and whatever greeting he had been about to give me disappeared. “Right. Sorry.”

For a few seconds, neither of us moved. He had no coffee to mishandle today, only a folded newspaper tucked beneath one arm. Dark sweater, dark jeans, no black coat.

I hated that I noticed.

“You’re everywhere,” I said, shifting both grocery bags into one hand to give my fingers a break.

Larkin glanced past me toward the market entrance before looking back. “I could say the same about you.”

“That would be less convincing.”

His eyebrows pulled together. “Why?”

“Because I was here first.”

A faint crease appeared between his brows as he considered that logic. “That’s not how cities work.”

“It is now.”

The corner of his mouth lifted, but he seemed to think better of arguing with me. “Good to know.”

Normally I would have enjoyed that. Instead, Jennie’s voice had followed me out of my apartment.

Messages can be scheduled.

Larkin noticed the difference before I said anything. His almost smile faded, and his eyes moved briefly to the grocery bags before returning to my face. “Did something else happen?”

“No.”

He waited.

I hated that too.

“You know,” I said, “for someone who doesn’t ask many questions, you somehow make silence feel like one.”

“I can leave.”

The answer came without irritation. He shifted his weight as though he actually meant it, and I realized I had expected him to defend himself against an accusation I hadn’t made.

“Wait.”

Larkin stopped.

I adjusted the handles cutting into my fingers. “Can I ask you something weird?”

“You’ve insulted my ability to read, accused me of haunting bookstores, and questioned ownership of my coffee. I think we’re past weird.”

Despite myself, I smiled. “Where were you last Tuesday night?”

That erased the amusement.

He looked at me for a moment. “Last Tuesday?”

“Yeah.”

“What time?”

“Maybe eight-thirty. Nine.”

His brow furrowed. Larkin looked away, eyes settling somewhere over my shoulder while he tried to remember. “Home, I think.”

“You think?” I shifted the grocery bags higher against my arm.

“I don’t usually document Tuesday nights.”

“Convenient.” I watched his face for a reaction, but he only looked back at me. “Can anyone confirm that?”

The question changed the air between us.

Larkin’s eyes narrowed slightly, not with anger so much as understanding. He finally knew what I was asking.

“No.”

I nodded once.

He glanced toward the traffic before looking back at me. “Do you think I’m the person following you?”

I had imagined that question several times since Jennie brought up scheduled messages. In every imaginary version, I answered immediately.

Standing in front of him was different.

“I don’t know.”

Larkin absorbed that without flinching. His jaw shifted once, but he didn’t laugh or tell me I was being ridiculous.

“What makes you think I could be?”

I could have given him the whole list. The bookstore. The coat. The lobby footage. The strange frequency with which we kept running into each other. Instead, I watched his face and said, “You keep appearing.”

“So do you.”

“Larkin.”

“I know.” He rubbed his thumb along the folded edge of the newspaper. “That wasn’t an answer.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

He looked down the sidewalk for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “Then don’t trust me.”

That wasn’t what I expected.

I frowned. “What?”

“You said you don’t know.” He met my eyes again. “So don’t decide you do just because I’ve been nice to you.”

For once, I had nothing clever ready.

Larkin stepped backward, putting more distance between us. “If I were you, I wouldn’t trust me either.”

A bus groaned to a stop at the corner behind him, releasing a crowd onto the sidewalk. For a few seconds we had to move apart to let people through.

When the space cleared, he was still there.

I tightened my grip on the grocery bags. “That is either the most reasonable thing you’ve ever said or the worst possible thing you could have said.”

“I realized that halfway through.”

“There he is.”

His mouth twitched. I should have let him leave.

Instead, I held out one of the grocery bags. Larkin looked down at it, then at me. “My fingers are dying,” I said. “You can carry it to the corner.”

He took the bag carefully.

“The corner,” he repeated.

We started walking. I kept him beside me where I could see him. And somehow, that felt safer than having no idea where he was.