Loving A Moretti - THE OBSESSION

Chapter SIX

I took screenshots before the messages could disappear.

That had become automatic now. Screenshot the number, the message, the time. Don’t answer. Don’t block until everything was saved. Somewhere in the last week, being followed had developed its own administrative process.

Looking for someone?

He isn’t there.

I stood outside the bookstore with my phone in one hand and people moving around me as though nothing had happened. A woman bumped my shoulder and apologized without slowing down. The light changed at the intersection. A horn sounded somewhere behind me.

Across the street, the place where I’d seen the dark-haired man was empty.

I called Jennie.

She answered with, “What happened?”

“Why do you assume something happened?”

“Because you never call me without texting first anymore.”

Fair.

I walked away from the bookstore while I explained. Jennie stayed unusually quiet until I reached the part about the second message.

“He isn’t there,” she repeated. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I know who I was looking for. That doesn’t mean whoever sent it does.”

“Belle, you went back to the bookstore where you first saw Larkin, looked around for him, and then somebody watching you said he wasn’t there. I think we can allow ourselves one conclusion.”

I turned onto a busier street. “That they saw me go into a bookstore.”

“And somehow knew you were looking for a man?”

I didn’t answer.

The problem with Jennie was that she occasionally made a useful point and became unbearable for several hours afterward.

“Where are you now?” she asked.

“I’m…going somewhere crowded.”

She made me stay on the phone until I reached a café. I chose a table against the wall with a clear view of the entrance and sent her the address before she could ask. Dean joined the group chat almost immediately after Jennie forwarded the screenshots, and my phone started filling with messages.

DEAN: Don’t leave alone.

ME: I am literally alone.

DEAN: Then stop being alone.

JENNIE: for once he’s right

ME: horrifying development

Dean called before I could put the phone down. He was twenty minutes away and apparently had already decided he was coming to get me. I told him that was unnecessary. He said he didn’t remember asking.

I ordered tea I didn’t want and sat there waiting.

The messages bothered me for a reason I couldn’t explain away this time. Whoever was following me hadn’t simply known where I was. He had watched long enough to understand what I was doing.

I had gone into the bookstore looking for Larkin.

I could admit that much to myself.

I had looked through the aisles expecting dark hair, a serious face, maybe another book held incorrectly if the universe felt generous. There had been no reason for anyone watching from outside to know who I expected to find unless they already knew about him.

Which meant either the person following me had seen Larkin before, or had seen me with him.

The basement bookstore.

Our conversation.

My hand in his.

The thought made my skin crawl in a way the photographs hadn’t.

Those pictures had captured me without my knowledge. This felt different. Something that had belonged only to an ordinary five-minute conversation had apparently had an audience.

Dean arrived eighteen minutes later. I knew because I checked.

He slid into the chair across from me, took one look at my untouched tea, and asked to see my phone.

“You could say hello.”

“Hello. Phone.”

I handed it over.

He read both messages without commenting, then opened the screenshot of the number and compared it to the previous one. Different again.

“Police?”

“I sent everything to the officer.”

He returned my phone and looked through the café window. I watched him scan the sidewalk without making a show of it.

“You think the guy across the street was Larkin?” he asked.

“I didn’t see his face.”

“But you thought it might be him and then this came.”

“Yes.”

Dean leaned back. “I don’t like that.”

“Neither do I.”

“No, I mean I don’t like that your stalker knows about another man you barely know.”

I stirred my tea even though there was nothing in it to mix. “I’ve considered that.”

“Could Larkin have followed you from the other bookstore?”

There it was.

The question I had been avoiding because I didn’t have an answer that made me feel better.

“He could have.”

Dean waited.

“I also could’ve walked past fifty men who looked like him this week,” I added. “We have a blurry security video and a coat. That’s it.”

“I’m not saying he did it.”

“You’re thinking it.”

“I’m thinking we don’t know anything about him.”

Neither did I.

Not his last name. Not where he lived. Not what he did for work. I knew his first name, that he liked bookstores enough to appear in two of them, and that direct eye contact seemed to interfere with his ability to handle objects.

That was hardly a character reference.

Dean must have seen something change in my face because he reached across the table and nudged my cup toward me. “I’m not telling you never to speak to him again. I’m telling you not to decide he’s safe because he’s awkward.”

“That sounds suspiciously like something Jennie already said.”

“She’s occasionally right.”

“I’m telling her you said that.”

“I’ll deny it.”

I finally drank the tea. It had gone lukewarm.

***

Dean walked me back to his apartment.

I hated that I let him.

Not because I didn’t want him there. I hated that the decision no longer felt entirely mine. A week ago, I could walk six blocks without creating a safety plan around it. Now I was sending addresses, changing train stations, checking reflections, and waiting inside cafés for someone to escort me home.

By the time we reached his building, I was angry enough to take the stairs just because Dean automatically moved toward the elevator.

He followed without comment.

On the fourth floor, he finally said, “You know the stairs aren’t more independent than the elevator.”

“I like cardio.”

“You hate cardio.”

“Today I’ve changed.” He laughed under his breath and unlocked the apartment.

Jennie came over after work carrying takeout and enough opinions for all three of us. We ate around Dean’s coffee table while I showed her the screenshots in person, although she had already seen them.

“I have a question,” she said.

“That sentence has never improved my life.”

“If Larkin isn’t the stalker, then does that mean your stalker is jealous of Larkin?”

Dean stopped eating.

I looked at her. “Why would you put that into the universe?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Take it back.”

She set down her fork. “The message didn’t say, ‘Why are you at that bookstore?’ It said, ‘Looking for someone?’ Then, ‘He isn’t there.’ That sounds personal.”

Dean rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I hate that I agree with her.”

“Everyone stop agreeing with Jennie.”

“I’m sitting right here.”

I picked at my food while they talked through possibilities I had already considered. Maybe Larkin was the stalker and the messages were designed to make me think there were two people. Maybe he wasn’t, and whoever had been following me had noticed him because they were watching me closely enough to notice everyone. Maybe the man across the street had been neither of them.

Too many maybes.

Eventually I put my fork down. “We’re not solving this tonight. The police have the number. I’m not answering it, and if I see Larkin again, I’m not going anywhere alone with him. Can we please talk about something that doesn’t involve men watching me?”

Jennie studied me for a moment before reaching for another dumpling. “Fine. Dean’s shirt is ugly.”

Dean looked down at himself. “What’s wrong with my shirt?”

And just like that, I was temporarily released from my own investigation.

***

Two days passed without another message.

On the third, I went home.

Not permanently. I still had clothes at Dean’s, and Jennie had somehow contributed a toothbrush to his bathroom on my behalf. But I needed several things from my apartment and wanted an afternoon where nobody watched me pick up my phone and tried to determine whether I was checking for threats.

Mr. Alvarez was replacing a lightbulb in the lobby when I arrived. He told me there had been no sign of the man in the black coat on the footage. I thanked him, checked my mailbox, and went upstairs.

My apartment smelled faintly stale after being closed up. I opened the curtains halfway, then changed my mind and left them there. Enough light came through without exposing the entire room.

I showered, changed, watered a plant that had survived my absence through spite, and spent nearly an hour doing absolutely nothing important. It felt good.

Around four, I realized I was out of laundry detergent.

I stared at the empty bottle beneath the sink.

There was a laundromat across the street.

Absolutely not. I laughed at myself, grabbed my coat, and walked three blocks to a*****e instead.

On the way back, I noticed him.

Larkin stood outside a small bakery, looking through the window.

I stopped.

He wore a dark jacket, not the black coat from the footage, and had one hand in his pocket while the other held a paper cup. For several seconds, I watched without his noticing me.

He looked completely normal.

Then he turned. His eyes found mine almost immediately.

The change was subtle but unmistakable. His shoulders straightened. The cup shifted in his hand. Whatever relaxed expression he’d had disappeared beneath something more careful.

I should have kept walking.

Instead, I crossed the street.

“Please tell me you’re better at bakeries than bookstores.”

For a second, he only stared at me. Then he looked at the bakery behind him. “So far.”

I smiled despite myself. “No casualties?”

“Not yet.”

There was a beat where neither of us seemed sure what came next. Up close, I searched his face for something I could connect to the security footage. The jaw looked possible. The height was right. His hair was right.

None of that proved anything.

Larkin glanced at the shopping bag in my hand. “You live around here?”

The question was ordinary. My body didn’t treat it that way.

I felt myself go still. He noticed.

Something in his expression shifted. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”

I studied him.

Most men would have filled the silence. Explained themselves, laughed it off, asked another question. Larkin simply waited, looking suddenly uncomfortable with his own words.

“No,” I said eventually. “I don’t.”

A lie.

He nodded once. “Okay.”

No challenge. No really? Not even an attempt to catch me in it. That should have made me relax.

It didn’t.

I adjusted the bag against my hip. “Do you always hang around places that sell things you can drop?”

His mouth twitched. “I haven’t dropped anything today.”

“Day’s not over.”

“I still have time.”

There it was again, that strange version of him I couldn’t reconcile with the person I’d spent the last week imagining behind a camera. He was easier to talk to than he looked like he should be. Serious until I teased him, then visibly fighting whatever reaction he didn’t want me to see.

I liked making him lose.

“See you around, Larkin.” I walked past him.

“Isabelle.”

I stopped. He hadn’t said my name before.

Hearing it from him sent a small, unpleasant awareness down my spine.

I turned.

Larkin stood where I’d left him, paper cup still in his hand.

For one terrible second, all I could think was that I had only told him my first name once.

Then he lifted the cup slightly. “You forgot this.”

My eyes dropped.

The detergent bag was in my hand. My phone was in my pocket. Nothing was missing.

I looked back at him.

Larkin glanced down at the cup he had just raised. His eyes stayed on it for a second too long before his fingers tightened around the cardboard sleeve, and I watched the realization happen across his face.

I looked at the cup, then back at him.

“That’s yours.”

His lips parted, but nothing came out. He lowered the cup slowly and cleared his throat, the tips of his ears already turning red. “Yes.”

I pressed my lips together, but the smile escaped anyway. “Were you just trying to return your own coffee to me?”

“No.” He shifted his weight and shoved his free hand deeper into his jacket pocket, suddenly very interested in something over my shoulder.

“You absolutely were.”

“I misspoke.”

“You held it out to me.”

His eyes came back to mine. “I know what I did.”

That broke me. I laughed, and Larkin’s jaw tightened as if he were trying to preserve whatever dignity he had left. He took a quick drink from the cup, probably for no reason other than to establish once and for all that it belonged to him.

“That was impressive,” I said.

“Glad you enjoyed it.”

“I did.”

I started walking backward, still smiling. Larkin watched me for a few steps before apparently remembering that being caught watching me was how this entire thing between us had started. His gaze dropped to his coffee.

“Try not to give that away to anyone,” I called.

He lifted his free hand without looking at me.

I turned toward the corner, laughing under my breath. For almost half a block, I forgot there was anything about Larkin I was supposed to be afraid of.