Loving A Moretti - THE OBSESSION

Chapter FOUR

Dean answered the group chat before Jennie finished explaining why my hotel idea was stupid.

DEAN: What do you mean someone is following Belle?

Three dots appeared beneath his name, disappeared, then came back.

DEAN: Actually no. Call me.

Jennie was sitting on my couch with her shoes still on, one hand pressed to her forehead. I had sent Dean screenshots of the messages because keeping him out of it had stopped making sense somewhere between I still found you and There you are. He called before I could decide whether I wanted to answer.

I put him on speaker.

“Start from the beginning.”

“Hello to you too.”

“Belle.”

Jennie pointed at the phone. “See? That’s exactly how I said it.”

“You screamed at me.”

“I was scared.”

“You threatened to come over and drag me out by my hair.”

“I was still scared.”

Dean sighed through the speaker. “I’m already regretting this phone call.”

I gave him the shorter version. Someone had photographed me three nights ago, called repeatedly, followed me, left another photograph under my apartment door, gotten into my building, found Jennie and me at the diner, and apparently noticed when I changed my route. By the time I finished, the silence on Dean’s end had lasted long enough that I checked whether the call had dropped.

“You waited until now to tell me?”

There it was.

“I told Jennie.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“I knew you’d react like this.”

“Like what? Concerned that somebody has been taking surveillance photos of one of my best friends?”

Jennie leaned toward the phone. “Thank you.”

“Don’t encourage him.”

Dean ignored that. “Where are you going tonight?”

“I was thinking hotel.”

“And Jennie thinks that’s stupid?”

“Thank you again,” she said.

“Stop forming an alliance.”

Dean asked which hotel, and I admitted I hadn’t chosen one yet. He went quiet for a second before suggesting I stay at his place instead. His building had a doorman, cameras on every floor, and an elevator that required a resident key after ten. More importantly, I had never lived there. If whoever was following me had learned my apartment and Jennie’s, Dean’s address was at least one place I hadn’t been photographed entering.

It made annoyingly good sense.

“I’ll stay one night,” I said.

“You can negotiate your independence after I see the screenshots properly.”

“I sent them.”

“I’m driving. I’m not opening evidence of a felony at a red light.”

Jennie looked at me. “He’s coming here?”

“I was already on my way when you answered.”

Of course he was.

Dean arrived twenty minutes later with a duffel bag from the gym still in the back seat and his blond hair pushed away from his face like he’d been running his hands through it. He hugged Jennie first because she was closest, then pulled me in hard enough to make my cheek hit his shoulder.

“You’re crushing my ribs.”

“Good.”

“That’s not how comforting works.”

He let me go and looked me over. “You look fine.”

“I am fine.”

“That wasn’t reassurance. I was checking for injuries.”

Jennie handed him my phone before I could object.

The three of us stood in my kitchen while Dean went through the screenshots. He didn’t say much. That was different from Jennie, who had reacted to every new development as if volume might personally discourage the stalker. Dean zoomed in on the security-camera image, read the messages twice, then asked whether the police had the original diner photograph and the building footage.

“They have copies of everything.”

“And bookstore guy?”

I looked at Jennie.

She suddenly became fascinated by the crackers she’d stolen from my cabinet.

“You told him?”

“I told him there might be a guy.”

Dean’s attention shifted between us. “There’s another guy?”

“There isn’t another guy. There’s a man I saw in a bookstore.”

“Who may also be the man in the security footage,” Jennie added.

“May,” I repeated. “As in, I don’t know.”

Dean handed my phone back. “And you’ve never spoken to him?”

“No.”

That answer bothered me more than it should have.

I didn’t know why.

***

I stayed at Dean’s for two nights.

Nothing happened.

No calls. No photographs. No new accounts. The unknown number stopped messaging me after There you are, and the silence became its own kind of annoyance. I kept expecting my phone to light up whenever I entered a room. When it didn’t, I checked it anyway.

By the second morning, Dean had stopped pretending not to notice.

His apartment was cleaner than mine and less aggressively organized than Jennie’s, which meant I could leave a glass on the coffee table without either being judged or having it relocated before I finished drinking from it. I woke to the smell of toast and found him in the kitchen wearing sweatpants, staring at his phone while something burned behind him.

“Your breakfast is dying.”

He turned, swore, and rescued two pieces of toast from the toaster. “I was reading.”

“Clearly.”

He scraped the blackened edges over the sink and asked whether I had slept. I told him yes, which was mostly true, then reached around him for the peanut butter.

“You can stay longer, you know.”

“I know.”

“I’m not kicking you out.”

“I know that too.”

Dean glanced at my overnight bag near the couch. “But you’re leaving.”

“I need my life back.”

“You’ve been gone two days.”

“Exactly.”

He gave me a look but didn’t argue. That was one of the reasons Dean was easier to say no to than Jennie. He could worry about me without immediately turning it into a hostage negotiation.

I had already decided I wasn’t going straight home.

Changing my routine had apparently offended whoever was following me, so I changed it again.

Instead of my usual breakfast place, I ate Dean’s ruined toast. Instead of taking the subway station closest to his building, I walked several blocks and entered through another. I got off one stop early, wandered through a drugstore without buying anything, then doubled back toward a street I rarely used.

It was inconvenient.

That irritated me enough to keep doing it.

By noon, I had nowhere specific to be and no desire to sit in my apartment watching the street. I ended up in a used-book shop I had passed before but never entered, squeezed between a tailor and a place that repaired watches. A handwritten sign in the window promised BOOKS, RECORDS, PRINTS, NO PUBLIC RESTROOM, with the last part underlined twice.

Inside, the store narrowed almost immediately. Shelves crowded both walls and continued down a staircase into a basement where the air smelled like paper, dust, and whatever cleaning product people used on old wood. Someone had stacked books along the steps despite the obvious possibility of death.

Perfect.

I went downstairs.

The basement was quiet except for a radio playing somewhere behind the counter upstairs and the soft creak of floorboards whenever somebody moved. I wandered through fiction, found a copy of a novel I’d been meaning to read, decided the cover was ugly, and put it back.

A book dropped on the other side of the shelf.

I glanced through the gap between two hardcovers.

Nothing.

Another book hit the floor.

“You okay over there?”

There was a pause.

“Yeah.”

The voice was male and close enough that I could hear the embarrassment in that one word.

I stepped around the end of the aisle.

A man was crouched on the floor collecting two books.

Dark hair.

For half a second, my body reacted before my brain did. My shoulders tightened, and every detail from the last few days crowded forward at once: black coat, blurred security footage, bookstore.

Then he looked up.

I knew that face.

“You.”

His hand stopped over a paperback. “Me?”

“The bookstore.”

He glanced around at the shelves surrounding us.

I stared at him. “The other bookstore.”

Something changed in his expression. Recognition, maybe. “I remember.”

He stood too quickly and caught his shoulder against the shelf.

Three books tipped sideways.

He grabbed one. The other two fell.

I laughed before I could stop myself.

He closed his eyes briefly, like this was an outcome he had personally feared.

“Are you sure you’re allowed in bookstores?” I asked.

“I’m usually better at them.”

“That’s a very specific skill to suddenly lose.”

He crouched again, and I bent to pick up the book closest to my shoe. Our hands reached it at the same time.

His fingers brushed mine.

He pulled his hand back so quickly I almost looked behind me to see what had startled him.

Interesting.

I picked up the book and handed it over. Up close, he was definitely not ugly. Jennie would have been unbearable about that. His face had looked severe from across the first bookstore, but it didn’t hold up particularly well when he was standing in front of me trying not to drop something.

His eyes flicked to mine, then away.

I looked at the book in his hand.

Right-side up this time.

He noticed.

“Don’t.”

I smiled. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You looked at the book.”

“So?” His grip shifted around the spine.

I gave him another second before saying, “I’m glad you’ve figured out how they work.”

The tips of his ears turned red.

Oh.

That was adorable. The thought arrived so naturally that it annoyed me.

For the first time since I’d walked around the shelf, I noticed what he was wearing. Dark sweater, dark jeans, no coat. Nothing remotely useful. If I had hoped seeing him again would magically answer whether he was the man in the lobby footage, it didn’t.

He was roughly the same height. Same build, maybe. Same dark hair.

That was all I had.

I should have been more suspicious.

Instead, I was watching him hold a book like it had personally betrayed him.

“I’m Isabelle,” I said.

His attention snapped back to me.

For some reason, he hesitated.

Only for a second.

Then he took the hand I offered.

His palm was warm, his grip firmer than I expected. His fingers tightened slightly before he let go, and I wondered whether I had imagined it.

“Larkin.”

Larkin. I repeated it once in my head.

“Well, Larkin.” I stepped backward and glanced at the books still crooked on the shelf behind him. “Good luck with all this.”

His mouth moved like he might say something else.

He didn’t.

I turned into the next aisle. Two shelves later, something hit the floor behind me.

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing again. For the first time in days, I forgot to check my phone.