Like Gravity(96)

“I’ll be home tonight. Come over later – let’s say eight? We can talk then,” I said. I could hear the smile in my own voice.

“But it’s only three, now,” he grumbled.

“It’s been two weeks,” I shrugged, though he couldn’t see it. “Are a few more hours going to kill you?”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “I’ll be pacing my living room for the next four hours and forty seven minutes.”

“Not that you’re counting,” I laughed. “And don’t pace – you’ve got nice carpeting. It would be a shame to ruin it.”

“I’ll see you soon, princess. Don’t make any other plans. Tonight, you’re mine.” His voice held a dark promise that sent a thrill rushing through me.

“Counting the minutes,” I breathed, before hanging up.

I raced back to the Victorian, eager to shower and clean the apartment a bit before Finn’s arrival. I stopped on the way home to grab some groceries for dinner, feeling light and happy for the first time in weeks.

I couldn’t wait to see him. Sure, there were things we still needed to discuss. But now that I’d decided to forgive him, everything seemed easier – like a giant weight had fallen from my shoulders and clattered to the ground at my feet.

I walked through the front door, whistling under my breath with my arms loaded full of groceries. The apartment was quiet – Lexi and Ty were spending the weekend skiing with another couple at a mountain range three hours away. Conveniently, Finn and I would have the apartment to ourselves to get reacquainted. I blushed in anticipation, hoping all the stories I’d heard about the wonders of make-up sex were true.

I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. I didn’t have a sense of foreboding, or a gut feeling that something was deeply wrong. I was happy, with a goofy smile pasted on my face, when I walked into my bedroom.

I took two blissfully unaware steps into the room, before the images in front of my eyes registered and I came to an abrupt stop.

Horror – that’s the only word I can use to describe what I felt as I stood frozen in place, scanning the walls of my bedroom.

There were photos covering every surface of the room. They plastered the walls, a morbid collage of images; they hung from strings on the ceiling; they littered the floor and the surface of the bed.

And every single one was a photo of me.

There were snapshots taken from far away, as I made my way to class or ate at the campus student center. Here, an image of me laughing with a classmate as we entered our Criminal Justice lecture hall. There, a photo of me sitting under a tree on the quad, munching an apple as I studied for Media Law.

There were close-ups of my face, multiple shots taken from every angle and in every light. His lens had captured each emotion – happiness, joy, sadness, grief, frustration, doubt, anxiety, fear. He’d gotten photos of expressions I hadn’t even known my face could make.

None of those were as scary as the ones that had been taken from inside this very apartment. I wasn’t sure how he’d gotten in without Lexi or me ever taking notice, but there they were – unquestionable proof that he not only had access to our living space, he’d made himself fully at home.

There were shots of me cooking, singing along to the radio as I stirred pasta or checked the oven. There were images of Lexi and I taking shots of tequila. Laughing as we put on makeup and got ready for to head out for the night. Hugging tightly, with matching smiles on our faces.

They only got worse, the more I looked.

Hundreds of shots of me naked, as I changed clothes in my bedroom. More images than I wanted to count depicting me in the shower, fully exposed and vulnerable.

I had been the unknowing and unwilling subject of every image captured by his camera lens.

The most terrifying photos were the ones of Finn and me. In each of those, Finn’s face had been harshly scratched over with sharpie or cut out with scissors. Several of them showed his face with a huge gun-sight target drawn over his face.

In a daze, I pushed the hanging photographs out of my way as I walked over to the bed, my feet sliding as they searched for traction on the slippery photos covering the floor. There was a box sitting on top of my comforter amidst a pile of images, wrapped in shiny black paper. The lid was fixed with a matte black bow; I tugged on it lightly and it tumbled loose with ease.

I reached out to lift the lid of the box, bracing myself with the knowledge that whatever was inside was probably even more horrifying than the Brooklyn-collage on my walls.

I held my breath as I flipped back the lid, eyes scanning the contents disbelievingly.

He’d planned this carefully, no doubt wanting it to have maximum impact on my emotions. To simultaneously terrify me and confirm that all my suspicions had been correct.

He succeeded.

The box was full to the brim with black rose petals. Resting atop the sea of macabre flowers, there was a note. It had been written in formal calligraphy, the flowing black lettering beautiful in an archaic, timeless sort of way. It had been scribed on a piece of thick off-white cardstock, the kind used by the wealthy in the days of old when they’d send out handwritten invitations to their balls and galas.

It felt heavy in my hand as I lifted it from the box and read the slanting message.

A gift for you, since I ruined your last one.

Beneath the note and the petals, there was a beautiful dress folded inside the box. I recognized it’s green bodice and elegant beading immediately; this wasn’t any dress, it was The Dress. An exact replica of the one I’d worn the night I was attacked outside Styx – newly purchased and, terrifyingly, the correct size.