Every Rose has it's Thorn.

Chapter 13 - Tear me Up...

A Few Weeks Later;
Shayne Ackles...

Lounging in my front room, the news playing on the TV - talk of the new strains of the virus that has plagued the world for the past 18 months or so - should have my attention but my mind is elsewhere right now. I know that I should be paying attention but try as I might my mind seems intent on wondering.

Grabbing the remote I shut the TV off completely - there is no point in having it playing when my brain won't focus. Things have been mostly quiet on the Jonah front, I mean in the literal sense, inadvertently he has become much more aggressive. More texts. More phone-calls. Deliveries of flowers, chocolates, even heart-felt cards with declarations of love and the promise to change. My stomach honestly churns with just the thought - so all deliveries end up in the trash, while his texts and calls still remain unread and unanswered. I don't know what else I can do. Short of leaving. He has even taken to parking right outside my home - his surveillance of my home is scaring me more and more.

I don't want to say that he is obsessed but it is certainly beginning to feel that way. I feel like I am in a fish-bowl - every direction I turn he seems to be there. Whenever I leave the house - he follows. When I am inside; he sits outside just watching. Don't get me wrong, I am more than thankful for the fact that he has stopped banging and kicking and yelling at my door, but this level of attention is definitely skirting the stalker fringes.

What can I do though? It is almost as if when I called the cops on him, he adjusted his behaviour to something that he can't get in trouble for. Little does he know that my brother is winding tighter and tighter, and it is taking both Hailey and I everything we have to hold him back. I know my brother - he is super protective of the people he loves, and I know that he loves me almost more than anyone else, so for him to see me going through this - well he is more than on edge. He is practically chomping-at-the-bit to be let loose. How much longer can Hailey and I realistically hold him back?

Then there is Jeremy - he has been nothing short of super supportive, but he has also expressed his need to have a word with my ex. Ever since we had that moment on the day we called the cops on Jonah, we have grown closer. Spending time together - getting to know one another, laughing, and just hanging out, we are both pretty big movie-buffs, so we spend a lot of time watching movies. There have been a couple more 'almost' moments - you know what I mean - where we are so lost in one another that the only natural conclusion would be to kiss but I simply don't know that I am ready. And honestly, I'm not at all sure that he is ready either.

After he explained what had gone down between him and his ex - Jessica, I could fully understand why he had come to the conclusion about me that he had. I don't blame him, and I certainly don't hold it against him. I don't know many people who would have handled that situation with the type of compassion that he clearly had. That screams to me of the type of man he is. And if it is at all possible, it only made me like him even more.

So, tonight my brother, Hailey, Jeremy, and I were going out to a local hotel for a meal. I was waiting for everyone to come here, and we were all going to leave in the same car. I am kind of excited if I am being honest, it has been so long since I have had people to go out with and I planned on enjoying myself, no holds barred. It was time to push away Jonah and the hold his possessiveness was having on me. I am a big girl and I have to learn to cope with this to the best of my ability. It isn't like he is stupid - he is only doing things that can't be construed as threatening, and what would come down to nothing more than an, he said, she said contest that the local authorities love to ignore.

Just as I was about to get up to go to the kitchen, my phone buzzed with a text, quickly checking to see it was Jeremy, 'just locking my door now, be there in less than a second! -R 😃.' Smiling, I got up and popped the lock on the front door and left it off the latch for him as I moved back into the kitchen to grab a drink and get him a beer. This was our routine; he'd text just as he was leaving his house so that I could have the door open for him.