Roses

Chapter 36

Zoey

When you have an out-of-body experience, how do you come back?

I don't know how long it's been since Adam stopped narrating, but I feel like I've been floating around my body since. Unable to enter it and take control.

The car has stopped moving, parked outside my house now. It's late at night and chilly outside. This could have been a very romantic setting.

Instead, I have to think about how he has hated me since he was fifteen. Twenty three years of hate. How many years of hate did it take for my father to kill my mother? The answer is much less.

I observe his face as we sit in silence. For once, he doesn't turn to meet my eyes. He looks out the windshield but his eyes aren't focused. He is definitely reliving the past in his mind.

"Your father lost my mother as much as I did," I say, after finding my voice. "It makes so much sense now." Every conversation I had with Abraham about my mother tasted bittersweet to me. I thought it was because he hated what my father did. But it was also because he hated my mother's actions just as much. She left him.

"He did." He finally looks at me. "And I lost him, even though he was right in front of me." So much bitterness and hostility mars his features, I feel the urge to shrink away from him.

"Michael mentioned something about revenge," I whisper. "Also that if I-"

"'If you only knew the lengths he went to to lure you back to this godforsaken town, you'd run away without looking back.'" He stares at me with an indecipherable expression, after repeating what Michael told me. Verbatim.

"You weren't there." I sound like a child but I don't give a fuck.

"I watched through the cameras."

"You have cameras.... inside your home?"

"Yes." Something screams at me to get the hell out of the car and away from him. I survived two serial killers in the last twenty four hours, and I feel like I've found myself in the path of another psychopath.

With the way his stare is blazing into my soul, it's hard to see the man I love. But I still need answers.

"You really did lure me back to this town, didn't you?" I laugh without humor. "You gave me that phony job so I'd be in your house and then you spied on me."

I really just connect the dots I have in the worst possible way, but his silence tells me it's all fucking true.

"What else have you done?"

He remains silent. I still can't read his expression but he looks like he's contemplating something.

"What. Else?"

"I kept tabs on you."

"I already know that. We wouldn't have run into each other that many times otherwise. Hell, you were at the bus stop the day I got here!" I look away and shake my head.

"I meant when you were in New York." I face him again. The exposed skin of my arms and face suddenly too cold despite the heater being on. "I hired someone to keep an eye on you.

"I got monthly reports on what you were up to. What plans you had for your future." He leans towards me slightly. "At first, I didn't exactly know what I was going to do with all that information. Just that I hated you. Keep your enemies closer, you see.

"But quickly the purpose of it all stopped mattering to me. You became my little obsession."

He leans back, like he wants to give me space to fully absorb what he just said. You became my little obsession. My years in New York were filled with mistakes. To know a fucking stranger had a front row seat to it all, makes a lump form in the back of my throat.