3. Ava

AVA

C onfronting my intruder was a crazy idea.

It was stupid and dangerous and… utterly tantalizing.

Okay, fine. I wasn’t going to confront him exactly.

But he knew my name.

It was only fair that I found out his .

Right before I turned him in to the cops.

No, not just the cops. The police commissioner who was Ebony’s old college buddy and had dinner at our house often.

There were no cameras in my bedroom of course, but the security cameras covered every square inch of the exterior of the McKinsey mansion.

My intruder couldn’t break in, then leave through my balcony without showing up on at least one camera.

But I’d gone through all the footage that the security company had sent over.

I’d gone over it twice .

I’d even double-checked with the security company that they’d sent over the right footage.

The security guy had pointed out the date and time stamp and assured me it was the right one.

So how could there be nothing on the security cameras?

He broke into my bedroom, put his hands on me, made me… feel things I didn’t want to feel.

“Ava, are you okay?”

No sign of him. Not one.

Like my intruder was a ghost.

But he was there.

I saw him.

I smelled him.

I fucking came all over his fingers, for God’s sake.

So how could he not show up on the cameras?

I wasn’t fucking crazy. Was I?

“Ava?” Dr. Vale’s voice finally broke through my thoughts.

I shook myself on Dr. Vale’s latte-colored couch and glanced over at my therapist.

He sat back in his black leather armchair, his salt-and-pepper brows furrowing at me, the only disturbance in his usual calm, measured demeanor.

Dr. Vale’s salt-and-pepper beard and short hair were always neatly trimmed and styled, matching his pressed gray jacket and the black turtlenecks he favored.

His slightly weathered face was always soft and kind. Yet there was something in the sharpness of his eyes, the way they observed me with quiet intensity, that hinted at the calculated mind underneath always at work.

He cleared his throat and pushed up his glasses on his hook nose. “Ava, you called this emergency session… What do you want to talk about?”

A worm of guilt added to the jumbled mess inside of me. I wasn’t supposed to restart my sessions until spring semester started next week.

Dr. Vale was doing me a favor by letting me disturb him at his home during the holidays. And here I was sitting mute.

But how could I tell him about my intruder who left no fucking evidence behind except an indescribable jumble of feelings in my body and an unreliable memory?

He’d tell me I was seeing things again.

I didn’t know if I was ready to hear it. I didn’t want to admit that even to myself.

“Perhaps you’d like to talk about Cormac?” Dr. Vale crossed one thin leg in dark corduroy over the other and balanced his notepad on his thigh. “Breakups can be difficult.”

“Yes. That… well, I…” I chewed my lip as I looked around Dr. Vale’s home office, buying myself time.

I’d never been here before. His home office was much more professional-looking than his campus office.

It was all slimline wood and chrome furniture and stiff black leather armchairs, monochrome gestalt images in square black frames in sets of three on his slate and white walls.

I liked his campus office more. It felt more like a living room. It actually had books with worn spines and potted plants and photos on his desk of his wife and two kids.

Speaking of his wife and kids, I couldn’t hear them stomping around and talking in his house. They must be out.

“ Ava ?” Dr. Vale tapped his pen on his pad, something he only did when I was frustrating him.

“I’m seeing someone,” I blurted out, then brought my mug of chamomile tea up to my face, the soft floral scent doing nothing to calm me.

“I see.” Dr. Vale straightened in his high-backed chair. “Are you sure that’s a good idea given that we haven’t yet resolved why you ended your relationship with Cormac?”

“No, I’m not seeing—I mean, yes, I’m seeing him. But not seeing seeing, if you know what I mean. That would be bonkers,” I rambled, now mostly to myself. “Seeing as I don’t even know his name or even if he’s…” Real.

Dr. Vale made a noncommittal noise in his throat. “I’m confused, Ava. Do you mean—?”

“Someone’s watching me.”

Dr. Vale froze for a second before the scratching of his pen on his pad filled the space between the ticking of the clock on the wall. “Go on.”

“At first I just sensed his eyes on me. I felt him stalking me. And I thought I was just… you know…”

I let out an awkward laugh and scratched at the navy and gray Darkmoor college crest on my mug, a shield decorated with open books and curling ivy, and a scroll underneath with Lux in Tenebris , meaning Light in Darkness, written on it.

“But last night…” I continued, “last night I saw him.”

Dr. Vale’s pen stopped scratching. “You… saw him?”

“I mean, it was dark. He was mostly an outline really.”

I didn’t know why I didn’t want to describe my intruder to Dr. Vale. Didn’t know why I wanted to keep the image of him to myself.

“Okay,” Dr. Vale said, drawing out the last syllable. “And then what happened? Did he speak to you? Touch you?”

My eyelashes fluttered shut and in my mind’s eye, his icy eyes bored into my soul as I came hard around him, my pussy clenching around a memory.

“Clean up the mess you made.”

I could almost taste the leather of his glove and the musky sweetness of my illicit orgasm.

I shifted on the couch, trying to ease the growing ache between my legs.

It almost didn’t matter if he was real.

How he made me feel was real.

He broke apart the dull hollowness that clouded me, like I was waking up for the first time.

He stirred something electric in me, a wild rush that made my heart race and my senses spark to life.

He made me feel more alive than I ever had.

God, I must be fucked up if a hallucination was the only thing that set me alight.

I heard Dr. Vale clearing his throat and opened my eyes to see him peering at me, his eyebrows furrowed together.

I couldn’t admit any of this to him.

“Nothing. He… left.” I sipped at my tea, letting the steam partially hide my face, my lie feeling like a stone lodged in my throat.

Dr. Vale lifted a quizzical brow. “He just left?”

“Yes.”

“And where did this encounter occur? ”

A hollow feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. “My… uh… my bedroom.”

Dr. Vale’s pen clattered to the polished wood floor and rolled aside. “Your bedroom?”

“Yeah, he, uh, kinda sorta… broke in.”

Dr. Vale made a noise in the back of his throat as he leaned over to pick up his pen.

“Ava, this is serious. If someone broke into your room, then you need to tell the police.”

I played with my lip with my teeth. “No, I mean, yes. I know. But…”

Dr. Vale tilted his head, his eyes narrowing slightly. “But?”

“But when I checked the security cameras the next day, he wasn’t on them.”

Dr. Vale let out a rush of breath as he sat back, the leather creaking. “I see.”

“I don’t know why he didn’t show up on the cameras, but I know he was there last night.”

“Ava, remember how we spoke about how to tell the difference between fantasy and reality?”

I slammed my palm down on the plump cushion of his couch. “He’s real , Dr. Vale. I swear he is.”

The deepened crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes made him look a decade older as he studied me, his slender fingers twirling his signet ring around and around. “Have you been taking the pills I prescribed?”

“Yes.”

I wasn’t seeing things. My pills were supposed to stop all that.

“You haven’t missed a dose? Not a single one? ”

I had been taking my pills.

I mean, I was sure I’d been taking them.

I snatched my tea back up again and took a sip, now lukewarm. “Well…”

“Ava, do you want to get better?”

I gripped the mug so hard I thought it might shatter in my shaking hands.

What kind of fucking question was that?

“Of course,” I spat out.

“You might find the question unfair,” he said, his voice returning to its usual steady clinical tone. “But I can’t help you if you don’t want to be helped.”

My tea was cold and bitter now. I set aside the mug and folded my hands in my lap.

Dr. Vale continued. “Some people like pain. Their issues are now their identity. They enjoy suffering. It’s a thrill for them… being hunted by ghosts.”

God. Was I one of those people? Did I like being fucked up?

But was I really the fucked-up one, though?

There were people who seemed to move through life as if on tracks: prestigious school, excellent grades, an overpaid job thanks to daddy’s connections, a dutiful wife, a set of heirs.

They were going through the motions in a life someone else had laid out for them like a freshly pressed suit.

Like Cormac.

Was I fucked up for wanting… something more ?

“I don’t want to be broken,” I admitted.

“Then you want to get better? ”

My phone started vibrating in my bag against my thigh. I ignored it. “Yes.”

“Healthy?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Vale stood and walked over to a cabinet, tugging a chain from around his neck where a small key hung at the end.

He opened the cabinet and turned a few labels on the shelf of pill bottles before picking one out and locking the cabinet back up.

I stared at the small white bottle in his hand, my stomach giving out an uneasy flutter. “What’s that?”

“It’s just a higher dose of the pills you’re already on.” His gaze was fixed on mine as he strode toward me, the pills clattering in his hand. “I want to hear you say that you know this… stalker isn’t real.”

I opened my mouth to speak. Of course he wasn’t real… right? All I had to do was admit it.

“Ava?” Dr. Vale stopped by my chair and I was forced to stare up at him.

“How… how do I know for sure?”

He held out the pill bottle. “Tell me your stalker is a delusion.”

“My stalker is a delusion,” I repeated like a good, dutiful girl as I took the bottle.

“I will take my pills daily.”

“I will take my pills daily,” I repeated, my voice going hollow.

“And you will tell me if ‘he’ returns.”

“I… of course.” The memory of his fingers inside me made my pussy ache .

I practically fell into the front seat of my silver Mercedes-Benz GLC parked in the stone entry driveway outside of Dr. Vale’s tidy mansion, the pills clattering in the bottle in my hand.

That went well. Not .

I shoved the pills into my bag and pulled out my phone.

Missed Call: Liath.

You have 1 new voice message.

At the sight of Liath’s name, her dimpled grin framed with bangs and shoulder-length auburn hair flashed across my mind and a smile tugged at my lips.

I hadn’t seen this bish since the first week of college holidays.

She, Aisling, Lisa, and I spent a week at the La Trinité-sur-Mer, in Brittany, France.

We’d been in the middle of pretentious sailing regatta and lots of cute, rich boys, but we’d spent most of our time on the front deck of her daddy’s yacht, tanning, drinking French martinis (cause when in France, ya know) and singing loudly and off-key to the latest Taylor Swift album.

Fuck, that was a ball.

About time she called me back.

She better be leaving me a message to say ‘sorry I’ve been such an MIA ho.’

I pressed play and set my phone to the Bluetooth speaker as I peeled down the driveway.

Liath’s voice filled the car. “Oh my God, Ava. Help me!”

I slammed on the brakes as goosebumps traveled across my entire body, like the sheer terror I could hear in Liath’s voice had crawled out of the speakers and was running down my arms like spiders .

“Ava, where are you? I need you. I need…”

Her panting filled my car, her footsteps erratic as her heels clacked on the pavement.

“Fuck, I’m so scared…”

A hollow pit opened in my stomach, a gaping void of dread that felt like it could swallow me whole, the weight of it pulling me down, deeper and deeper into the darkness.

“I’m being followed. He’s stalking me. Ava!”

Her footsteps broke into a hurried run, her breaths growing heavier until she screamed.

“Ava, he’s coming for me!”