Page 91 of For Fillies and Monsters

I continue to stare at him because I don’t trust myself with words anymore. He sighs, defeated, and turns away from the kitchen, walking toward his room. Before he gets there, he pauses, saying over his shoulder, “Someday, you’re going to have to share all those secret thoughts with me, Stetson.”

I still don’t speak. Because if I open my mouth now, I’m going to ask him about all his secrets. And I have a sinking feeling there’s more there than just how he made Nathan drop the charges.

May 10th, 2024

It’s late and Gus has been gone for hours—on another one of his late night drives that I’m too chicken to ask him about.

What if he’s going to meet a woman? Even as I think it, I know it’s untrue. He’s far too invested in my life to be with another woman, even if he pretends there is someone else. I’m aware enough to know it was a ploy to make me jealous.

And fuck if it didn’t work.

The house is silent around me, not even a breeze tapping against the windows, and I shiver. I hate when it’s this quiet—leaves too much space for my screaming thoughts to filter in. And filter in they do—ripping and tearing at my last shred of doubt about Gus.

About Gus being my stalker.

Something he’s brought up more than once is how much of a monster he is. And I couldn’t agree more. But it’s not so much the sentiment that bothers me, but rather, the way he has said it.

The first day he worked for me, he said, “What can I say, I’m a monster,” and even if I want to deny it, I can’t. Because that statement sounds eerily similar to the one my masked man made all those years ago… “Call me Beast or Monster. Because that is what I am.”

They’re eerily similar, because theyarethe same. I know it in my bones. And I hate it.

I sit up, my stomach tied into painful knots at the realization. Gus is my monster from all those years ago.

And if he was my masked man, and monster, then how far off can it really be that he’s my stalker?

Has he really been in my life for ten years? Is that possible?

I race for the door, bolting it shut. Because yes, it’s not only possible, but as the thought forms, I know it to be true.

Gus has been everywhere, and everything, in my life, and I didn’t know. I was blind—first by ignorance, and then byfear.

But I see now.I know.

And fuck, what terrifies me more is that I don’t hate him for it. How many nights did I want my stalker and my monster to be the same man? To need me so desperately that they would go to any lengths to have me?

And they did.He did.

And I cannot hate him for it.

But I can make him work for it. I can see his wicked, depraved plan unfold, because I deserve that much. I deserve to see how far he will truly go to have me. I deserve to feel the full weight of his desire—his obsession—upon me. I need it.

And if I have to make him crawl to me, I will.

THIRTY-NINE

STETSON

June 7th, 2024

I know.

The two words rattle around in my brain—detonating so loudly, I can’t hear what else McCrae says to Gus, and what Gus says back. I want to scream it at McCrae’s smug face, and wipe that look mixed between satisfaction and disappointment from his features; to scream it as he stares disappointedly at Gus’s fallen face. I want to scream it at Gus,to Gus, from the fucking rooftops.

I know!And I have known from the morning I woke remembering our first time meeting.

But my mouth won’t work, the words arrested in my constricting throat. At first, I wanted to deny the fact. How could this man be the same one haunting me, and why? Why would he go to such lengths to scare me, to torment me, to claim me? And then I realized—he sees me for who I am at my core and relishes the darkness there. He is not afraid of what he will find, but loves it. He loves me, in his own dark and twisted way. And what more could I want?

It is the most freeing thing in the world, to be wanted not despite your flaws, but because of them. There is nothing morespecial than being appreciated, accepted, and desired for your imperfections.

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