Page 75 of Desperate People

How deep this thing with the stalker goes.

How it’s not just about this time, or this break-in, or this new wave of media attention from a damn music video.

It’s about what happened before.

When I was fifteen, barely out of braces, someone decided I was worth obsessing over.

A man I’d never met.

Never smiled at. Never spoken to.

But he watched me. Followed me.

Left me notes and gifts and little scraps of his delusions like breadcrumbs in my locker and under the windshield wipers of the car my driver used to pick me up from school.

One day, he got close enough to grab me. I don’t remember much. Just the sound of my own scream and the flash of his camera before security tackled him.

My father shut down everything after that.

He pulled me out of school, whisked me away to Europe for six months, and kept me out of sight until the court case was over and the buzz died down.

It sounds like a fantasy, right?

Europe with an unlimited budget and private jets?

It wasn’t. It was a gilded cage.

I was scared. Isolated. Missing my friends, my life, the feeling of normalcy I never truly had but always wanted.

And even though I understood his reasons—my dad loved me—I swore to myself I’d never run again.

Never let someone steal my life from me like that.

But tonight, that old fear is back.

And I can’t help wondering if I’ve broken my promise.

Isn’t that what I’m doing now?

A nasty voice inside me whispers that truth like poison.

That instead of fleeing across an ocean, I’ve run into the arms of a man powerful enough to shield me.

That marrying Balor Cruz—brilliant, brooding, bulletproof Balor—is just another escape.

A prettier cage. A safer fortress.

Maybe he’ll get bored eventually, the voice taunts.

Maybe this will all blow over, and he’ll remember he doesn’t belong with someone like you.

But I shut that voice down. Hard.

Because it isn’t true.

I didn’t marry Balor out of fear.

I didn’t run to him to hide.

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