Page 2 of Jealous Stalker

All that mattered now washer.

I ventured close enough just to verify that she was signing up. Not that it would’ve mattered. But it meant I would see her again, probably long before she came back here. Because I didn’t intend to let her slip out of my sight now. But since hacking the gym’s systems wasn’t an immediate necessity, I could take my time. Do it tonight.

She finished her orientation and left.

I stifled the roar of objection building at the back of my throat, then I made the mistake of walking into the locker room.

A couple of roid-heads were in there, talking aboutmy girl. Laughing.

Plotting.

Saying things—ugly, hungry things—about her.

And that’s when it happened.

The snap. Theclick. The thing inside me that had been stirring since she walked through the doors roared to life and took the wheel.

No one else would touch her.

No one else wouldseeher.

Not if I had anything to say about it.

So yeah, I broke a few bones in that locker room after I slipped on my mask, issued a few lethal warnings as grown men writhed on the floor.

Then, that the night, I started following her.

Not close enough to scare her—never that. I stayed in the shadows. Watched. Learned. I made it my mission to know everything.

Starting with her name.

Ella Mackie. A beautiful name for the woman who owned me now, who cradled my bloody, unhinged in the soft palm of her hand.

Her coffee order? Cream, sugar, two pumps of vanilla because my girl is a little sweet thing who needs spoiling.

Shampoo? Herbal, something soft and floral that made meachefrom head to toe the first time I caught the scent on her hair.

She likes cats. Doesn’t like loud places. Fidgets with her sleeves when she’s nervous.

Sweet Ella doesn’t even know I exist.

But that’s okay.

She will.

Soon.

CHAPTER 2

S.t.a.l.k.e.r

You want to know the most jaw-dropping thing I’ve learned about my girl?

She sleepwalks.

Yeah. Let that sink in. It took a stunned, three-minute of staring, stupefied, before my brain computed that little tidbit.

My perfect girl—the one who hums to herself while picking out fruit at the store, who wears oversized hoodies that swallow her whole, who presses her face into kittens at the shelter she volunteers at like she wants tolivein their fur—leaves her bed in the middle of the night, wanders around her apartment,with no idea she’s doing it.

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