Besides, the contents looked innocuous. They were just a bunch of plain black binders. I picked up the top binder and flipped it open. It looked like a bunch of boring text until my eyes zeroed in on the name at the top. Stella Alonso. I blinked twice to make sure I read that clearly, but no matter how long I stared, the words didn’t budge. I skimmed over the rest of the page quickly and realized it wasn’t just random text about schools and birthdays and hobbies. It was about me. Everything about my life—my birthday, my friends, my hobbies and where I went to school starting with pre-K going all the way up to college—was laid out in black and white. Why would Christian have a file on me? To look into my past so he could weed out my stalker? I’d already told him everything I knew, but maybe he was worried I’d missed something. However, when I flipped through the rest of the binder, that clearly wasn’t the case. My entire life was distilled into these pages. Everything from basic information like my parents’ occupations to my favorite
foods, school extracurriculars, and my favorite freaking professor in college. He even had a list of every person I’d ever dated. I’m going to be sick. Bile coated my throat, but I set the binder down and picked up the second one with shaking hands. It was worse than the first. It contained full dossiers on not only me but everyone closest to me, including my family, friends, Maura, and previous boyfriends. The third folder housed a collection of media—my college graduation photos, a Thayer Chronicle article about the holiday food drive I’d organized, and a shot of me attending my first fashion show that’d made it onto some influencer gossip site years ago, to name a few. The photos and articles were all public domain. There were no private or candid shots, but seeing them together along with the rest of my files made me want to throw up. For a second, I thought he might be my stalker, but it didn’t make sense logistically. I also knew Christian well enough to know he wouldn’t terrorize me the way my stalker had. Not well enough that you anticipated him having a dossier on your entire life, an insidious voice in my head sang.
Perhaps Christian had a good reason for the files, but it was still a huge invasion of privacy. He hadn’t dug into just my life; he’d dug into everyone I knew. He’d done it without my consent, and he’d kept it from me. How long had he had those files? Days? Weeks? Months? My stomach rebelled, and I barely made it to the nearest bathroom before my breakfast made a messy reappearance. Tears stung my eyes as I heaved. This time last week, we’d been on a boat in Italy. I’d told him I’d loved him, and he’d kissed me like he loved me back. Seven days felt like a lifetime ago—long enough for a dream to twist into a nightmare. Maybe he needed that information to track down my stalker. Maybe he wanted to make sure no one in my life was a serial killer.
Maybe…maybe… I was grasping at straws, but all I could think about was Christian sitting at his desk, picking through my life with the ease of someone typing in a Google search. Even if he wasn’t my stalker, he’d crossed many of the same boundaries. Stepped over many of the same lines. The urge to vomit rose again. I’d already thrown up all the contents in my stomach, so I could only dry heave into the toilet. I have to get out of here. He wouldn’t be home for another few hours, but I couldn’t risk him leaving the office early and finding me like this. I couldn’t pretend everything was okay when it felt like nothing would be okay ever again. I forced myself off the floor and quickly cleaned up before I entered our bedroom. Although I had a ton of stuff stored in the guest room, I’d all but moved into Christian’s room after Hawaii. He’d cleared out a section of his closet for me, and the sight of my clothes hanging next to his familiar dark suits twisted my heart into an excruciating knot. “It wouldn’t hurt you to wear something other than black, gray, and navy, you know.” I lay in bed, wrapped up in the comforter and watching Christian get dressed. Suit. Tie. Watch. Cufflinks. I never thought watching a guy put on cufflinks would be sexy, but he made everything look sexy. “Other colors hurt my eyes.” “I wear other colors all the time.” “That’s different. I love everything you wear.” My stomach flipped, and I flopped back on my pillow with a sigh. “It’s not fair that you can end every argument by saying things like that.” Christian’s laugh lingered in the room long after he left. The memory pulled a smile out of me, but it faded when my current reality sank in again. The binders. The secrets.
The need to get the hell out of here before he came home. I couldn’t face him right now, not when my emotions were so raw and all over the place. I needed time to think and space to process away from him. I forced my eyes away from his section of the closet and threw the essentials into a duffel bag. A few changes of clothes, toiletries, and Mr. Unicorn, who I grabbed
on my way out. At the last minute, I scribbled a quick note to Christian and left it on his office desk. That and the files should be self-explanatory. I wasn’t ready to talk to him, but I worried what he might do if he came home and found me gone without a trace. I hugged Mr. Unicorn tight to my chest as I took the elevator down to the lobby. I didn’t care that I was an adult walking through public with a stuffed animal. He was the only male who’d never let me down. I knew Brock was keeping an eye on me and that he’d alert Christian to where I’d gone, but I’d deal with that later. For now, there was only one place I could go that was almost as safe as Christian’s used to be. “Ava?” I called her on my way out of the building. My voice wobbled, but I refused to cry. Not now, not here. “Can I come over? Something…something happened.”
41
CHRISTIAN