Page 49 of Apple of My Eye

I pushed through the door and sprinted to my truck without looking back, before I heard the door again and his boots on the gravel behind me.

I turned at my driver’s side. He stopped a few feet behind me, not crowding me, hands in his jacket pockets, watching me with the patience and concern that I simultaneously relied on and found deeply inconvenient.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted, and I meant it, which did not make it any simpler. “I just couldn’t—not in there. Not with people looking.”

He studied me for a moment. “Are you okay?”

“I will be.”

He did not look entirely convinced, but he did not push. “I’ll come by tonight. After dinner.”

I nodded. “Yes. Come to the house. We’ll talk then.” I scrambled inside my rig.

He held my gaze through the window for one beat longer, and then he went back inside. I exhaled—only caught off guard by a scrap of paper under my windshield wiper that wasn’t there before.

Like déjà vu, I quickly grabbed it and read it. Familiar handwriting scrawled,“It was all your fault,”across it.

“What the hell?” It was happening all over again. The same things that Trevor used to do to me, the following, the lurking, the notes, his obsession with me… I’d been right all along, even probably those times my gut told me someone was out in the orchard spying on me, was probably him.

Panic set in, heart racing, difficulty breathing, shaking. I had no business being behind the wheel. As if the note had burned my fingers, I threw it into my bag. Somehow I managed to start up my rig and drove to my next appointment, constantly eyeing my mirrors for signs of anyone following me the entire way.

When I arrived at my appointment, their horses came into the paddock to greet me. The owners weren’t around, which suited me perfectly fine. I preferred horses anyway, the way they could emotionally soothe my soul. For several minutes, a few of them surrounded me, breathing on me, as if sharing in my pain, knowing I needed protecting from everything in my life.

Chapter Fifteen

Daisy

I had madesoup and another apple pie while waiting for Knox to arrive, more out of having something to do with my hands than any real hunger. The house smelled heavenly when Knox knocked and I let him in.

"Hey.” He set his hat on the hook by the door, as if claiming that spot as his.

"Hi." I crossed to the kitchen with a dish towel in my hands.

He followed and put his arms around me from behind. I bristled at first. I had not entirely realized until that moment how wound tight I had been all day.

Then his chin came down to rest on top of my head, and the warmth and scent of him washed over me like a salve. I melted into him too fast. We stood like that for a minute.

"Tell me what happened today," he said finally. "All of it. Don't leave a single detail out."

I sighed and started with Patrick's call. The cold case details, the lack of fingerprints, the warning. Knox listened without interrupting, his arms steady around me.

"Who was he warning you about?"

"I have my suspicions." I left it there for now. Then I told him about the truck. The dark color, the pacing, the way it had not been behind me when I finally pulled into town. I kept my voice even, reporting the facts the way my father might have in his journals. It kept me momentarily sane, removing myself from the equation.

I did not tell him about the note on my windshield yet. Maybe never.

Knox had gone very still behind me, save for the sound of his jaw clicking.

"Did you get a plate number?" He gritted.

"No. And the windows were darkened."

His arms loosened. "Daisy. Look at me." I turned inside the circle of his arms. "Has this happened before?" He chose his words carefully, like he suspected the answer and was giving me the space to say it.

I stared at the ODRR logo on the front of his sweatshirt and debated telling him things I had told no one. Things only my diary and Bruce Brewster knew. There was a sickness in keeping those things hidden. It must have eaten away at me all these years. Hadn't I suffered long enough?

I rolled my shoulders. "I'm going to tell you some things in confidence. But you have to promise me you won't tell anyone."