Wild Nights(45)

“Let’s get out of here and call the police,” my mom said as she jerked my arm.

As much as I didn’t want to, I knew we had no choice. He could’ve been hiding in my basement or lurking in a closet somewhere, and I refused to be the one to find that out. I decided to just tell them that I’d been on vacation for a couple days and came back to a possible intrusion.

We sat outside in my mom’s car with the doors locked tight, each taking in our surroundings. The police showed up in a few short minutes and a few of them did a sweep of my entire place. It took them a couple of hours, so I knew they were thorough.

“There’s nothing here, ma’am,” one officer said to me. “Maybe someone came and left while you were gone?”

Knowing Blaze and how psychotic he was, he probably intentionally left his boots there. He probably wanted to spook me if I ever made it back home, or he wanted to leave some sort of reminder or personal stamp.

The police waited patiently as I gathered up all of my belongings and my cat and loaded them up into my mom’s car. I was getting the hell out of there and never looking back. My aunt could sell it as cheap as she wanted, as long as I broke even. I just wanted away from there.

I set up a post office box at the post office so that there wouldn’t be a traceable address to me, and living with my mom turned out to be a really nice change for me. It was nice coming home and not being alone all night. She even made supper several nights a week. It wasn’t like having a boyfriend, obviously, but it took away some of that aching loneliness that made me fall victim to Blaze.

Every once in a while, I’d think about R.J. I kept his number tucked away in a safe place, just in case. He had saved my life, and I hoped that someday I’d get to see him again. I wondered if he ever thought of me too. He said I reminded him of someone he once loved. Guys like him were special, but I knew I could never get involved ever again with a biker gang or a bad boy. I can’t trust myself around them. Not at all.