Stalking Season [Complete]

As I sat in my car, the scent of stale coffee, cold French fries, and lonely nights circled me. It was my only passenger. As usual at this time, I was the only person in this parking lot. I was a man who spent his nights watching another man’s life unfold. Alone. Watching. Waiting.

Obsessing.

My boot rested on an empty drink cup rolling around the floorboard every time the wind rocked the car. The silence around me wasn’t empty. In fact, the hush reminded me of the distance between me and the rest of the world. Being lonely was my life. Most days, I was simply observing lives unfold, witnessing people spiral into the very mess that landed a P.I. on their tail.

Swirling snow signified that the weather had turned nasty. I turned up the heater to full blast. Outside, the wind was the kind of biting chill that burrowed through layers of wool to find the marrow. Ice crystals feathered across the glass, turning the night into a distorted white sketch.

Southern Seasonings’ corporate office was an enormous, three-story monument dusted in fresh snow. I nudged my fake glasses higher on my nose. The plastic dug into the skin. I sighed. The sharp, persistent pinch was a minor annoyance, but a small price to pay for a low-level disguise.

I leaned into the steering wheel as I locked my gaze on the windows. I pulled the collar of my dad’s old army coat tighter around my neck. The fabric swallowed my shoulders the same way it had swallowed me when I was a kid trying to grow into my dad’s boots. As I hugged myself, I craved the warmth of my bed. Even though I wouldn’t mind being home right now, another part of me, a larger, more insistent part, sparkled with quiet satisfaction. I liked this work.

No, I loved being a P.I.

Especially when my evenings involved August Tate.

Oh, fuck-a-duck-sideways, August Tate had a hold on me.

As if summoned by my thoughts, August materialized in the corner window of his fancy-ass office. My pulse kicked hard enough to thump against my throat. I shifted. The fabric of my back cargo pants tightened across my thighs. I adjusted, trying to get the perfect view. My gaze locked, my dick bucked just as it always did, the moment August Tate stepped into view.

Mr. Tate stood as a dark, solitary silhouette against the gray interior of his expensive surroundings. Sharp want coiled in my chest.

August’s gaze was distant, lost in the swirling snow. Papers dangled from his hand. He seemed… lonely. Just like me.

I’d seen this time and time again. Mr. Tate could somehow stand in a building full of employees and still look as alone as I did in a freezing car. Fuck. Sometimes my phone didn’t buzz for three days unless it was spam calls or bill-payment reminders.

A raw ache resonated inside me. Maybe that’s what drew me in so fiercely. I understood loneliness, knew its perpetual whisper in my bed at night.

I reached for my laptop on the passenger seat. The metal casing was cool to the touch as I flipped through camera angles. I traced his silhouette on the screen, my fingers hovering over the trackpad.

Two months of trailing Mr. Tate had given me intimate knowledge of his entire life. I knew when August worked, when he slept, every mundane moment in between. I knew how he liked his coffee, which shoulder he hunched when he was stressed, and which songs he hummed in the elevator.

For-the-love-of-a-chicken-on-crack, I knew he bought two bananas every Tuesday and only ate one.

I knew things about August Tate that no one else would—details so small, so personal, they were like secrets I’d stolen. And no matter how much information I amassed, I couldn’t stop. The truth hit me a month ago. This wasn’t surveillance anymore. I was stalking him. Every hour, every day, he occupied my thoughts. I hadn’t even taken another job, terrified of missing a single moment of whatever August was doing.

A tremor of self-reproach ran through me. I needed to get a grip. My dad would say I’d lost my mind.

I had.

But then, a soft, insidious whisper snaked into my mind. Just one more hour. What would it hurt? Then maybe I could follow him home, just to make sure he arrived safely. Then, perhaps, a quick dive into his trash, to see what he’d eaten for dinner. No man should subsist solely on grocery store sushi, as August seemed prone to doing.

A dreamy sigh escaped me. What the hell was the matter with me? I was acting like a lovesick teenager etching a crush’s name into a notebook. My eyes drifted back to the man in the window. He was, quite simply, perfect. Tall, tan, and his muscles filled out his suit in all the right ways. August had shoulders broad enough to block a doorway and hands that looked capable of rebuilding an engine.

Although with his manicure, he didn’t even have a broken nail.

August had sharp angles to his jawline. The man had grace and style—August was everything I wanted. When he smiled, his teeth flashed, white and even like freshly polished pearls. I wanted to slip my tongue between those teeth.

I hadn’t seen his dick yet, but I had a sneaking suspicion his cock would be as flawless as the rest of him.

Okay. I would never admit it to anyone, but I could admit it to myself. I’d spent weeks imagining the weight of this man’s hands on my shoulders, the way his broad frame would look pressed against mine. My mind kept circling back to the same maddening question. Did August look as solid, as masculine, and as commanding when he was stripped naked?

Just the idea sent all my blood to my dick until I was cursing under my breath.

I gave myself a mental shake as heat warmed my face. This was wrong. I blamed it on the sheer volume of information I’d collected, on the strange, magnetic pull of discovering someone so uncannily like myself. We were so alike that I sometimes wondered if God had named my soulmate ‘August’ on purpose.

August and Summer. That was stupid.

As my mark stared, a worried ‘v’ appeared between his thick eyebrows. Yeah, I knew it. We were scary alike. We worked too much. Slept too little. Ate garbage. Forgot special occasions. Lived alone. Maybe I was just staring into a window and falling in love with my own reflection.

That was a frightening thought.

My job as a private investigator meant unusual hours, which made maintaining a relationship impossible. August, I’d discovered, struggled with the same thing. He was a relentless worker, systematically dissecting every aspect of Southern Seasonings. From what I’d dug up, he was a relatively unknown figure on the corporate ladder, yet he was poised to work directly with Mr. Troy Larkin, the owner of this billion-dollar spice empire.

Most people would just shrug off such a monumental task, but not my August. He plunged in and hit it hard. I admired that kind of drive. I struggled to respect anyone who lacked a solid work ethic.

Maybe I recognized that fire in him because I had it inside me. It was a restless, aggressive need to keep going, keep trying.

My finger tapped the laptop’s trackpad, switching the view. Now I watched August from behind, his back to the window. He still seemed lost in thought, his gaze fixed on the winter landscape. Lucifer-spin-me-upside-down, his ass was the stuff of erotic dreams. My August did like to work out, and all those squats showed. My mind drifted to the cameras I’d placed in his world, hoping for an “accidental” dick pic. I knew the layout of his private gym by heart, the exact placement of the weights, the way the light hit his shoulders when he took off his shirt. A part of me, the darker, out-of-control part, begged me to rig the executive bathroom, to see him stripped of everything.

A stubbornly ethical part of me had, so far, refused to put cameras in such a personal place.

No. I wouldn’t. Not even when that insistent voice whispered about watching August in the shower.

On the screen, August tapped his breast pocket. I already knew what he was doing. The man was searching for his favorite pen, the one his mother had given him for his tenth birthday. He checked his breast pocket first. He always checked there first, even though he never kept it there. I watched him toss the documents onto his desk, his frown deepening as he rummaged for the coveted writing tool. Then, with a frustrated huff that I could almost hear, he strode into the small conference room off his main office.

I bet I could stalk August Tate for the rest of my life and never get bored.

I was about to switch camera angles to follow him when another view flared to life.

A sudden flicker.

I clicked, my fake glasses tumbling onto the seat. On the screen, the space heater in the background of August’s area flashed.

A jagged orange spark spat from the vent, hung for a fraction of a second, then gorged itself on a stray document. The fire paused, as if it were thinking about what to do next. Then it roared to life, a golden bloom consuming the corner of the room.

Every muscle in my body tensed up. My shoulders were at my ears. I could actually taste fear, and it wasn’t appetizing.

Oh fuck-a-Doberman. August Tate’s office was on fire.

**** Author Note ****

Hey friends,

So once upon a time, I wrote this short story for a company because they were requesting short stories. Then they rejected the work. The editor said it was too much of a “thriller,” the backstory was a “waste of time,” and it wasn’t a “romance.” So I cried in my shower and moved this book to my novel graveyard on my computer.

Then one day I stumbled onto Inkitt, and here I am. I like this place. I like the readers and the community’s support. I cry less here, and that’s something. So... here is a story resurrected from the grave. If you like it, please give a review. Reviews help me know that you like my work, and they give me the warm, fuzzy feeling in my soul.

If you picked this up, thank you. I wish you only good things! I hope you have fun with Summer and August, and maybe you will understand me as a writer better than that editor did.

Cheers~ C. M. Moore (Monica.)

www.authorcmmoore.com