Page 45 of One More Chance
She tilted her head and watched me. “Good. But understand this, Levi… this isn’t a warning for her. It’s one foryou.I let you back intoour lives because I believed you had changed. Because I saw the man you are trying to become. But if your past bleeds into our present?” Her voice broke before she continued. “I won’t hesitate to cut you out for good."
“I don’t want you to cut me out,” I whispered. “I want toearnbeing here.”
My wife stood there and picked me apart with her analytical gaze. She closed herself off, every inch of her a fortress. “Then clean up the mess you made. All of it.”
Rufus let out a soft whine at our feet, sensing the tension.
She picked up the wine glass and finally took a sip, eyes never leaving mine. “We deserve peace, Levi. Do not let her steal it from us.”
She turned and walked down the hallway toward the master bedroom, a room we once shared, leaving me alone in the kitchen with the note still crumpled in my hand and an inferno of determination and fear raging within my heart.
Chapter 16
Back at the rental, I started sleeping with the lights on. Not because I believed they’d protect me; hell, I knew they wouldn’t. But because it felt like the dark made Angie stronger.
The crazy bitch wasn’t just watching from the shadows anymore. She was in the walls. In the hum of the fridge. In the creak of the floorboards. Sometimes I swore I could feel her crawling under my skin, whispering through my molars like radio static.
For the first time since I woke up in this new life, I wondered if there was a cost to being pulled backward through time. Some invisible toll taken on the soul.
Whatever cruel and sadistic god decided I was worth dragging out of that wreckage hadn’t done it for redemption. No… it was clear they wanted carnage, and I was their chosen puppet, spinning in the center of the chaos like a coin.
Was I losing my mind? I pondered at a dozen different explanations for Angie's behavior, for her obsession, for why she was so erratic and different in this new life. Had I truly changed her this much with mychoices? Had the fact that I had been inside her when I woke up in this new life done something to her, broken her mind somehow? Had I brought somethingback with me that just looked like Angie?
The questions chased each other through my skull, relentless, looping, and snarling. I paced the rental's halls like a trapped animal, each step echoing too loudly, each shadow stretching too far. The house felt off-kilter, as if the bones of it had shifted in my absence.
There was a new crack in the hallway mirror, jagged and crooked like veins. Wasit new? Or had it always been there, and I'd never noticed it until I was so on edge and hyper aware that I was noticing everything?
Two nights after the envelope was left at Sloane's, I saw Angie.
It had been a long day with the kids, and Sloane asked for some space. Reluctantly, I headed back to the rental: away from my home, my kids, my wife. I showered and was getting ready to lay down when I saw movement outside the bedroom window. With my pulse pounding despite frozen veins, I pressed my back to the wall, slid to the edge of the window, then peered out through the glass.
Angie stood close to the rental, her face blank and emotionless. She was holding… something? Another note? A gun? My bedroom was dark, I knew she couldn't see me, so I moved further into the window to get a better view of whatever was in her hands.
A camera. But not just any camera. Sloane’scamera.
The old Polaroid I’d given her on our third anniversary. The one she used to capture the quiet moments: sun-drenched Sundays, sleepy-eyed smiles, the kind of peace I’d destroyed.
How does the bitch have Sloane's camera?
Had Angie broken into our garage? Gone through our things? Rifled through our memories as if they were simply junk to pawn? My fists curled into tight knots as I stood there, unable to blink or breathe.
Then Angie lifted the camera, aimed it at the rental house, and took her time to adjust the lens. That's when I knew the bitch wanted me to see her. She wanted me to know that she was in control of the situation.
The bright flash felt alien in the dark moonless night. My vision filled with spots.
She stood there, her face still a mask of emptiness, as she shook the Polaroid picture. When she examined it, her eyes widened and her lips curdled into that same, crazed, too-wide grin from the other night. Her head snapped up from the photo and she looked directly into my eyes with an obscene intensity that caused me to step back from the window.
I could still see her. See the way she giggled, waved, then turned to walk away. No hurry. No fear. As if she owned the night.
I drew a shaky breath as cold air bit against the dampness of my skin. I didn't even realize I had been sweating until Angie was gone.
Gone? No, she wasn't gone. She had momentarily receded like the tide, but she would be back.
My phone buzzed and I jumped. No caller ID. A private number this time.Ah, fuck.I answered.
Angie's voice slid through the phone, as sweet and unsettling as poisoned honey. “Levi… let's skip the formalities. You picked up knowing it was me." A shuddered breath from her as she continued, "By the way, do you know the little gray sweater? The one with the tear at the sleeve?”
My throat clenched, mouth dry, and I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I knew that gray sweater well. It was Sloane’s emotional armor: soft, frayed at the cuffs, stretched at the sleeves. She wore it after our worst fights, the kind where we didn’t talk for days but still passed each other in the hallway like strangers. I remembered her curled up on thecouch in it, silent tears soaking the collar, refusing to look at me even when I begged her to. She wore it when she was pregnant with Liam and again with Violet. When her body hurt, when her back ached, and when the weight of motherhood was crushing her.
