A/N: This time I made the chapter a little longer. I usually end up writing several versions of the same chapter, but this is the one I liked the most. I just hope you don't think my mind is a little... weird.
–Previous part.
Stalker Fem!reader × Stalker Hollis
OBSESSION
Every dark secret handles better when shared with the right person. PT3.
Upon arriving home, the silence greeted you like a constant reminder of your reality. Your adoptive parents weren't there; another business dinner, another work trip, another subtle form of abandonment justified by money. You went up to your bedroom, still feeling the weight of Hollis's jacket on your shoulders. You took it off reluctantly and lay down on the bed, closing your eyes to try and shut off your mind, but the tick-tock of the clock in the hallway began to drag you backward. Toward the past. Toward the place where it all began.
You were eight years old. The smell of dampness and cheap disinfectant from the orphanage was still fresh in your memory.
You were sitting in the hallway, your legs dangling from a wooden chair that was far too big for you, hugging your knees. A few meters away, the door to the psychologist’s office was left ajar. Your future adoptive parents were inside, signing the final papers, but before they took you away, the psychologist deemed it necessary to give them one last warning.
"Y/n is a smart girl, there is no doubt about that," you heard the psychologist’s monotonous voice filter through the crack. "But you must be very aware of the territory you are entering. Abandonment at such an early age leaves... complex psychological scars."
You heard the throat-clearing of your future adoptive mother, an elegant woman who was merely looking for an accessory to fill her own empty house.
"What exactly do you mean, doctor? She looks so calm, so sweet."
"It's a facade," the psychologist stated bluntly. "Y/n has developed a very rigid defense mechanism. We have noticed concerning personality traits. She shows a marked lack of empathy toward the other children. In evaluations, and in her daily life, she demonstrates a fixation with feeling superior to everyone else. If something doesn't go her way, she completely devalues people, discarding them as if they were worth nothing. It is deeply concerning that she does this at such a young age."
There was a heavy silence inside the office. From the hallway, you didn't even blink. Your eight-year-old face bore no expression of sadness; on the contrary, you felt a profound contempt for this man who believed he knew you. He is the foolish one, you thought back then. The other children are idiots, they cry over everything. I am different. I am better.
"She is a child who needs absolute control to feel safe," the psychologist continued. "If she feels she is going to lose affection or that someone is going to leave her, her mind will rewrite reality to protect itself. It is narcissism, an armor so that no one ever abandons her again. You have to be very strict with her therapy if you don't want this to worsen over the years."
Of course, your adoptive parents ignored the warning. They thought expensive toys and a big house would solve everything, only to end up abandoning you in a different way later on: leaving you alone within four walls while they chased their own lives.
You snapped your eyes open in the dim light of your current bedroom, your breathing a bit ragged. The psychologist had been wrong about one thing: it wasn't a mental issue, it was your superpower. It was what kept you safe from idiots like July and everyone else. You were the one controlling the game.
Except now, Hollis was inside it, and for the first time, you didn't know if your armor would be enough to stop him.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀♱ ⠀
Three days passed during which you didn't speak to Hollis at all. To you, that time felt like an eternity, even though notifications kept popping up on your Instagram with updates on his part of the project. They were just dry, blunt messages: "You need to research this," "I already finished this part," "Is this done right?".
You feigned perfectly that his sudden distance didn't affect you; you forced yourself to respond curtly, limiting yourself to a cold "Yes, it's fine."
However, after what had happened during your last encounter in the library, his new behavior left you completely thrown off. Or was he just testing you? Yes, it was probably a trap. He wanted you to lower your guard and fall into his game just to prove you were crazy about him. You tried to convince yourself that you were just delirious, all to avoid admitting that you were losing control.
And finally, Saturday arrived.
Waking up in the morning with that mental heaviness, thinking about another boring day where your parents wouldn't be around and you would do absolutely nothing, stripped away any desire to get out of bed. As usual, your hand blindly searched for your phone on the nightstand. As soon as your fingers wrapped around it, the device vibrated against your palm.
"How strange... So early and I'm already getting messages from someone," you muttered to yourself, thinking it might just be some irrelevant app notification.
But upon turning on the screen, July's name appeared in the notifications.
July: Guess who Hollis is going out with tonight and going to the party together with!!
Your eyes widened. Any trace of sleep vanished in a second, replaced by a horrible sensation, as if you had received a blunt blow to the stomach. Seriously? Hollis... with her?
Your fingers moved quickly across the keyboard, trying to hide the panic.
You: Don't tell me. How did you get his phone number?
July: That's the best part! I didn't send him anything, he was the one who messaged me. He said you told him I wanted to invite him, and he even apologized for taking so long to talk to me.
July: Thank you so much, Y/n. I hope you go to the party so you can see us together.
A dry, entirely joyless laugh escaped your lips. Your hands gripped the phone so tightly that your knuckles turned white, before you slammed it down in anger against the pillow.
You couldn't believe it. Was he trying to provoke you? Wasn't July supposed to be irritating to him, and didn't he like quiet girls?
"How pathetic you are, Hollis," you thought, as your mind quickly activated its shield to protect you from rejection. The pedestal you had placed him on began to crack. You had believed he was different, that he was smart—smart enough to know he shouldn't provoke you—but there he was, degrading himself to the level of an idiot like July. But it was fine. He had to learn the hard way what kind of person he was going out with today. July would bore him in ten minutes, and then he would come crawling back to you, regretful, like a loyal puppy. Of course he would. No one else understood him the way you did.
A cold smile crept back onto your face. Now you knew Saturday wouldn't be boring at all. You would go to that party, you would put yourself in the front row just to watch Hollis humiliate himself next to July.
You wouldn't miss his failure for anything in the world.
Night finally fell. You arrived at the party, which, as usual, was being held in one of the largest houses in the area, owned by one of the highly spoiled kids from school. You pushed your way inside, bumping into people who didn't even bother to move out of your way. The air reeked of alcohol, sweat, and cigarettes, and the flashing lights made you a bit dizzy. Suddenly, July's hand yanked you roughly, pulling you away from the crowd.
"Hey, you're a bit late," she complained with a slight pout, before letting go of you to hang onto Hollis's arm.
He was already looking at you, holding your gaze with a cynical smirk that made your blood boil.
"Ah, yeah. Well, honestly I wasn't planning on coming, but I got bored at home," you replied, feigning total disinterest.
You weren't going to give them explanations. The reality was that you had spent hours mentally preparing yourself not to lose your temper upon seeing them together.
It wasn't long before July began to drink as if there were no tomorrow. Little by little, everyone in the place ended up wasted or under the influence of some substance. Except for you and Hollis. You had no interest in losing control like that, and he stayed sober under the pretext of looking after the two of you. Pathetic.
After a while, the three of you ended up in the third-floor hallway, where only the servants' rooms and a small bathroom were located. The alcohol took effect quickly on July, causing severe nausea. The bathrooms on the first and second levels were occupied by idiots with their hormones raging, having sex, so there was no choice but to go up. Now, you and Hollis waited outside while you heard July vomiting loudly inside.
"I find her annoying... And now you're here, waiting for her outside the bathroom," you let slip suddenly, looking at him with an amused, almost mocking smile.
He immediately turned toward you, widening his smirk.
"Mhm. But if being with her is what it takes to get your attention, I can force myself to put up with her tonight."
That response threw you off completely. Your mind had assumed he was doing all this just to screw with you, but for him to admit it with such ease provoked a strange feeling inside you—a mix of triumph and bewilderment. Suddenly, Hollis closed the distance between the two of you, stepping dangerously close. He reached out, firmly cupping your cheeks to force your eyes to lock with his.
"Why do you make it so difficult? I don't understand this whim of yours to pretend you have no interest in me..." he asked in a low, tense whisper. "Did it really not matter to you at all that I didn't speak to you these past few days?"
All those thoughts from hours ago where you thought he was an idiot quickly seemed as though they had never existed. Your pupils were locked onto Hollis's in a way so magnetic that your facade was on the verge of crumbling. You wanted to close the space separating you and kiss him. But before you could articulate a single word, the bathroom door swung open. July walked out and saw you. She saw you dangerously close, and the scene was unmistakable. The shock, the alcohol, and the jealousy made her explode in a second.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" July roared, completely out of her mind.
Blind with rage, she lunged at you and struck you across the face, sending you stumbling back against the wall. The pain barely registered because fury consumed you instantly. Hollis reacted immediately, grabbing her arm to pull her away, but July fought back clumsily due to how drunk she was. In the middle of the struggle, she took a bad step backward, lost her balance entirely, and collapsed.
The sound was sharp and horrifying. The back of July's head slammed full force against the sharp corner of a heavy wooden cabinet in the hallway.
Her body instantly went limp on the floor. Her eyes closed, and a thick stream of blood began to flow rapidly from the back of her head, staining the carpet. But it was so dark that you pretended not to notice. Hollis froze completely, staring at the body and then at you, his pupils dilated from the shock of the scene.
But in your mind, the gears turned with mathematical coldness. You didn't think about calling an ambulance, nor did you care if the injury was severe. Your mind only saw the perfect opportunity for revenge. "She hit me. She asked for it. Now she's going to learn her lesson," you thought. Your plan was to leave her lying there, unconscious in her own puddle of blood, so that when someone found her, she would be the absolute laughingstock of the whole school. Everyone would say she had gotten so violent and drunk from being a bad drinker that she ended up falling on her own. It would be her ultimate humiliation.
You turned toward Hollis, grabbing the lapels of his jacket to force him to look at you. Your eyes shone with a calculated determination.
"Leave her," you whispered in a firm voice, manipulating his mind in a split second. "She brought this on herself for being crazy. We're going to leave her here. When they find her, everyone will see the pathetic show she put on because of her damn drinking. Nobody saw us come up. If we leave now, she'll be the only one left looking ridiculous."
Hollis stared at you. Seeing your total lack of empathy, your ability to transform an accident into a strategy for humiliation, ignited that spark of sick fascination and devotion in his dark eyes. He loved your malice. He nodded, entirely trapped in your web.
You gave Hollis your hand, and leaving July unconscious and bleeding in the dim light of the third floor, you walked down the stairs back to the party with a hidden smile, blending into the crowd as if nothing had happened. Unknowing, of course, that the internal bleeding would ensure July would never wake up.
Walking back to the ground floor arm-in-arm with Hollis felt like stepping into a completely distorted dimension. The music was still thumping, people were still dancing and laughing, completely oblivious to the fact that July lay dead in the hallway. Your breathing was a little fast, fueled by the thrill of knowing July was up there, bleeding out without anyone knowing.
Hollis moved with a terrifying calm; he led you to the kitchen, poured you a glass of water, and stood in front of you, blocking you from everyone else's view. His dark eyes scanned your face, analyzing every single one of your reactions with a fascination that made you shiver.
"Breathe," he commanded in a barely audible whisper, brushing his hand against yours. "Nobody knows anything. Everything is fine, she deserved it."
You tried to hold onto his words.
Fifteen minutes passed, which felt like hours. Hollis made sure several people saw you on the ground floor, casually greeting some guys from the football team. But the bubble of control shattered when a piercing scream cut the music in half.
The DJ cut the sound instantly. Murmurs began to spread like wildfire throughout the house.
"Call an ambulance! There's a dead body in the hallway!" a guy yelled, his face pale, running down from the stairs.
Chaos erupted immediately. People began rushing toward the exit in a panic over the police, while others, driven by morbid curiosity, crowded around the entrance to the hallway. Hollis took you firmly by the waist, pulling you close to his body in a gesture that looked like protection against the tumult, but was actually to keep you bound to him.
"Let's go see," Hollis whispered in your ear, his tone strangely excited. "We have to act surprised, Y/n. Be a good actress."
You walked toward the hallway along with the crowd. Upon arriving, the scene was a nest of screams. Two girls were crying hysterically. On the floor, the body of a senior medical student was kneeling next to July, checking the pulse on her neck.
"There's no pulse..." the guy proclaimed, standing up with trembling hands. "She must have slipped, she reeks of alcohol. It was an accident."
Hearing the word "accident" come out of someone else's mouth was like a shot of adrenaline to your ego. Your mind celebrated in silence: See? The universe knows I'm right. It was an accident. She brought it on herself. You glanced sideways at Hollis, and he returned a complicit look, tightening his grip on your waist.
However, the facade of perfection cracked when the sound of police sirens began to echo dangerously close. It was obvious the cops were coming; they would surely investigate the place, find the substances that were around, start the interrogation, and worse. They would definitely question the two of you—you were the last ones seen with her before she was found like that, lifeless.
Hearing that they would arrive soon and begin an interrogation suddenly gave you a wave of anxious nausea, but your mind took less than two seconds to react. You couldn't afford to panic; you had to use your best resource: your ability to create the perfect facade.
You pressed yourself closer to Hollis's chest and forced your eyes to fill with tears. You let out a choked sob, visibly trembling, immediately drawing pitied looks from those around you. If the police or anyone else asked about July and why you hadn't been with her, you already had the perfect story constructed in your head.
"Yes, she told me she was going to the bathroom... She was very drunk. When I tried to follow her so she wouldn't be alone, she got annoyed with me. She told me she was meeting another friend upstairs and that it would be better if I went back downstairs to look after Hollis so he wouldn't get bored. I listened to her... I shouldn't have left her alone," you would say through tears and heartbroken weeping.
It was an infallible alibi. Who would doubt the devastated best friend? Nobody. By inventing this supposed friend July was going to meet, the police would waste their time searching for a ghost. Furthermore, Hollis and you had made sure multiple people saw you on the ground floor during those fifteen minutes. Nobody in that house would notice the gap in time; they were too drunk, high, or stupid to remember the exact hours. By the time they questioned you, you would only prove to be a worried friend whom July had dragged to that party.
Hollis felt your fake tremors and heard your contained weeping. Realizing what you were doing, a spark of absolute devotion and pride flashed in his dark eyes. He held you tightly against his body, hiding your face in his neck, pretending he was comforting you through the shock.
"Shh, it's okay, it wasn't your fault..." Hollis whispered out loud so the others could hear, playing his part perfectly.
Hidden in his chest, you concealed a cold smile behind your fake tears. The plan was perfect. July was dead, the blame would never fall on you, and Hollis now belonged to you completely.
For now.
