By A Rose

|CHAPTER NINE🌹|

So far there was no sign of the Crucifier. But I expected the worse at any moment.

Rose petals seemed far away from me. Bloody corpses suddenly kept their distance. Silence and peace were all I had.

Wesley Stark's home had become paradise and his presence was total satisfaction embezzled in joy.

After seven months of idleness Wes finally got me a job. It was a simple one in a school not so far away from his house. 

I became a teacher at a Junior High School.

It was an easy job. I thought history which was basically stories with reality embedded in them.

I was glad since I had time with books and still earned cash. I was also saved from the stress of getting back home late. I got home really early. Far earlier than Stark.

The situation we found ourselves made Wesley Stark and I live like couples. We both went for our daily jobs and I often made dinner since I got home early, except the days when we were both tired. 

Our friendship became stronger. It seemed living together had brought us closer than we taught. We knew a lot about each other, and ever since we started living under the same roof we acted like a single person, parted in two different bodies, sleeping in separate rooms. 

I knew all about him. I knew what he loved, what he hated, when he woke up, when he slept, his favourite meal and every other information an obsessed girl in love could get. 

Though we lived in the same mansion, I became Wesley Stark's stalker. I knew so much about Wes, I could write an auto-biography of him. 

Wesley Stark was an idiot and a fool. For these were the only words I could use to describe him.

He already lived in the same house with a woman who was in love with him and he still made an attempt to get a new apartment. For who? Me?! The man had no idea.

I laughed so hard at every joke he cracked. Most of them were not so funny but I moved with the flow just to please him. I blushed whenever he was close to me. I always tried to make him notice me, yet he had no idea. 

I was still his victim and it made me feel worse. I felt like a living statue in his apartment. 

Sometimes I spent more than forty minutes in the bathroom. I washed and scrubbed but thirty minutes was used to observe my features. 

Every day I got back from work, I'd walk to a huge crystal-framed mirror in the bathroom to get a thorough view of my reflection. I was alright. According to the sexy lady in the mirror I could pass for one of the ladies on Baywatch. 

I had it all. 

Hips, the face, the legs...all a guy could ever want. Sometimes I had to pinch myself to clear the desperation from my mind. It was a distraction and I was grateful to it, for most times I forgot the Crucifier existed. 

I was desperate. Yes, guilty as charged. But how could a man be so ignorant? For months, he lived as though nothing happened. Even in my best night gown I was nothing but a 'friend'. 

It was annoying and I hated it.

On a beautiful Sunday morning after attending a short sermon in a church nearby, we went out to eat and then arrived in Wesley's mansion.

A few hours passed by quickly and in a moment just before the sun set, Wesley invited me to the labyrinth. 

I loved the huge entangled garden. My greatest joy was the non-existence of roses in the green maze. Of all the flowers one could find in a home of luxury, Wesley's was free of red roses. Somehow, it seemed nature wanted us to be together.