Chapter 18

• "Rose became obsessed with me as soon as she met me in adolescence. We used to be good friends, until her feelings towards me changed. I would receive letters from her under my bedroom door, she would wait for me after school, and she started to push away the boys I liked just because she wanted me for herself," I told him, with a lump in my throat. "She literally made sure to keep me away from the people I cared about, even my school friends. I lived with her and her stepfather for a while, my mother had fallen in love with him. I think it was the tattoos that caught her attention, he wasn't very good"looking. Mom would leave for weeks, months, leaving me with them. He treated me like dirt, while Rose followed me around with her stupid obsession. It was a nightmare that I don't want to remember. More than one night I would find Rose smelling my hair or watching me sleep. I had to start locking the door.""
• Max stepped back, surprised but still paying attention.
• "Everything went to hell when one night I forgot to lock the door, and I woke up to find her groping my breasts," I recalled, looking at some point in the dark hallway. "I didn't take long to escape from that house. An old lady gave me shelter in her old apartment one afternoon when she found me rummaging through her trash. A few years later, the old lady died alone, with no children, and I ended up living there, where I wished to hang myself once. My life was in decline..."