Hopefully, Axl had Sunday off.

Also hopefully, he’d spend it with me.

Suddenly, he bent and kissed the side of my neck where he wasn’t holding my hair.

“All right,” he said there after the kiss, then pulled away and looked at me. “I see this really flips you, and you’re right. It’s too soon. I’ll put Mom off.”

“Axl,” I said quickly when it looked like he was going to move away.

He stopped.

“I get it,” I continued. “And that ‘it’ has two parts too.”

“Sorry?”

“The first, I’m a procrastinator. You learned that the hard way. If something scares me, I avoid it.”

“Hattie, baby, this isn’t me saying—”

I shook my head and put my hand to his chest.

He shut up.

“I conditioned you to that because that’s me. Seriously. I have to own up to it. And honestly?”

“Yeah?”

“Meeting your folks terrifies me. So, if I had my choice, I’d meet them on our wedding day, after the actual wedding.”

He got a look on his face that made me keep going.

Fast.

“Not that I think we’re getting married or anything.”

That look interpreted itself when he started laughing, something he had been holding back.

“Are we doin’ that shit outdoor or indoor?” he asked through his laughter.

Well.

Phew.

He wasn’t freaking about me bringing up our wedding when we’d been seeing each other (officially) for two days.

“Shut up,” I muttered through a grin.

“White cake, baby, with lemon filling, and that whipped cream frosting. None of that heavy buttercream crap,” he ordered.

“So noted,” I said, still grinning.

He sobered and said, “I hear you about avoidance.”

“Good call, cutting that off at the pass,” I told him.

He just studied me with a warm light in his icy eyes.

“Part two is, you’re right again. We’re doing this. So why wait?” I concluded.

“That mean I’m gonna meet your dad soon?”

“Uh …”

He smiled, touched his mouth to mine quickly, then let me go and turned back to the salad, saying, “I called the meet with my folks. You get to do the same with your dad.”

“Appreciated,” I replied.

Dad could definitely wait.

But I had a feeling Mom was going to love Axl.

Hmm.

I sipped wine while he tossed veggies into the salad, put it in the fridge then checked a rice cooker on the counter.

“Chicken’s almost done, rice not quite,” he announced. “I’ll make the sauce in a sec.”

“It smells awesome.”

He shot me a smile while he nabbed his glass then something caught his eye.

He drank some wine, set the glass aside, and I watched him move to a pile of mail.

He then did exactly what I did.

Walked right to the recycle bin because that was where most of it was going to end up.

He hit the pedal and yup.

There it went.

Flyer.

Flyer.

Something in an envelope.

Postcard flyer.

All I could see was vast space filled with tree stumps that used to be a forest with confused deer wandering around and fumes from the postal workers’ Jeeps.

Conversely, I again thought I was all kinds of weird that it felt super nice, sitting, sipping wine, food cooking, and watching Axl doing something everyday, like going through his mail.

“What the fuck?”

My mind went from my apocalyptic thoughts about the environment, and my happy thoughts about Axl, and my eyes went from the bin to Axl when he said this.

He dumped the rest of his mail on the counter (what appeared to be coupon papers, which in my opinion, you should be able to opt out of if you didn’t clip coupons).

Then he came to me, envelope out.

Big manila envelope.

Like the one the pictures came in from my stalker.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

When he got close, I saw, handwritten on the front it said, To HATTIE’S FUCK.

“Oh my God,” I repeated.

Axl ripped it open.

“He knows I’m here,” I said.

“Yep,” Axl replied tersely.

And I didn’t know if a facial expression could be described as terse, but if it could, his was.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“What?” I asked.

“Note says, ‘I’ll do you too,’ ” he shared, then flipped a picture around.

A naked, tall, muscular man, bent over a table, tied to it, taking it from behind from a man in a black leather, full-head mask.

Same theme, the man getting it did not look like he was enjoying it.

In fact, like the pictures he sent me, everything about it seemed violent, even having no small amount of experience watching scenes like that in action and knowing getting it good could look like it was bad.

The pictures he selected seemed designed to denote pain, not pleasure.

And this was mega creepy beyond the fact that all of this was just super creepy.

“He put this in my mailbox,” Axl said.

I didn’t know what that meant so I looked from the photo to him. “Pardon?”

“He put it in my mailbox, Hattie.” He showed me the envelope again.

No address.

Just the words.

“He didn’t post this to me, he opened my mailbox and put pornographic materials in it,” he stated.

“Is that, uh … actionable?”

“Mailboxes are the remit of the United States Postal Service. They have protections. And those protections are federal. Think a cop wouldn’t be all fired up if you got pissed some landscaper or housekeeping company put some marketing material in your mailbox. This?” He shook the envelope. “Yeah. A cop would get interested. So would the Feds.”

I found this hopeful on one front.

I put that hope into words.

“Maybe we should hand this to the police.”

“We will. I’m telling Eddie and Hank tomorrow. About this and about the threat he mailed to you, which is also actionable, not to mention the rope. It was harassment before. That’s official now. His shit is racking up.”

I felt relief, mostly because I didn’t know who this loser was, or how much more of a headache he’d be to Axl as well as Brett if they caught this creep and that did not go well.