In the months since Chloe had returned to Georgia, her life was spiraling downward. She had left the club in her rental car immediately after watching that woman lead Beca back into the building. She drove straight to LAX, turned in the rental and bought a ticket on the red-eye back to Atlanta. Her plane touched down at 3:00 in the morning. The problem was that there was nothing left for her in Atlanta.
She still had the apartment she had shared with Tom. She drove there, and when she got inside, collapsed on her bed, and fell asleep. She dreamed of Beca.
Over the next several months, while she was able to function, she forced herself to go to work and take care of the myriad mundane tasks that signaled normalcy. But in her head, her obsession grew like an out-of-control wildfire. She dreampt of Beca, she talked to Beca when she was alone, there wasn't a single waking moment that she didn't think about Beca.
By that fall, everywhere she turned it seemed, she saw Beca in some magazine or on a talk show or at an event. The woman was everywhere, yet nowhere. She started collecting all the information she could find about Beca. She knew that the woman Beca was with was Alex Morgan. She started gathering information about her too, the enemy. She knew that they lived somewhere in LA. She knew Beca still worked for Residual Heat and she knew where that was.
By mid-November she was fired from her job. Her attendance had been sporatic at best. That was because on those nights when she dreampt of Beca, she couldn't get out of bed in the morning. She had cried at first, cried more than any human should, but then numbness crept in, and then anger. She didn't eat, rarely showered. She stunk. Her eyes, still brilliant blue, were sunken in her skull and dark circles surrounded them. Her hair was a mess.
In December, right after Christmas, she was seated on the couch in the apartment. Out of habit, she turned on the television, flipping through channels. Suddenly she stopped. The channel she was on was showing still shots of Beca on the screen, still shots of Beca and that woman. The hosts were talking about Beca's upcoming marriage. And then, they rolled the video. It showed the inside of that club, that woman on one knee, Beca screaming "Yes!". It showed Beca falling into that woman's arms. It showed a still shot of a ridiculous engement ring. The thin line separating sanity and madness snapped in Chloe.
The following day, she bought a gun from a guy on the street, in a bad end of town. She started driving west with no particular plan except she was going to kill Beca Mitchell. Then she would kill herself.