He shrugged.“I might’ve stalked you on social media.”He delivered the line with a perfectly straight face, but I saw the smirk in his eyes.
“Stalker,” I said, but the butterflies took flight at the idea that he wanted to know these things about me.
Nick nodded at the envelope, which I’d subconsciously placed between us like a loaded gun.
“So,” he said, “that the big reveal?”
“Yeah.”My voice was high and thin.Fuck.
I had felt so strong when I had called him and told him I wrote everything down, but now that he was about to read it, I wanted to snatch my written testimony back up and run.
He didn’t reach for it.“You want to do this here?”
Where else?The idea of a “private” place made my stomach do a reverse somersault.Here, in public, I had all these people to hide behind.I had to act normal and not become a neurotic mess.In private, I just might fall apart.
“Here’s fine.”Even though here or literally anywhere else wasn’t fine.Nothing about sharing what I had written was fine.
He nodded.“Okay.”Then he picked up the envelope but didn’t open it right away, just turned it over in his hands like he was checking for booby traps.
“Sorry if it’s...weird,” I said.“I tried to keep it, you know, factual.”
“You did fine,” he said, before he’d even looked at it.“I appreciate you writing this.”
God.He was making this so much worse by being decent about it.
He opened the clasp, slid out the papers—ten pages, maybe?I’d lost count after the third panic attack.He set the envelope aside and started reading.
I tried not to watch him, but I couldn’t help it.I tracked every flick of his gaze, every muscle tick in his jaw.At first he read fast, flipping through details like they were addresses or names.But about halfway down the first page, he slowed.I could see the shift.The calm and cool of “just the facts” fell away, replaced with a low-grade tension that made the lines around his mouth deeper, harsher.
I tried to drink the coffee—it tasted like vanilla and battery acid—but my hands weren’t steady enough to actually bring it to my lips without sloshing it, so I set it down.
Realistically, I knew the coffee was probably great.The battery acid came from inside me, as it often did when old ghosts popped their heads up.I’d need something stronger to silence them, but it would have to wait.
I waited for him to make a sound—a cough, a grunt, a curse—but he didn’t.Not once.
Finally, fucking finally, he finished the last page, then stacked the papers neatly, laid them flat on the table, and put both hands on either side.He didn’t look at me right away.Instead, he stared at the papers, then at the ceiling, then let his eyes close for a second.He looked older, more tired than when I’d walked in.
“That’s a lot.”He exhaled a long breath.
“Sorry?”
He shook his head, like he wanted to shake the word out of the air.“No.You did good.Most people don’t remember this much detail or write it down this clearly.”
He didn’t say “victims,” but I could hear it, anyway.
Nick drummed his fingers on the table, then looked at me.“I’m not gonna ask you to do anything you don’t want to.But there’s one thing I need, and you can say no.”
My shoulders hiked up.“What?”
He hesitated.Not like he was afraid to ask— more like he wanted to get the wording perfect.“Do you remember where the house was?The one he took you to.The, uh...the one with the blue door.”
A tiny spider ran up my spine.I had the urge to lie; to say I remembered nothing.But Nick had just read my entire soul and hadn’t flinched.I owed him the truth.No, I owed myself and every girl like me the truth.
I nodded, but my throat locked.“I don’t know if I can go back.Or, like, even get close to it.I can’t...Cars are...”Oh, hell, I was getting too worked up.I needed to calm the fuck down and just say it like a normal person.“I don’t like cars.Riding in them, I mean.”
“Okay.We don’t have to go by car.You’re good with public transportation, bikes, scooters, literally anything else on wheels?”
I nodded.“Everything else is fine.”
