Page 46 of Trick or Stalk

I’m already lying to myself.

I shove it into my jacket pocket and continue down the sidewalk.

Town is busier today. People move between shops carrying coffee cups and bags. Someone is decorating a storefront with fake spiderwebs. A kid wearing a witch hat runs ahead of his mother while she tells him to slow down.

Normal shit in a normal town.

Exactly what Wilder and I came here for.

A place where nobody knows us. Where no one knows what we’ve done. What we’re capable of.

I look through the front window of The Crooked Spine bookstore. Books sit on shelves, Halloween decorations strategically placed around them. A skeleton wearing reading glasses sits in a chair, a book in its hands.

I snort. Festive.

The bells jingle as the door opens.

I stop so suddenly that the couple behind me nearly runs into me.

“I almost slammed into him,” the woman complains.

But I ignore her.

She just stepped outside the door.

The woman from the house in the woods.

Her long brown hair moves in the breeze as she steps onto the sidewalk, the little copper-colored dog trotting beside her.

For a moment, I simply stare at her, drinking in every inch of her—from the tightly buttoned red wool coat and the plaid scarf she tugs tighter around her neck to the tall brown boots on her feet.

Sunlight catches her brown hair, bringing out its warmer tones.

She’s even prettier in the daylight.

The dog stops to sniff something near the building. She laughs and gives the leash a gentle tug.

I can't hear what she says. That irritates me.

I start walking again, telling myself I’m heading toward my truck. Which happens to be parked in the same direction she’s walking.

When my boots crunch over the fallen leaves on the sidewalk, I’m close enough to see and hear her, but far enough away that if she spun around, she wouldn’t think I was following her.

“Hi, Presley!”

I stop.

The woman in front of me does too.

My pulse kicks.

Presley.

I repeat it silently.

It fits her. I don't know why. It just does.

A redheaded woman walks toward her, an elderly dachshund moving slowly beside her.