Page 66 of Ghosted

So.

Real, then.

Great.

Love that for me.

I stare at the ceiling and try to stay perfectly still, as if my body hasn’t already started reporting every bad decision from last night in painful little bullet points.

Jagger was right.

I can still feel him.

No romance or soft-focus bullshit. Just the ugly proof of him sitting in my muscles, under my skin, between my thighs, in the sore press of my hips where his hands held me against cemetery stone like he’d caught something he had no plans to give back.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

Mistake.

The woods come back fast.

The mask. The knife. His voice through the rain. My breath breaking in my chest. The way I ran and kept glancing behind me, telling myself I wanted distance while every stupid part of me listened for him getting closer.

I wanted him to chase me.

That’s the part I can’t make prettier.

I wanted the fear because it had his hands attached to it. I wanted the dark because he was waiting inside it. I wanted him to catch me.

And then I let him.

My stomach twists, but regret would be cleaner than whatever this is.

I sit up and immediately hate that choice when a dull ache pulls low through my body. My hand goes to the neckline of my sweater before I can talk myself out of it.

The cut is still there.

Thin. Red. Darker around the edges. Sitting on the curve of my breast like evidence with an attitude problem.

I touch it with two fingers and my breath catches.

Fantastic.

Apparently, humiliation is on the schedule before coffee.

The second my fingers brush the mark, I remember his tongue there. Rain on his lips. The mask lifted just enough for him to taste what he’d done. His eyes after, wild and locked on me like he’d found something he wanted to keep.

Or something in himself finally stopped pretending.

Both options are deeply concerning.

I yank my sweater higher, fall back against the pillow, and glare at the ceiling like it owes me an apology.

“We are not going to romanticize the psychopath,” I mutter.

A tiny scrape comes from the glass tank near my desk.

I turn my head.