Page 41 of Pareidolia

“Aspen. Okay.” He throws a look over his shoulder at the two-story ghost of my past. “Do you think you’re going to stay?”

Stay here. Stay in my parents’ house? Stay where a fucking emotion-eating moth monster made of shadows can find me?

I don’t know. I don’t think so.

Not when people are starting to know who I am.

Not when that could lead to me being caught, especially now that I know what it feels like when I kill.

Not now that I want more.

I…

“I’m not sure. I actually need to get back to the lookout, though.” I gesture toward my van. “I have groceries I need to get into the cooler.”

A cooler I don’t have, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“Right.” He shuffles in front of me, and that flush of color comes back to his cheeks. “Just… Aspen.” He says my name like he’s trying to get used to it now that he knows it’s wrong, and I frown.

“Hm?”

“I’m glad you’re back in town.”

Fuck me.

Absolutely, one hundred per-fucking-cent, fuck me.

“Me too.”

I get into the van before he has a chance to say anything else sappy, and it takes everything inside me not to peel out.

I can’t be here. Noah knows who I am…

Who I was…

Noah knows the person who others thought I was, once upon a time, even though I’m not even sure what I am anymore.

And I could feel the honesty in his words when he said he had a crush on me. What I could only imagine was hope when he said he was glad I was back.

I’m drowning in it.

I could feel those emotions prickling across my skin, not just read them on his face. I’m an expert at reading expressions because I study them so closely in an attempt to mirror them when I have to be around people.

But this? This was completely different.

I can’t do this. Whatever Nox did to me fucked me up in a way I don’t know how to handle. As much as I want to go back to the fire tower, back to my laptop, back to Nox to demand he fix this…

To demand he show me more…

I can’t do it.

As soon as I’m out of Noah’s sight, I stomp on the gas, wondering if I can drive fast enough to escape the looming shadows of Duskfen Forest behind me.

I almost make it, I think. I’m on the outskirts of town when the things beneath my skin start to squirm.

To writhe.

When my body seizes up, and it’s all I can do to throw on the brakes so I don’t wind up in a ditch.