Page 21 of Stay Scared

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Cade lowers the skull to his side. “I was hoping for something warmer.”

“You ambushed me inside an abandoned amusement park.”

“You came here on purpose.”

“I did not accept you.”

That look is familiar. Cade used to wear it when he knew pushing harder would only make me leave faster.

“You knew it was me outside.”

“I knew before you got here.”

“That pause in the queue was real.”

“Yeah, that part was real.”

“You grabbed me anyway.”

“You went for the door.”

“That still doesn’t explain why.”

His fingers tighten around the mask. “I wanted to see if you’d know it was me.”

My forearm still remembers him. I tug my sleeve farther over my hand.

“You still do that,” he says.

My eyes snap back to him. “Do what?”

“Pull your sleeve over your right hand first when you’re cold.”

My chest tightens. I tug my sleeve farther over the hand he just named and glare at him.

“Do not turn this into nostalgia.”

“That wasn’t what I was doing.”

The fact that I believe him only irritates me more.

The man near the padded wall begins removing the white mask. His fingers reach behind his head with the same careful movements I remember from Halden Coffee. The strap comes free, and dark hair falls forward as he lifts the mask away.

His face is familiar through repetition rather than intimacy. Dark brown eyes, straight nose, stubble usually visible only in a reflection after he had been sitting behind me too long. Without glass and laptop screens between us, I get my first unobstructed look at him.

“You were watching me.”

Owen Shaw turns the mask in his palm. “I was watching you.”

His voice completes the memory. I heard it once outside the coffee shop when he told an employee I had left a charger behind.

“You sat behind me at Halden.”

“Most mornings.”

“For how long?”