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Then more people die and one day it’s you.
One time I walked up to her porch and peeked in her window after she’d moved into her uncle’s. The TV was on and I thought maybe she was watching it. That she’d be okay. It had been weeks. Weeks of nothing but her crying, constantly crying and hating herself. And I despised it. I fucking loathed it. The whole street could hear her uncle yelling at her to stop crying. That he’d lost his sister too and that she needed to stop.
When I looked in, she was still crying, but her eyes were wide open, her cheeks tearstained, and she saw me.
I know she did, not that it changed anything. I knew at that moment when she didn’t do anything or say anything, that I was just as dead to her as her mother was. It hurt me like nothing else in this world had to know that just then, I meant nothing to her. I couldn’t take her pain away. I was nobody special.
I’d never been more sure of anything in my life. I was nothing that night.
But the next day, I proved her wrong. When she kissed me back, I proved her wrong.
CHLOE
He comes by every day. Friday night he stood in my kitchen. Saturday, he drove by with Carter Cross, Sunday he came alone and now it’s Monday night and he’s outside again.
I act like I don’t see him. I’ve always done that. Everyone leaves you alone if you act like you don't exist.
The thing about Sebastian though, is that he doesn’t leave until he knows I know he’s watching me. Or maybe that’s just what I think because I feel his gaze on me every time and I have no desire not to look back at him.
I pull back my curtain when the car outside idles and idles. A book is open in my hand, its pages unread. I let it shut as I peek outside to see who it is. The large text closes with a dull thud that matches the single pound in my chest when I see him out there.
I try to swallow but my throat’s dry.
Angie said it’s an intimidation tactic. I shouldn’t have told her anything about Sebastian coming by like this. She concocted about a dozen theories of what’s going on with the murders and Sebastian and why he’s checking on me and instructing me on what to tell the cops. She was animated, to say the least, but I was more interested in hearing about what she did on Sunday with her new boy toy than anything that has to do with this shit city.
My eyes drift down, meeting Sebastian’s and instead of glancing away, I hold his gaze for a moment.
I would feel it, wouldn’t I? If his intention was to intimidate me, I’d feel fear, or a chill maybe? I’d feel something other than the quiet stillness that settles deep in my bones, the smoldering heat that simmers in my blood. Just looking at him, my body relaxes.
I swear I even see his lips tug into an asymmetric smile when I don’t look away.
My heart does that thud again, and I have to loosen my grip on the thin curtain and let my head fall back against the headboard.
He’ll only ever be at arm’s length, so this power he has over me, this innate emotion he controls inside of me, can’t be good.
The idling stops, fading into the sounds of the night and that warmth and soothing feeling disappear with it. It’s sickening that something so small could garner so much emotion from me. As I reach for my book, I see my phone out of the corner of my eye.
I don’t have a fucking clue where I left off. My fingers run along the edges of the pages as if my memory can lead me to the right page, but all I can focus on is the phone.
Shoving the book off my lap, I reach for it.
The cops didn’t come to question me.I text the number I know is Sebastian’s. He’s never explicitly said it was him and usually he texts me, but I know it’s his number. I want to tell him he can resume pretending I don’t exist.
When he doesn’t reply, I skim through the previous messages.
The first one reads:You did good today. He sent it a few nights after the infamous kiss. The night I first slept peacefully in this house after my uncle took me in.
Who is this?I asked, but he never answered.
When I first moved in, my uncle didn’t have a spare room ready for me. We’d had to clear out the cluttered room he sometimes used as an office. Almost all of my mother’s things had to be thrown away in the move. Same thing with some of my possessions, not that I had much. This townhouse was already full, and I wasn’t even sure if I was staying here for long. No one told me anything. No one but Sebastian in a nameless text.
The phone pinging in my hand scares the shit out of me, spiking my adrenaline and forcing my heart to race up my throat. I nearly slam my head back against the headboard, but somehow manage to calm myself down.
The memories of the week my mother died have always haunted me. That week brought awful nightmares, ones that have come back in full force now that the past is being dredged up.
It’s only Sebastian, I tell myself and breathe in deeply, calming every bit of me, although the task feels even more impossible than staying awake long enough to see what he’s written.
How are you sleeping?
