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Making my way into her room, my gaze automatically goes to her bed, finding it made, and my brows furrow. I’ve been watching Kyah for a little over two months now, and she’s not once made her bed, so why the fuck is today special?
Not liking this one bit, I turn to walk out of her room when I finally see it—the same blood-red lipstick that painted her lips last night is now scrawled across the wall in big block letters.
I KNOW IT’S YOU, ALEX.
SMILE FOR THE FUCKING CAMERA.
A wide grin stretches across my face. What a clever girl. I knew she was close to figuring it out, but I’m not going to lie, I’ve been enjoying this part of our little game. I wish she could have dragged it out just a little bit longer, but it’s okay. I’m following her lead now. She’s calling the shots.
Not bothering to hang around without her here, I turn, and as I go to walk out of her room, I pause and glance up at the camera above the door, knowing her eyes are on me. “You better run, my sweet Kyah,” I tell her, unable to keep the wicked grin off my face.
And with that, I walk straight out her front door, more than ready for the real fun to start.
36
KYAH
“Holyshit,”Natbreathes,leaning over and watching the live footage of Alex in my apartment. “Why are all the hot ones unhinged? I had such high hopes for him.”
“Right?” I say, letting out a heavy sigh. “I thought I was falling in love with him.”
“I know,” she says, throwing her arm over my shoulder and pulling me into her side as we overtake her small one-bedroom apartment across from the beautiful Central Park. “I thought you were too, but it’ll be okay. We’ll figure out something to keep you safe from him.”
My gaze drops, and I scootch down in her bed, my head dropping against her pillow. “Am I wrong for not wanting to be away from him?”
“Uhhh yes,” she scoffs. “I know he might have made you fall for him as your sexy, over-the-top cocky neighbor, who likes to throw you up against walls, but that’s not who he is. He’s been sneaking into your apartment at night, eating you out while you sleep. Who knows what he’s really capable of? Hell, what if moving into that apartment wasn’t a coincidence? What if he already knew who you were and did something to the previous tenant just to be close to you?”
A shiver trails down my spine, not having considered that yet, but I suppose she could be right. Alex only moved into the building a little over two months ago, and despite me telling him that I wasn’t interested in dating my neighbors, he didn’t really give me a choice. He was adamant and kept showing up in my life until I couldn’t possibly resist.
The signs have been there all along, and instead of seeing what was right in front of my face, I ignored it all, blinded by the way he made my heart race. What the hell is wrong with me? And where am I supposed to go from here? I can’t just return to my apartment and give him free access to me, but that’s my home.
Do I call the cops or tell the Grim Reapers what’s going on? Spider will take care of it if I really need him to, but his version of taking care of it would be to put Alex in a shallow grave and I don’t know if I can handle that. Despite everything, despite the stalking and sneaking into my apartment every night, Alex has also made me fall in love with him, and how the hell could I possibly be responsible for hurting the man who owns my heart?
Shit. I hate this.
“So,” Nat says, a hesitant tone in her voice. “I don’t want to make any accusations or anything, but just wondering, now that you know the stalker is Alex, does this mean you still believe he’s the one who killed Viper?”
My eyes widen, and I sit up in bed again, my heart pounding a million miles an hour. “Holy shit,” I breathe, fear lodging in my throat and making it hard to speak. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“But now that you have . . .” she says, arching a brow.
“I, umm . . . I really don’t know,” I tell her honestly, trying to think of everything I know about Alex, but who knows if anything he’s ever told me is even real. Do I really know him at all? “I was positive that the stalker had killed Viper. It made so much sense, but now that I know it’s Alex . . . I’m not sure. I don’t know what he’s capable of. Up until a few hours ago, I never would have thought he was the stalker, but now, I just don’t know. I mean, yesterday I kinda accused him of being the stalker because of something he said, but I don’t think I really believed it. At least, I didn’t want to believe it, but then he proved to me that he wasn’t and he was so convincing.”
“Shit, Ky. I hate this. It’s scaring the shit out of me. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you,” she says, pulling me into her arms again. “But we have to be smart about this. We don’t know what he’s capable of, so I think you should move in here for a little while and perhaps start looking for a new apartment. We can get you a new number and—”
“Do you really think that’s going to work?” I ask her. “He knows where I work, who my friends are, and how I spend my time. I don’t think moving away is going to help anything. He’ll find me, Nat. Besides, I don’t want to run the risk of pissing him off.”
She lets out a heavy sigh. “Ky, I just . . .”
“I know,” I say, my heart breaking while so conflicted with the idea of having to move away. That apartment is my home. I was forced to grow up within those walls, but what really hurts is the thought of having to leave Alex. Despite everything, I can’t figure out how to not love him. Society tells me it’s the right thing to do to move away, to force distance between us, or at least file for a restraining order, but there’s no denying the thrill I’d get when I heard him slip into my bedroom at night. I don’t fear him, even though I should, and for some reason, I can’t bring myself to admit that to Nat. “We’ll figure it out. If we were able to get through our late teens, then dealing with Alex is going to be a piece of cake.”
She scoffs. “Not gonna lie, I kinda figured between the two of us, I’d be the one to bring home a psychopathic stalker.”
I can’t help but laugh because honestly, it’s not the first time the thought has entered my brain. “There’s still time,” I tell her. “It doesn’t need to be a competition.”
Nat laughs, and we both scootch down into her bed again, pulling the blankets right up to our chins just like we used to when we were kids sleeping over at each other’s homes. “Do you think he’s done this before?” she muses, rolling over to face me.
My brows furrow as I start thinking it over. “I mean, because it’s Alex, I kinda want to be the only woman who’s ever made him cross lines like this, but he’s too good at it for this to have been his first time,” I tell her. “From the way he was able to hack into my security system and seamlessly create loops to how confidently he welcomed himself into my apartment. Someone doing that for the first time would have been nervous and made mistakes, but he had me playing his game the whole way through. I didn’t even get a sense that he’d been in my apartment until he wanted me to know that he was there.”
