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There’s a pair of headphones on her ears, so loud I can hear the music from here.
My heart stops. Whatever caused this, whoever is responsible, they’re fuckingdead.
“What happened?” I demand.
“Oh,” she says, surprised. “Marius? What are you doing here?”
She’s saying words, but none of them are the ones I need to hear.
“What’s going on, Sarah?”
She looks down, flushing. I should dislike that, but it brings some color to her pale face. “I…” She clears her throat. “It all gets too much, sometimes, so I do this.”
I let go of the door, walking in. I consider turning the light on—there’s a switch—but something tells me not to do it.
“You hide?” I summarize, trying not to sound too unkind.
Mostly, I’m confused. Why don’t I know this?
The same instinct that told me to leave the light off makes me sit in front of her, staying quiet for a while. I’m not going to make her feel bad about this, or whatever she’s doing to cope with what’s going on in her head.
“Do you do it often?”
“I mean…define often.”
That’s a yes, then. “I’ve never seen you do it.” And in the last few weeks, we’ve spent a fair bit of time together.
“I don’t need to when I feel safe. You know, with Vi and everyone else…” She shrugs.
I smile, reading between the lines. “And me. You feel safe with me.”
She looks away, everywhere but at me, really. “I shouldn’t. You’re dangerous.”
Given the fact that I went to the Clarks’ fully intending to murder one—if not three—of them, I can’t deny that. “I’m not dangerous to you, Sarah.”
“I know.”
Those words are everything.
This girl is everything.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, all the while knowing the answer.
If she were, she would be up and out of this dark room, making it all sound like I’m imagining things. She’d say she’s here because she just happened to drop a pen in a supply closet.
“What triggered you?”
She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know, people were…looking at me. Talking to me. Staring. Not in a nice way. People I don’t know.”
Shit. I did this. I pushed her to date me to make sure she’d be watched, and now she is. I thought she’d hate it, and that would have been one thing, but it’s far worse. It makes her panic so much she shuts the world off.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. We need to find the stalker.They’refar more unsafe than my stupid social anxiety.”
She’s right, but if I’d known about this, I would have done things differently.
I had options. I chose to push the dating idea because Iwantedto date her, and it was a good excuse. She wasn’t going to agree to go out with me, so I made her do it.
