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Elara quickly changes her clothes and then heads back to the window to open her curtains. The second she does, she sees movement again. But this time she knows it’s not her imagination. She saw what it was.
Who.
Kade quickly slips behind the large oak tree across the road, but she’s already seen him. Elara stumbles backward, tripping and falling onto her bed. She cries out as she instinctively puts her hands back to brace herself. He’s here. Kade’s watching her, outside her home.
There’s no room for doubt anymore.
He’s following her.
A potent mix of fear and anger flushes through her. She wants to go out there and tell him to get the hell out of her life. At the same time, she wants to crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head.
Panting with the force of the emotions coursing through her, Elara stares at the curtains. Is he still out there? Watching? Waiting?
And for what?
Her breath disintegrates when the curtains impossibly, undeniably start to change. A deep maroon, the same shade as the roses on her bedside table, is blooming across the beige. Within a blink, they’ve morphed. No longer the neutral color of her childhood—admittedly, the color she always hated—now a beautiful dark red.
Footsteps pound up the stairs, and Elara tried to compose herself as her parents burst into the room, both of them searching for what had made her scream.
“Honey, what happened?” her father asks, clearly worried.
Elara sighs, knowing she has to lie again. She doesn't want to worry her parents any more than she has to, and if she tells them there’s someone following her, they'll never let her leave the house again. She’ll have to deal with it on her own, and besides, what had just happened with her curtains is totally unbelievable.
“Nothing,” she says, waving a bandaged hand. “I thought I saw something out the window, but I think it was just a cat.” She tries to keep things as vague as possible. She’s heard somewherethat lies are harder to keep straight if you can’t remember the finer details.
Her mom squints, glancing around the room, and Elara’s breathing stills. Her mom must sense something is different so Elara pointedly keeps her gaze away from the curtains. Her parents already think she’s overly fragile because of the stitches. If she tells them that her curtains changed color on their own, they’ll have her admitted to the psych ward. Hopefully, her mom won’t notice the change in curtain color.
“Honey, what happened to your curtains?”
Elara stops her shoulders from sagging. No such luck. Which means another lie, because the truth isn’t an option. She looks down at her injured hands like she’s ashamed, which isn’t actually far off.
“I changed them because I accidentally ruined them. Sorry.” She keeps her gaze down, knowing she just broke her commitment to be vague. And apart from the apology, which is genuine, the rest is a total fabrication. She’s not the one responsible for changing the color of the curtains.
Although, if it wasn't her, then who did?
Her father sighs, gently kissing the top of her head. “You aren’t supposed to be doing any heavy lifting. We would have done it for you.” He pulls back to look her in the eyes, and Elara fights not to squirm. “Don’t even worry about the curtains. It is no big deal at all. Nothing.”
He presses a second kiss to her forehead, and again Elara’s struck by how upset her parents must be after the last few days. Her father isn’t exactly a physically affectionate man. She hadn’t spoken to them since last weekend, and then suddenly they got a call from the hospital that their only daughter had been mauled by a wild animal.
She pulls both of her parents in for a tight hug, closing her eyes as she basks in their warmth and love. Her father’s worry,not to mention the lines of tension and fear around her mother’s eyes, only confirms that she’s doing the right thing by not telling them about Kade. Or the curtains.
“I love you guys. I’m sorry I worried you. I really didn’t mean to.” She hadn’t intended to scare them, or be attacked by a wolf, but it still only feels right to apologize. She sees her dad squeeze her mom’s hand gently and the sparkle of tears in Mom’s eyes before she sniffles and nudges Elara to lie down.
“All right. Time for sleep.”
Elara hides her smile at her mother’s bossiness. She always does that when she gets emotional.
This time, her mom does tuck her in, but Elara doesn’t object. In a blink, it feels as if no time has passed at all. Her dad is waiting at the door for her mother as she gently leans down and kisses Elara’s forehead, as if she isn’t nineteen, but is still a little girl. If nothing else, being here with her parents at least makes her feel safer.
What that will mean for school tomorrow, she has no idea, but she’ll deal with it then. Elara burrows down in her bed as her parents leave the room, turning the light off. The idea of sleep is welcoming right now. In fact, oblivion is downright appealing.
Except sleep doesn’t come. It takes a little while to find a comfortable position with her bandaged hands, and when she does, she finds she’s facing the curtains.
The curtains that are now maroon.
The curtains covering the window that Kade was on the other side of not that long ago.
Tears prickle Elara’s eyes as she turns her head away.
