Page 32 of Heart So Hollow

“Shit,” Bowen screws up his face and rolled his eyes, “how’d that go?”

“Awful,” I mutter, remembering the constant, low-key stress that took over my life until the semester was over. “He came into class every day and sat down next to me like nothing happened. He didn’t even say anything, he was just…there. It really messed with me. Like, I even started wondering if I imagined the whole thing. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and skipped out on the last two weeks of class.”

Bowen cocks his head, “Is that why you got all squirrelly on the hike?”

“Kind of,” I mumble. Even now, I don’t want to come right out and say it.

“I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

I shake my head, “It’s not your fault. It could’ve been worse.”

Bowen arches his brow with a smile, “You’re way more pragmatic than I am.”

“I’m good at compartmentalizing,” I say with a shrug.

Colson before he tried to murder me fit nicely in a box, Colson after he tried to murder me fit nicely in a different box, and so on and so forth. Brett after meeting Bowen will get its own box as well.

“And then,” I shoot Bowen a look, “I kept seeing him everywhere. It’s like he always showed up where I was. Every time, I managed to hold it together, but afterward, I just—” I hesitate, just wanting to forget it, “cried and cried. It got to where I barely went out anymore.”

“So, he was stalking you,” Bowen concludes.

I give a half shrug, content to pretend everything was a string of inconvenient coincidences. Just like I pretend I never heard any of the things Colson said to me that night, even though they remain seared into my brain.

“You said it was weird he even ended up in that class,” Bowen points out. “He sits next to you, moves whenever you move, you never saw him around campus before then, but after all that, he just shows up everywhere you go?” Bowen tips his head onto the back of his chair, “I think you’ll hear from him again.”

This is not what I want to hear.

I try to brush him off, “It was three years ago.”

“Three years to think about you,” he points out. “I can’t blame him, I guess. I’d be freaking out, too, if I screwed up that bad and you told me to fuck the hell off.”

I shoot him a grin and seize the opportunity to deflect, “Has a woman ever told you to fuck the hell off?”

Bowen pauses, staring into the fire for a few moments before turning back to me, “Not successfully,” he says with a wink, sending a wave of butterflies through my stomach. “So, what did your friends say about what happened?”

“Nothing,” I confess, “you’re the first person I’ve told.”

“Really?” As much as he tries to hide it, I still see the smug look that flashes behind his eyes. “Why?”

“A lot of reasons…”

Because then I would have to acknowledge a lot of other things Colson did that nobody knows about…

“I didn’t see him again after graduation,” I shrug, deciding it’s safer to remain vague, “Why not let sleeping dogs lie?”

Bowen seems to accept my reasoning. “I’m guessing breakups since then haven’t been that bad.”

I give a bitter chuckle, “What breakups?”

Bowen furrows his brow, “Really?”

I shake my head, “Nothing of any substance that would warrant a breakup.”

“Wow,” he marvels, staring into the fire, “so, you just like to love ‘em and leave ‘em.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” I scoff, “Barrett, my best friend, always tries to set me up with guys, but they’re more her type than mine.” I roll my eyes, “So, when it doesn’t work out, she just ends up dating them instead. But I appreciate the gesture.”

He peers at me with skepticism, “That’s pretty fucked up, wouldn’t you say?”

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