Page 116 of Hunting Pretty

I swallowed, my mind spinning with the weight of his words.

His expression softened. “I know you’ve been struggling with whether you should turn me in.”

I stiffened, warring in my mind over whether I should deny it. But this wasn’t the time for lies. This wasn’t the time for hiding.

I nodded. “I have.”

He brushed a strand of hair from my cheek and tucked it behind my ear, such a tender motion from such a dark-hearted man. “I don’t blame you for it. So I’m not mad.”

He paused, his voice growing softer. “I should be in jail.”

The admission hung heavy between us, the weight of everything he’d kept hidden slowly coming to light.

“But I won’t go. Not now. Not because I’m afraid of prison. But because I won’t leave you unguarded, unprotected. I made that choice a long time ago, Ava. And I stand by it.”

A lump formed in my throat, my emotions a tangled mess of fear, confusion, and… something else. “Even if I turn you in?”

His lips twitched into a half smile, the kind that didn’treach his eyes. “Even if you turn me in, they won’t find me. I scrubbed all the necessary traces of myself away years ago. No records. No identification. No trail to follow.”

I blinked, my stomach knotting. “What do you mean?”

He looked at me, his expression unreadable. “Technically, I don’t exist.”

“But—”

“Enough questions.” An edge of tension had crept back into his voice. “Go to sleep, Ava.”

A part of me wanted to protest, to push him away and tell him I wouldn’t stop until I got answers. But the words never came.

There was something about the way he held me—so steady, so sure—that felt impossibly good. Like in his arms was the only place I was meant to be.

It shouldn’t have felt right. It shouldn’t have made me feel safe. And yet it did.

It feltfamiliar, like I’d been here before, wrapped in his warmth, his presence shielding me from the rest of the world. It was as if some hidden part of me had always known this, had always been waiting for this exact moment.

“Stay with me till I fall asleep?” I asked.

The tension melted from my stalker’s shoulders. His steady, calm breathing returned.

“I’m not leaving you,” he promised.

Perhaps it was his words, or perhaps it was the way he was curled so protectively behind me, but it dislodged another memory.

I gasped awake, thrashing around in my four-poster bed, its carved spindles twisting like something out of my nightmare.

But he was there behind me, his arms holding me tight.

“Shh,” he whispered as I sobbed. “I’m here.”

My tears fell hot and fast down my cheeks. I was drenched in sweat, my lace nightgown vacuum-sealed to my young body.

I sucked in deep breaths, the familiar scent of old furniture and velvet filling my nostrils.

He was the only thing that made my nightmares bearable.

I wasn’t sure what I would do if I woke up from one and he was no longer there, nestling his nose into my damp hair.

He brushed his fingertips up and down my arms, hushing me softly.

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