Page 63 of Fall Into Me

Declan.

“It’s all right, you can let me in on the secret.” He’d spoken to me like we were friends in on an inside joke. Like he was more than a stranger who’d walked into my café and placed an order.

“What are you doing with Fane? I know you’re not together anymore, but I’ve always been a fan of games. I could play along.”

The guy was a fucking creep, and it didn’t take much for me to put together that whatever was going on between him and Fane wasn’t good. The moment the door opened and those familiar violet eyes set on me, they swept down my body in a move so completelyknownto me that I wasn’t even sure Fane realized he did it. The quick calculation of whether I was in one piece. Then there was the way his brow had dipped ever so slightly, and his jaw clenched.

I could have told him what the guy said, but what if that led him to do something stupid? What if he did something that made him leave town? What if someone else, someone I didn’t know well enough to confront and try to change their mind to leave Darling alone, replaced him?

Everything that could have happened rushed through my mind. Despite it all, the thing that scared me the most was the dead look in Declan’s eyes and the idea that even though Fane was bigger, there was this niggling in the back of my head that he could get hurt. If I told him and that did happen? It would’ve been my fault and I didn’t want or need that on my conscience.

If there was one thing I’d learned to do over the last two years, it was deal with shit on my own. So I kept my mouth shut, and by the weird as fuck look on the guy’s face where he stared right back at me from the other side of the street, I could wager a guess that he took it as a sign we were on the same side.

Same side of what? Who the fuck knows, but whatever sixth sense I had that told me when I was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time kicked in. I didn’t think twice when I turned where I stood and bolted.

I knew Jerry felt it too, the way the street felt colder. How the very air around the guy seemed to want to exist anywhere but near him. Jerry didn’t drag behind like he did when I tried to get him to run faster than his usual trot. He didn’t pull against his leash.

He just ran.

He pulled ahead of me, forcing me to run faster than I would have been able to on my own.

For one fleeting second, I thought I imagined it. Seeing this stranger I didn’t know in literally any capacity except for one single interaction. That my mind had finally teetered beyond the fine line that I had been walking between sane and absolutely unhinged.

It was the wrong thing to do in my situation. Everyone and their mother always said,Don’t look behind you. I shouldn’t have done it, but I chanced a single look.

I’d never known fear like I had in that moment when I turned to find Declan running behind me and gaining. A scream lodgeditself in my throat, trying to claw past the deep, gasping breaths I was pushing out.

My legs were burning, and my heart was thrashing. My house was roughly five miles from the center of town, but cutting through parks and people’s yards took it down to maybe three. That’s all I kept telling myself.

Three miles.

Three miles, and then I was home. Where I could hide behind a locked door and call Fane.

My mind had reached for his name and clutched onto it. Held it like a lifeline.

There was music still blasting in my ears. I hadn’t had time to take out my earbuds or pause it, and even though it was loud, I could swear I heard the way his shoes were connecting with the pavement.

Two miles.

My vision started to blur. The terror that was coursing through me was overflowing and pouring out my fucking eyes. Even though a sob managed to make its way out somehow between my gasping breaths and the scream that I barely held back, I didn’t stop.

Jerry didn’t falter once. His long legs propelled us forward.

One mile.

I waited as long as I could before I turned around again, and there was no time to stop the scream that tore from my throat. I swear my heart stopped beating entirely, just for a second.

Declan was so close to me now that if I faltered for even a second, he would’ve been able to reach out and grab me.

It felt like this was something from a fucking horror movie, not my life.

For two years I’d gone every day with not so much as an unexpected sneeze, and in less than two weeks my entire life hadbeen turned upside down. I was lying to myentiretown, and now I was being chased by a psychopath.

I rounded the last corner to my house, so sure that I could feel the tips of his fingers skimming the back of my shirt. The ends of my hair.

I could see my house, and I let myself look one more time. The moment I turned my head to look behind me, I smacked right into something solid. My scream was so visceral I felt the way it ripped at my vocal cords.

In my head, I always imagined I would immediately take a fighting stance.

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