Page 136 of Nanny and the Beast

"We clicked right away," she says. "He made me laugh.He was around when I just needed someone to talk to at the endof the day.I mean, I loved my grandmother, but I couldn't talk to her abouteverything, you know? He was my age, so he understood what I was going through."

"Like what?" I ask.

"Little things," she says, shrugging. "It feels like a lifetime ago, but in many ways, it feels like it was just yesterday. I went to a public school, but most of the kids in Ravenwood come from affluent families. They spent their summer vacationing in Europe or playing tennis at the country club. On top of it all, everyone I knew had already gotten into their dream college. They didn't have to worry about a thing because their entire life was sorted out for them. But it's a different reality for people like me. It's almost like we exist on different planets."

"And Adam could relate to that?" I ask.

She shrugs. "It felt nice to vent to him."

Her eyes are in a dreamlike state, like it's the summer after high school again.

"Were the two of you dating?" I ask.

"He never asked me out on a date, and I was too shy to ask," she says. "We only communicated through text messages. But I definitely had feelings for him. I never felt that way about anyone before, so all of it felt really special."

"He wasn't the person you thought he was?" I ask.

She laughs softly. "To say the least."

And then she blinks, burrowing closer against my body. My heart expands, creating as much space as this girl needs. She's weaving herself into every part of me, and she doesn't even know it.

"I thought my world was in shambles before, but it was nothing compared to the hell that was waiting for me," she says. "After six months of us talking, I found the courage to ask him if we could meet in person. He wasn't open to the idea at first, but he agreed eventually. We decided on a time and place."

Her eyes are lost again. She's back in that moment, getting ready to meet someone special.

"When I showed up at the restaurant, my heart dropped," she says. "He looked nothing like his pictures. He wasn't a nineteen-year-old boy, but a middle-aged man old enough to be my father. He was playing me the whole time."

"What did he look like?" I ask.

I try to keep my voice neutral, but her eyes cut to mine. She studies me for a moment.

"He was big," she says. "Blond hair, thick eyebrows, pot belly. There was something menacing about his presence. I watched him from a distance because I couldn't believe something like this had happened to me. This is the kind of stuff you hear stories about. You never think that it could actually happen to you. I called him to make sure that it was really him. When he picked up the phone and glanced around the restaurant, I had the confirmation I needed. I made a run for it and blocked him on the app."

"But that wasn't the end of it," I guess.

"It was the beginning," she says. "He knew too much about me. He knew where I went to school and the neighborhood where I lived. I don't know how he pulled the information, but he found my home address. That's when the stalking began."

"You never filed an official complaint against him?" I ask.

"I should have, but I was scared out of my mind," she replies. "And a part of me felt so guilty about ghosting him. I felt like I was being selfish or something."

"Seriously?" I ask.

She looks up at me.

"It's just how I felt at the time," she says. "It was a pretty shitty year for me in general. I eventually had to tell my grandmother what happened. We decided it would be best tomove somewhere else. That's how we ended up living in Florida for four years."

I nod. This is something I already know about her. I know that they stayed there until it wasn't financially sustainable anymore.

"We moved back to Ravenwood last year," she says. "Since so much time had passed, I thought it would be safe to live here again."

But it wasn't. He found her again after a few months.

I run my fingers down the groove of her spine. When I reach the small of her back, I press my palm there and pull her closer.

"His infatuation with me had only gotten worse," she says. "All that changed was that I wasn't a naive teenager anymore. I didn't want to live a life that was ruled by fear. So when things got bad, I went to the police station to file a complaint against him."

Her chest rises and falls in quick, uneven breaths.Something happened on that day.

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