Page 1 of Beyond Hate

Chapter 1

London

Themanwaswatchingme again. I’d been seeing him for weeks. It was strange, though.

He looked…different.

I’d noticed him when summer started, lingering at the edge of the building while I was lounging at the community pool. At first, I thought he was just a pervert. It wasn’t like we didn’t get those more often than I wanted to admit. They’d hang around the fence line in the summer and watch the apartment’s residents in the water, eyes hungry and fingers biting into the rusty chain link.

If I lived in a better area, security would have chased them off.

If I lived in a better area, maybe we’dhavesecurity.

I didn’t, though, so I just ignored the eyes and enjoyed the cool water that smelled too chlorinated but still felt amazing on a hot day.

These eyes were different, though; I could almost feel them burning. The sensation of being watched would crawl along my skin like the pinpricks of a thousand tiny needles, and for a while I couldn’t tell where it came from, but when I looked up…

Nothing.

No one.

It was almost worse, knowing someone was there with no proof. It felt more… intentional.

It feltdangerous.

When I told Hudson, his eyes narrowed to angry slits, and the scowl when he answered made me wince. “Why are you such a fucking slut for attention, London? No one cares enough to watch you. Now get into bed.”

I didn’t bring it up again, but I knew I wasn’t imagining it. It just made me feel worse, knowing my boyfriendknewI felt unsafe and still left our apartment door unlocked when he came in at night.

The first time I sawhim, I was at work. I’d just started at Til’s as a dancer, and I felt his gaze on me for half the night before I finally realized where it was coming from.

The man in the back of the room had a hood pulled up, but I could still see the bright lights of the stage reflecting in his dark eyes.

The sensation that rocked through me made me shiver, made me falter in the soft sway of my body as I pulled my shirt over my head.

And he just… watched.

After that, I noticed him everywhere—he watched me, and that dark expression never changed. It never wavered. He stared like he was trying to figure out what my insides looked like, and sometimes I waspositivehe’d been in my apartment a few seconds before I woke.

Hudson just rolled his eyes when I tried to tell him about it, and the second time I brought it up, the feel of his fist landing on my jaw told me it wasn’t worth mentioning again. If I’d had any family to run to, I would have. If I’d had anyone who cared about me, I would have left.

But I didn’t. So I stayed… and so did the man.

For weeks, I wondered what he wanted.

For weeks, I wondered if he was going to kill me.

And then… he was gone.

It was like something in the air lifted—some dark cloud that I’d been terrified of was suddenly wiped away so I could feel the sun on my skin.

I felt like I could breathe, like something in the world had aligned, and I could finally inhale.

For a few weeks, things feltlighter. If I was being honest with myself, hope wasn’t something I felt very often… but for just a while, I did.

Then the man came back… only… he was different.

He’d been menacing before, when I saw him across the room. Menacing in the weeks that I hadn’t seen him but had felt him.

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