Page 34 of Savage Stalkers
Everything. My obsession. The missing piece I didn’t know I needed until I saw her.
“Mine,” I whisper.
“This is fucking bullshit,” she says, her voice shaking. “I need the truth because I can’t understand how or why this is happening.”
She pulls her hair out of its twist and runs her hands through it, messing up the perfect style from the gala. “You’re my TA. You”—she points at Zay—“hit on me at the coffee shop. And you”—her finger swings to Kain—“were hired by my mother as security. How does that connect to masked men?”
Kain’s jaw ticks. “It doesn’t. Not in the way you think.”
“Then explain it to me like I’m five, because right now I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind.”
I take a shaky breath. She deserves the truth, even if it destroys whatever chance I might’ve had with her.
“I’ve been watching you for six months,” I tell her quietly. “It was before the contract. Before Wild Steps. Before any of this.”
Her face goes pale. “Watching me how?”
“Cameras in your apartment building and... following you.” The words taste like dirt in my mouth. “I was stealing small amounts from your stepfather’s accounts. You weren’t supposed to be part of it, but then I saw your photo and...”
“And what?” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“And I couldn’t stop,” I admit, desperate for her to understand. “Skye, I know how it sounds. I know what I am. But I never touched you, never approached you, did nothing to make you feel unsafe until you signed that contract asking for exactly what I’d been wanting to give you.”
Zay shifts in his seat. “The contract was real, pumpkin. Just not processed through Wild Steps.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hacked their website,” I reply honestly.
The silence that follows is deafening. I watch the pieces click into place and see the exact moment she realizes the scope of what we’ve done.
“None of it was real,” she says slowly.
“The feelings were real,” I say desperately.
She laughs, but it’s a broken sound. “Real? What part of this is real, Silas? The part where you illegally watched me? The part where you manipulated me into signing a fake contract?”
I flinch at each accusation because they’re all true. Every word she’s saying is true, and I have no defense except the pathetic truth that I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life.
“The part where I would do anything to protect you,” I say. “Where seeing another man’s hands on you made me want to commit murder. The part where you’re the only thing that matters to me in this entire fucked-up world besides them.” I nod toward Zay and Kain.
Her eyes fill with tears, and it kills me. “That’s not love, Silas, that’s obsession.”
“I know.”
The admission hangs between us like a fucking death sentence. A tear slides down her cheek, and everything inside me screams. I want to wipe it away, to comfort her, to fix this somehow. Yet I can’t do anything but watch as the truth destroys whatever we might have had.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispers, pressing her hands against her eyes. “Six months. You’ve been watching me for six months.”
“Skye—”
“No.” She holds up a hand, stopping me. “Don’t. Just... don’t.”
The car fills with suffocating silence. All I can focus on is her, and the way her shoulders shake as she curls in on herself like she’s trying to disappear.
I did this to her—I broke her.
“I need to know,” she says finally, her voice muffled by her hands. “Did you—did you ever hurt anyone because of me?”
