Page 20 of Imogen

“How are you feeling?” she asks, stepping into the room.

“Been better. The tightness around the stitches still needs a bit of getting used to,” I answer. “How are you?”

“I’m not the one who got stabbed,” she jokes, taking a seat. “But I’m good.”

“Evan mentioned you had a new job. How is that going?”

“It’s the reason I’m here actually,” she replies, lowering the basket on the seat between us.

My eyes widen at the gaming products in there. Those products must have cost a fortune. There’s a headset and two controllers that I know for a fact are limited edition because I couldn’t get on the list for the pre-order. It had been like the malarkey of getting Taylor Swift tickets. They sell for six to seven hundred each. There’s also a limited-edition mini speaker, a roll of LED lights, and a couple of games and accessories.

“Please tell me you didn’t buy me all of that. It’s way too much.”

“Actually, my boss gave them to me to give to you. And he kindly gave me this,” she declares, pulling out Zombie Apocalypse: Ground Zero.

“Holy shit! How did you manage to get that this early? I’m still waiting for my purchase code.”

She smiles, and it lights up her entire face. “I was explaining to Laura, a colleague I work with, why I took a day off last week. I don’t even remember how your favourite game came up but it did. That same day, my boss came in with the game, and I guess when he found out who you were, he wanted to do more. I received the gift basket at the end of the day.”

“Thank you, but no one needed to do this for me.”

“I know, but a lot of people are grateful for what you did. Cyrus planned to kill others and they found pictures on his phone of other people. Dad said they were people who were just in the same building as Cole. He even had pictures of you, which is when he sped up his timeline.”

“I think it got sped up the minute Emily and her friends went looking for Gabby. I think it knocked him off his path.”

“Maybe.”

I nearly leave it there, but something compels me to be honest, knowing she’d never judge me. “Everyone keeps painting me as a hero, but I feel like a fraud. I did nothing. I was useless once that knife got pushed into me. I should have sensed him. I should have known something was off when I didn’t see the red light below the camera.”

She shifts closer. “Ben, you aren’t a fraud. From what Cole was telling Dad in the waiting area, he got hit first.”

“He did. Before I got the chance to do anything, he took me off guard and closed the door hard on my face. We fought for a minute before I got hit again and fell unconscious.”

“You couldn’t have been down for long because Cole said when he became conscious, Cyrus went for him with a knife and you dove in the way. If he had killed Cole, then it would have been over. It might not feel great, but taking that knife saved all of you.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I guess. But I still feel like a fraud.”

“How about I put this game in and you can feel like a zombie killer instead?”

I laugh at how easily she makes me feel at ease. Talking about that night is hard. Everyone has their own perception of that night, whilst I have another. It’s like the letter ‘m’ written on a piece of paper. Four of you will see something different. One will see an ‘m’, the others an ‘E’, a ‘w’, and a ‘3’. And all I can focus on is my perception of that night. It feels good not to feel pressured into feeling a certain way. “Only if you play with me.”

She clucks her tongue. “Dude, if you wasn’t going to offer, I was taking it with me. You aren’t the only one waiting for a pre-order code.”

“You don’t have anywhere else to be?” I ask, knowing her boyfriend isn’t particularly a fan of mine.

The guy gives off a creepy vibe. He shows the world one face, but I’ve seen him with Imogen when he doesn’t have an audience and it’s like he wants to control her, not be her partner.

She lowers her gaze slightly. “Not tonight. But I am going to take a bowl of that food because it smells amazing. If that’s okay?”

“No, go ahead. My sister made enough for ten families.”

“Do you want anything whilst I’m up?”

“A beer?”

She arches a brow. “No chance. I know you’re still on painkillers.”

“It was worth a shot,” I tease.

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