22. Esperr
ESPERR
Zyran fills the doorway in a way that makes my apartment feel like it shrank. And I don’t think I ever realized how large of a man he was until now.
I take a step back without meaning to, watching him take it in—the current mess of my living room. His eyes move the way I’ve noticed they always do, cataloguing every square inch of the place. And what’s odd is the fact he looks at home doing it.
That should bother me, and the fact that it doesn’t annoys me.
“The couch is there,” I mutter, mostly just to say something.
He nods once, still looking around before dropping his bag off next to the chair. Then he says, “Give me a second,” and steps back out into the hallway.
I frown, waiting as he reappears a moment later, pulling a small cart behind him. It’s completely packed, nearly overflowing.
He maneuvers it through the door with ease that I’m learning only he has. But the longer I stare at it and then at him, it’s like it suddenly dawns on me.
“You brought groceries.”
“Didn’t know how long the storm would run,” he says, pushing the cart into the kitchen.
“You bought groceries,” I say again, because apparently I need to say it twice.
“Well, when you were somewhat asleep yesterday, I checked your fridge so I could make you breakfast, and well, you had maybe a block of cheese and some orange juice.” He hikes a thumb toward the kitchen without a hint of an apology. “I checked.”
Of course he did.
And I’m the one standing there, dumbfounded, opening and closing my mouth.
“Didn’t know how long the storm would run,” he continues, as if that’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.
The fact that he’s been in my fridge should bother me significantly more than the fact that he’s right about the cheese and orange juice.
I cross my arms and look towards the cart, trying to see it properly.
My eyebrow shoot up when it’s not just storm supplies like bread or canned beans, anything for survival.
No, there’s actual food in there, produce, things that require cooking.
Which might not mean anything to someone, but to me, it means that he’s thought about it.
That somehow makes it worse.
“You planned this,” I hear myself saying.
“Yes.”
Yes.
He said yes, like it’s just that simple.
And he stands there, jacket still damp from the snow, his hair pushed back like he’d been shoving it out of his eyes all day.
“You were stalking me.”
I’m not sure what caused me to say that, but now that the words are out, it’s like everything makes sense.
“Well, kind of.”
The feeling at the grocery store—three, maybe four weeks ago.
I’d been standing in the cereal aisle trying to decide between two boxes when I felt it.
It was that sort of prickle at the back of my neck, the one I’ve been convincing myself was anxiety and nothing more.
I’d look up, scanning the aisle, and find nothing.
The entire time I told myself I was being paranoid.
Recently, every morning when it had slowed down, I’d be wiping down the counters and suddenly feel eyes on me from somewhere I couldn’t pinpoint. I’d always check the window but found the street empty or just a stranger passing through.
The parking lot outside my building, the shadows that I coughed up to just be my damn imagination.
“There’s no kind of,” I hiss, taking a step towards him.
“It’s either you were stalking me or you weren’t.
And since you knew where my apartment building was—” I stop, watching his steady eyes hold mine, letting me put everything together at my own pace, like he has all the time in the world.
And some sick part of me likes it. Likes that he was stalking me and that he’s obsessed.
“How long?” I ask, needing to hear him say a number out loud so it stops the unhealthy idea of him knowing everything about me.
Zyran holds my gaze, not moving a muscle as he says, “A while.”
My jaw tightens, not because of his answer but because my brain is switching to filthy thoughts about him. I want to know what he looks like under those clothes; I want to feel his body holding me down?—
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he agrees, smirking. “It’s not.”
The heat suddenly kicks on, and a lamp in the corner flickers like it always does. For the first time I’m thankful for the distraction because the apartment feels smaller than it did twenty minutes ago—the walls are beginning to close in around me.
“Put your groceries away,” I finally muttered.
I turn on my heel, needing to get away from him.
“You’re dripping on my floors too!” I yell over my shoulder before slamming the door closed.
I tell myself I hope the snowstorm doesn’t happen and tomorrow I can go back to work, go back to my routine.
But I’m just a dirty little liar.
I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the wall.
The problem isn't really the fact that he’s a stranger. It’s not even stalking, though it should be, though every rational part of me is lining up evidence and building a case and coming to the very reasonable conclusion that I should open the front door and shove him out.
The problem is that I don’t want to.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
I’ve spent a long time being careful about what I let myself want. Wanting is a door that opens both ways—something comes in, and something gets out. You don’t always get to choose which is which. I learned that early on, and I learned it the hard way several times.
So I stopped wanting things that could want me back.
And now, he showed up at my door in a snowstorm with a cart full of groceries, telling me that he had stalked me.
I press my palms flat against my thighs, trying to figure out why my chest feels like something is pulling at it from the inside.
I don’t know him, not really.
Sure, I know his name. But I also know he takes up too much space. I know he watches everything like he’s waiting for something to go wrong, and I know that should scare me more than it does because I grew up around men who looked at the world exactly the same way.
Maybe that’s the problem.
Maybe that’s why he feels less like a stranger than he should.
I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling, listening to him exist on the other side of my bedroom door. The quiet sounds of someone moving through a kitchen that isn’t theirs.
He’s cooking; of course he is.
I throw an arm over my eyes and take a deep breath.
I hate this—I hate that I’m lying here listening for him. And I hate that when I heard his voice and saw his face, something in me settled in a way it hadn’t settled before.
I hate that the word stalking came out of my mouth and some deep, broken, embarrassing part of me thought it was good.
You’re insane, I tell myself, squeezing my eyes shut. Stalking isn’t okay, and you are absolutely out of your mind.
I open my eyes and sit up, unable to sit still anymore.
My bedroom isn’t even that messy anymore; there’s a shirt draped over the chair in the corner, socks bundled up near the door, and a glass on the nightstand I keep forgetting to take back to the kitchen.
I stand up and start with the bed, smoothing the sheets out first, pulling them tight at the corners the same way my mother taught me before I knew anything else. Straighten the pillowcases and fold back the blanket just so.
The shirt goes back on the hanger; my socks get thrown into the dirty laundry basket just off against the wall. I pick up the glass and then realize I can’t take it to the kitchen.
From the other side of the door the sounds of the kitchen have gone quiet, just the low hum of something I can’t quite pick out.
The occasional soft knock of something almost sounds like a spoon against a pot.
It’s him moving around in my space like he belongs in it, unhurried, and unbothered by the door I put between us.
I set the glass down on the dresser instead; at some point I’ll take it out.
Blowing out a breath, my gaze goes to the window above my bed; it’s blurred white with snow, the storm is so thick now I can’t see the building across the street. It’s just white against the glass, the world outside almost reduced to nothing.
Sealed in—no work tomorrow, no routine to hide inside, no counter to wipe down or orders; there’s no noise to fill the space where my thoughts get loud.
It’s just me and him. Along with however many days this storm decides to take.
He reads minds; that’s what's wrong with him.
Because the exact moment I’ve convinced myself that I’m fine, that everything will be okay, there’s a knock at the door.
“Dinner’s ready,” he says through the door.
I frown, staring up at the ceiling.
He says dinner like it’s the most normal thing in the world, which it is; of course it is. Like somewhere between him stalking me for God knows how long and showing up at my door in a snowstorm with a cart full of groceries, we became people who sit down and eat together.
The smell has been killing me for the last forty minutes.
Whatever he’s cooking has been drifting under the door like a slow act of warfare, and my stomach has been losing the battle the entire time, growling at me like a traitor.
It’s like it doesn’t care about boundaries or self-preservation or the fact that I don’t actually know this man.
Standing up, I smooth my shirt down, feeling my cheeks heat. And it’s not the good kind; it’s the embarrassing kind, the one that has nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the fact that some giddy, idiotic part of me is excited to open that door.
Jesus fucking Christ—absolutely not.
But no amount of self-control stops me, not as I walk forward and not as I smooth my hair down, and I drop my hands immediately.
I will not fix my hair for someone sleeping on the couch; I refuse to.
And yet, I open the door, brushing my hair back off my shoulders.
The smell hits me first, wrapping around before I’ve fully stepped out of my room. My stomach growls immediately and loud enough that I press a hand against it like that’s going to stop it.