Chapter 7
Sly
Okay, I was stalking her in a creepy way.
Can you blame me, though? She’d been sitting in my head for five straight days, and I needed to know she was okay.
I needed to see her again, just to make sure she was breathing and moving and not swallowed by the mess I left behind.
That was it. I wasn’t going to get close.
I wasn’t going to walk up and say, “Hey, Sumner, sorry about that night, want to go out? Because I fell for you the night your douchebag boyfriend died by forgetting gravity exists.” It sounded pathetic in my head, but if I let my heart run the show, that’s exactly what would have come out of my mouth.
I couldn’t sleep at night, so I did the only sane thing a man with an aching heart could do. I rode back to the house and watched the street, hoping to see her again.
I also tried to find her on the internet, which was usually an easy and helpful way to find someone.
Social media was how I found every guy I killed.
Fine. Accidentally made kill themselves.
Two were on Facebook, one on Instagram, and the rest were polished up on LinkedIn.
It wasn’t hard. People on those platforms handed over their information without being asked.
I looked up where they worked, showed up, and followed them home. It was an easy and efficient system.
But with Sumner, I found nothing. I went through Joey’s Facebook and dug around his friends list. No Sumner.
In fact, nothing ever came up when I searched for her name and the city we lived in.
I also tried spelling her name differently, because I was still not convinced it was actually Sumner.
Really, would it have been so hard to just use a second m instead of an n?
I guess that’s what made her unique.
Again, there was nothing when I searched for her online. Either she kept her life clean or the universe had decided I’d had enough luck.
So my last option was the street. I parked far enough away so no one could see me.
To my luck, and because fate loved rubbing my nose in it, Sumner pulled up on the fifth day.
It had been late, and I couldn’t see her face from where I stood, but I could tell by the weight in her walk that she wasn’t okay.
Why would she be okay? Her boulder of a boyfriend killed himself in front of her, and I left her to clean up the mess.
I kept thinking about her on the phone with the ambulance, then the cops, then his family.
I hated the picture of her doing that alone.
She’d told me to leave, and for once I’d listened, even though everything in me wanted to stay and handle it for her. Not for Joey. Only for her.
So I stayed on the street, leaned against April with my helmet on and visor up, and watched her through the windows.
Unlike Joey, who had been a weirdo by walking around his house without any lights on, Sumner seemed to have flipped every single switch in the house.
I liked to believe she did it for me. Almost like she knew I was standing out here, watching her.
I knew that wasn’t the case, and I was being delusional once again, but I wasn’t hurting anyone with my thinking.
I saw her walk around the living room, picking things up and putting them down.
She entered the kitchen a few times, opened the fridge four times before deciding to grab a bag of chips from the cupboard.
Then she disappeared upstairs and only came back into view ten minutes later with her hair pulled up into a bun.
She still kept the lights on everywhere when she went into what I figured was her bedroom, and from then on, I didn’t see her until the early morning.
I was still there when the sky turned light grey—almost like her eyes—and I kept standing there with the hopes of her coming out of the house soon.
I had a full bladder and an empty stomach, and I needed to fuel myself sooner or later, or else I’d get grumpy.
The thought of just walking up to her front door and knocking in the hopes she’d let me in came to me a few times throughout the night, but it felt too intrusive.
So, I kept waiting until sometime around eight-thirty, and she finally stepped out of the house wearing black sweatpants and a tank top. From where I was standing, and with my perfect eyesight, I could see just how sad she was. She looked tired, too.
She locked the door, then stood on the stoop for a second like she was bracing for what the day would bring.
Whatever she was up to this morning, she wasn’t really happy doing it.
I slid my visor down when she walked to her car, and when she drove out of the driveway, I woke April and fell in behind her from far enough back that even I couldn’t accuse me of stalking.
It was a short drive to the grocery store, and after she parked, she headed inside without ever looking left or right.
She might’ve seemed focused or unbothered to people who didn’t know her story, but I knew she was in deep thought, just trying to get through the day.
I kept my helmet on, ready to head inside the store too, but my bladder whined at every move I made, begging me to empty it.
“I can’t fucking pee in an alley,” I murmured, narrowing my eyes at the wall next to April. Another sharp pain hit me right in the gut, and I decided then that going this many hours without peeing was pure torture.
“Fuck it,” I muttered, and pushed down my pants to take a piss in the alley behind the fucking grocery store. If there’s anything I should ever get punished for, it’s for shit like this.
After emptying my bladder and feeling April harshly judging me in silence, I rolled my eyes at her and at myself for being such a weirdo, before heading into the store.
Inside, I grabbed a basket because it’s what people do when they’re not stalking. I caught a glimpse of Sumner, who stood by the produce. I drifted toward the apples, with my helmet still on, and pretended to compare varieties like a man who cared about apples. Who even likes apples?
She picked up a bunch of cilantro, sniffed it, put it back, then grabbed another because the first one had clearly offended her. God, she looked so pretty as she tried to decide which bunch to take.
As she continued through the store, I kept my distance as much as I possibly could. For some stupid reason, I felt an intense pull toward her, almost like needing to just stand next to her. Or hold her. Yeah, I wanted to hold her. Tell her that everything will be okay.
But I did my best not to have her see me.
She was standing in the tea aisle now, looking at the millions of different options.
Why would she need tea, though? Maybe she felt a bit under the weather.
Or maybe tea helped her relax in stressful situations.
Though she didn’t look too stressed. Just… sad.
She reached for the top shelf and stretched up on her toes, and I moved instantly, wanting to help her, but I stopped when she got the box on her own. She dropped it in the basket without much care, then kept going.
The cereal aisle seemed to have bothered her, because she walked through it with an annoyed expression on her face, sighing and shaking her head at the options.
As she stood in the next aisle, I pretended to study cornflakes.
She still hadn’t noticed me, and we continued to do this dance all the way to the pasta, where she grabbed a pack of spaghetti.
Finally, she stopped in the middle of another aisle.
Tissues to the left of her. Paper plates to the right.
I planted myself by the end-of-aisle display, studying the wet wipes, and watched her out of the corner of my eye.
She stood with her back to me, but had her head turned toward the tissues.
Did she need them? Had she been crying these past few days? God, I hoped not.
She started to turn slowly, lowered the basket to the ground, and I was caught off guard when she looked me dead in the face.
“Sly.”
Shit.
Shit shit shit shit shit.
She said my name and didn’t even look surprised.
I was caught, and I couldn’t move. Maybe she said my name out of habit.
What habit, I don’t know. But maybe she had been thinking about me all week.
Maybe I had left such a big impression that she just randomly said my name out loud at random times.
Yeah, that’s it. I still had a chance to leave. Just turn and leave, Sly.
I ignored her and slapped my visor down, then tilted my head back, reaching for a box of wipes.
“Sly!”
Shit. Now she sounded pissed. Nope, not gonna stay here. I was stalking her, and she had just caught me, and I was going to hell. I surely wasn’t making myself liked by her after all this, so the best option for me now was to just leave.
“I swear to God, if you leave, I will throw something at you.” I took the threat very seriously.
With my body tensing, I put my basket down and slowly stepped into the aisle to face her. Letting out a heavy sigh, annoyed with myself, I finally said, “Hey, wow…what a crazy coincidence seeing you he—”
“Don’t.” She crossed her arms over her chest and shifted all her weight to one leg. “Don’t you dare act like you haven’t been watching me all week.”
Right.
Perfect.
So I hadn’t been subtle at all.
Good to know.
She frowned at me, her eyes searching my helmet. As much as I loved looking into her eyes, I was glad she couldn’t see mine. She’d see shame, and I wasn’t a man who was good at showing uncomfortable emotions.
Her brows rose. “Are you just gonna stand there and say nothing? I at least deserve an apology.”
I muttered a curse under my breath and lifted my visor first before deciding to take off my helmet altogether. I owed her that much.
“You’re not subtle, you know that?” she asked, not giving me a chance to speak. Which I was okay with, to be honest. I had no fucking idea what to say to her that could in any way justify my behavior.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?” Her brows rose further. “That’s all you have to say?”
“Yeah. I mean, no.” Running my free hand through my hair, I lowered my head in defeat. “I’m sorry.”
Her mouth did a single twitch, but it wasn’t a smile. “Are you going to follow me through every aisle, or do you want to tell me what you need?”
What I needed was not to ruin this moment. I needed to stay calm and not overwhelm her. “I needed to see you standing. Breathing. Not drowning in the fallout I left you with.”
“You didn’t leave me with the fallout,” she said.
“Yes, I did. Sure, you crashed my plans and messed things up, but they were still my issues you stumbled into. And you were the one left with them.”
She kept those perfect grey eyes on me, saying nothing, letting the silence sit between us. A few customers drifted past without giving a damn about us. One guy grunted when I stood in his way. A woman parked herself between us for almost two minutes, oblivious of her surroundings.
During all of that, Sumner never broke eye contact, and when we were alone again, I said, “I’m not here to make this weird.”
“You’re failing.”
“That tracks.” I rubbed the back of my neck.
“You scared me,” she said. “Not the knife or your intentions that night. The last five nights.”
I didn’t try to minimize it. She had every right to be this honest—and worried. “I’m sorry.”
“You said that already,” she said. “I need something more honest, Sly.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I told her. “I kept seeing you. I kept hearing you. I told myself I’d stay away because it was the right thing, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I stood in the dark like an idiot because I needed to know you were okay. You look sad and hurt, and I know that’s on me.”
“I’m not sad. Or hurt.”
I frowned. “But I killed Joey…”
“You didn’t kill him.”
My eyes rolled before I could stop them. It was a reflex at this point because I hated hearing, mostly from myself, that I didn’t kill any of these guys in the past. “Yeah, I kinda did.”
“No, Sly, you did not kill him,” she said, sharp and clear. “Because Joey is alive.”