12. Lilith
CHAPTER TWELVE
“ A re you going to offer me any advice or are you just going to sit there?”
Katniss didn’t even twitch. She remained a perfect little pancake, sprawled out on my stomach, her tiny arms spread wide like she’d collapsed after a particularly exhausting day of doing absolutely nothing.
I squinted down at her. “Oh? You think I should shut the hell up?”
She cracked open one eye, stared at me for a beat, then promptly closed it again.
I sighed. “Yeah, me too.”
Lizard therapy wasn’t helping me tonight.
My brain had become one of those malfunctioning vending machines. The kind where you put your money in, press the button for chips, but instead of dispensing them, it just whirrs loudly, eats your change, and shoots you the metaphorical, electrical version of the middle finger.
Except instead of chips, my brain was stuck on him.
The sight of him standing on the sidewalk, frozen, waving at me like I hadn’t just caught him lurking in the shadows, leaving gifts at my doorstep like some hooded, half-scarved, deranged six-foot-five tooth fairy.
And come to think of it, the gifts had started before I’d caught him on my doorstep. Before the grab. Before I even knew he existed.
Had he been following me before that?
Watching me?
The thought should’ve made me sick, should’ve sent ice-cold nausea rolling through my gut, should’ve made my skin crawl right off my body. And it did . Sort of.
I mean. It should have.
But it didn’t. Not completely.
Because instead of horror, instead of fear, there was something else winding its way through my stomach.
One question.
Why?
I glanced down at Katniss, scratching under her chin. “It’s weird, right?”
She didn’t care. Not even a little bit. But I did.
Because those gifts? They weren’t normal. They weren’t random. They’d been too well thought-out.
Clark would never have put that much effort into anything unless it directly benefited him. He would have made a grand show of it, used it as leverage, a bargaining chip to wave in my face whenever it suited him.
‘Remember when I bought you that thing?’
‘Remember what a great boyfriend I was?’
He’d never paid attention. He didn’t remember that I hated roses or that I only drank oat milk because dairy turned me into a ticking time bomb. He didn’t remember the books I loved, the songs that made my chest ache, or the little things that warmed me from the inside out.
Him giving me gifts had never been about him noticing something about me. They were transactions. Tokens meant to earn forgiveness, affection, control. He gave to get. That’s all it was.
But I had been so certain that it was him. So sure that his love-bombing, his desperate attempts to drag me back, had simply escalated into something more personal. Because who else would it have been?
I ran my thumb over the cool metal in my hand, tracing the ridges and edges like I was trying to decipher some kind of secret message.
The box he’d left on my doorstep the morning I’d caught him hadn’t been some cryptic little offering.
No, it had been a full-on self-defence kit.
A keychain with pepper spray, a personal alarm, and one of those tactical knuckle things designed to jab straight into someone’s throat.
Because nothing says ‘totally normal and not concerning’ like your unsolicited gift-giver arming you for combat.
And, of course, because apparently he had some mysterious brand to uphold, there had been another quote tucked inside.
‘ Courage, Dear Heart.’ - C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
I exhaled slowly, flipping the keychain over in my palm.
Some people buy drinks. Some people buy pepper spray.
Love languages are diverse.
And to be fair, safety was sexy. Maybe he had good intentions? Maybe this was just his version of flirting? A slow burn? An insane, felonious, borderline horror movie slow burn?
But despite that, it had stopped. He’d disappeared. The shadow had become one with the shadows. And wasn’t that what I’d wanted? For the gifts to stop? To be left the hell alone?
So why the fuck couldn’t I stop thinking about Budget Phantom of the Opera?
I sighed down at Katniss. “Tell me this is insane.”
No comment.
But— God . Those dark, unreadable eyes. The way they’d locked onto mine from feet away. The way they’d widened when I’d demanded answers.
And the way his gaze had raked over me… Slow and intentional. Like he was memorising every inch.
“What if—hear me out—he’s really bad at introductions?” I said to Katniss. “Like, maybe he was going to introduce himself properly, but then he panicked and got stuck in a weird, gift-giving spiral and just… didn’t know how to stop. Because, you know. Social anxiety is a bitch.”
Or—crazy thought, Lilith—he’s a fucking stalker.
I should’ve called the cops.
Nope. Never mind.
They’d never been there. Not when I was a kid, screaming for help in a house that swallowed my voice whole. So why would they be there now?
And what would I even say?
“ Oh, please help me, officer! A man has given me croissants and the tools to defend myself against men! Yes, yes, he’s very mysterious! No, I don’t know what he looks like! But I do know his taste in literature is impeccable!”
Yeah. That would go down a treat.
Was this what rock bottom looked like? Was I so destroyed, wired so wrong, that the red flags weren’t just blurred—they’d turned into some really pretty shade of green?
Maybe if I’d been given real love as a kid, I wouldn’t be sat here wondering if my stalker was just a misunderstood dumbass who never learned how to flirt.
Why me? Why this? Why now?
Had I done something to invite it? Had I missed a moment, a detail, a sign?
Was it random? Or had there been a reason lurking right underneath the surface? Something I’d overlooked?
Call it morbid curiosity. Call it childhood trauma. Call it a survival instinct dressed as a huge mistake.
But, to hell with it.
I needed to know.
I’d spent too much of my life being left with questions. Gaping holes where explanations should be. Filling in the blanks with ‘maybe it was my fault, maybe if I’d just—’
Not this time. This time I wanted to understand.