Chapter Six #3
I kiss her again. Slower this time. Softer. Taking my time with her mouth and learning the shape of her, the way she sighs
against my lips. Around us, the snow keeps falling and the city keeps moving, but none of it matters.
There’s only her.
When we pull apart again, I notice she’s shivering. The snow has been falling steadily, and her coat, while stylish, isn’t exactly built for standing outside in a snowstorm.
“You’re cold,” I say.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shivering.”
“That’s not completely from the cold.” She smirks, but her teeth are chattering slightly, and something protective twists
inside me.
I step back and scan the street until I spot a cab idling at the corner. I raise my hand and it pulls toward us, and I open
the back door for her. She slides into the backseat without protest, and I follow her in, giving the driver her address.
The cab pulls into traffic, and Hailey is still shivering beside me, her teeth chattering despite the heat blasting from the
vents. I shrug off my coat and drape it over her like a blanket, then pull her in close, my arm around her shoulders as I
rub her arm through the fabric, trying to generate some warmth.
She goes tense for a moment, her body rigid against mine. I wait, not pushing, holding her and watching the city slide past
the windows, everything muted by snow.
Slowly, degree by degree, she relaxes. Her weight settles against my side, and I feel some of the chill leave her body.
We don’t talk. We don’t need to.
The cab stops outside her building, and she stirs, pulling back to look at me. My coat is still draped around her shoulders,
and she looks smaller wrapped in it, more vulnerable somehow.
“I had a good time tonight,” she says. “In case that wasn’t obvious.”
“It was a little obvious.”
“Shut up.” But she’s smiling. “So what happens now?”
“Now I take you out again. Tomorrow night.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You’re not even going to ask?”
“Would you say no?”
A pause. Then her lips curve. “Seven o’clock. Don’t keep me waiting.”
She leans in and presses a kiss to my cheek, brief and warm and over too quickly, then shrugs off my coat and hands it back to me.
“Keep it,” I say. “You’re still cold.”
She blinks a few times as if she’s not understanding my words. “Then what will you wear?”
“I’ll survive.”
She considers me for a moment, then pulls the coat back around her shoulders. “Fine. But I’m only taking it because it smells
like you.”
Before I can respond to that, she’s opening the cab door. She steps out and walks toward her building, and halfway up the
steps she pauses and bends down to pick something up. When she straightens, she’s holding a single red rose, its petals dusted
with snow. She turns back toward the cab, and even from here I can see her smile as she lifts the flower to her nose.
She thinks it’s from me.
What the fuck?
She waves at me with the rose still in her hand, then disappears inside.
I didn’t leave that rose. I’ve never left her anything.
The dried roses in her apartment flash through my mind. I’d assumed she bought them herself, but now I’m realizing I was wrong.
Someone has been leaving her roses. Not only tonight, but for weeks. Maybe months.
And it isn’t me.
I tell the driver to wait.
Her window lights up, and my stomach turns to ice.
That’s when I notice him.
A figure stands across the street, half-hidden beneath an awning, nearly invisible in the falling snow. Dark coat, hood pulled
up, face completely obscured. He’s not moving, not fidgeting, just watching her building with a stillness that comes from
training.
He’s been here a while. Long before our cab pulled up.
I open the cab door and step out into the snow.
His head turns at the movement, and for a long moment we stare at each other.
His hood is pulled too low and the distance is too great for me to make out any of his features, but I can see enough.
The way he holds himself, the restraint in his posture.
Former military. Someone who knows how to disappear when he wants to.
Someone who fucked up tonight by not noticing me first.
I take a step toward him. Before I can take another, he’s turning away, walking down the sidewalk without hurry. He rounds
the corner and disappears like he was never there.
I memorize everything I can. Height, approximately six feet. Build, lean but strong. The direction he went, the timing of
his retreat. It’s not much, but it’s a start.
Hailey has a stalker. And it isn’t me.
My jaw sets and my hands curl into fists inside my gloves.
I’ve spent months following this woman, learning her patterns, watching from a distance. But I’ve never left her anything.
I’ve never made my presence known. This man has been leaving gifts, inserting himself into her life, and Hailey has no idea
that the roses she’s been drying and displaying aren’t from some secret admirer with good intentions.
They’re from someone who watches her window in the middle of the night.
Someone like me, but without my restraint.
If this stranger thinks he can get between me and Hailey, he’s about to learn exactly what happens when you threaten what
belongs to me.