Page 101 of Creep

“I have always been honest.”

I kept my gaze on the ceiling. I couldn’t exactly refute that, considering we hadn’t talked all that much, so perhaps he was telling the truth when he said he had always been honest.

“So if I ask, you’ll answer me?”

“Yup. But before you ask, make sure you can handle the answer.”

“Handle the answer,” I repeated. “There’s that word again.”Handle.

Did Caden not think I could handle whatever it was in that book? And did my stalker not think I could handle the answers to the questions I would ask him?

I hated to even think it, but I was afraid they might be right.

“What was that?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “Nothing. Just something my brother said.”

“Your brother’s dead.”

I sucked in a sharp breath and turned toward him, even if I couldn’t see him. “You seem to know a lot about me.”

He made a small sound in acknowledgment.

“Then you know I’m dating someone,” I said.

Again, he made that sound.

And I wondered if someone who claimed to be as obsessed with me as he did, who had done every illegal and immoral thing to be with me, would have let go of the fact that I was with another man.

Before you ask, make sure you can handle the answer.

Why did I think I wouldn’t be able to handle this answer?

27

LIA

I frowned downat my phone just as the call went to voicemail.

Victoria had been trying to reach me. And I had been ignoring her.

I had been ignoring Leo as well, but it wasn’t like I talked to him all that much anyway, so ignoring him was easier than ignoring her.

Which hadn’t been a problem when I told her I’d been busy and declined her invitation to Brody’s Bar two nights before. But she could probably tell I had been ignoring her, considering how many times she tried to call me since and how many times I had been pushing her off.

I hadn’t even thought about Brody since Mael and I had gotten together, and surprisingly, Brody hadn’t called me. Perhaps I hadn’t been the only one to feel that our chemistry was…off.

Or maybe I had gotten off easy and didn’t have to explain anything to him.

I didn’t know, and now wasn’t the time to think about that because I was five minutes away from starting my shift.

I shoved the phone into my pocket and headed out from where I had been hiding in the back to the computer out front and punched in my time.

Then I got to work.

It wasn’t until I was about five hours into my shift that the door opened, and I felt the air shifting. I looked up to see a man I had never met before, yet there was this familiarity to him. And the way he was looking at me made me think I was supposed to know him somehow.

I watched as he walked up to the counter, his pace slow and confident, as if he was used to having others wait for him, watching him, talking about him.

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