Page 110 of Creep

“You have to go,” I whispered against his lips. I reached up and kissed him once more, not wanting it to end but knowing it had to.

He pulled back from me at last, and I watched as he gathered up his stuff and moved toward my bedroom door.

He paused when he got to the threshold, staying there and watching me. I couldn’t see him clearly in the dark, but I could sense his confusion.

Then he nodded and walked out the door.

“Mael?”

He paused, then turned around and took me in. “Yeah, kitten?”

I smiled. “Nothing.”

He stood there for a beat before he turned again and walked away from me. Just before he disappeared from my sight, I whispered, “I love you.”

He stopped in his step.

My heart beat frantically in my chest, wondering if he heard me.

He didn’t turn around like I expected but continued walking out the door.

I waited about ten minutes before I threw the cover off my body and grabbed my phone. I had already packed a small bag, and it was stashed away in my closet. I pulled that bag out and pulled up Leo’s contact on my phone.

Despite the late hour, he picked up on the first ring. “Lia, sweetheart. Is everything okay?”

I took in a long, deep breath, trying to hold onto my composure. I didn’t want to lose it over the phone. “I need your help.”

29

MAEL

I drovelike a man obsessed because that was what I was.

She ran away from me.

From me.

And into the fucking arms of the last man she should have run to.

She wouldn’t have done that if she knew everything, and now it was too fucking late. She was in his grasp, and I didn’t fucking know where he had hidden her.

I love you.

Her whispered words ran through my mind over and over again.

If she loved me, then why the fuck did she run away?

And I was fucking stupid enough not to act on my gut feeling that something was fucking wrong when I came over to her apartment that night. My fists tightened around the wheel. Lia got a head start.

It was only a couple of hours later when I decided to check in on her and realized something was fucking wrong, but it was a couple of hours she managed to use to her advantage.

And she fucking had help.

I pulled up to a factory on the outskirts of town, not dissimilar to the one I had been trapped in before.

Leo didn’t hide Lia here. I knew that much.

I still didn’t know what that fucker wanted with my girl, but it wasn’t to start her working here. Not like he did with Theo and me.

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