Page 36 of Creep

The text could be sweet if he had put men on her simply to protect her. But I knew better. This wasn’t protection. This was possessiveness.

The thought of another man encroaching on my territory just got my hackles rising, and it took all the self-control I had not to drive over to the fucker’s house and kill him in his sleep.

I would have done it if the fucker’s house wasn’t like a fortress. Getting in and out to kill him wouldn’t be easy. Not impossible, but that didn’t tell me why he was so obsessed with Lia to begin with, or why he wanted her father dead. He knew she had made the police report because I had told him about it. Briggs seemed happy about the fact that there might be a public record of Lia having a stalker, and I didn’t know why. It didn’t matter that there weren’t any public records of Lia’s report. I killed that plan when I guessed she would be calling the cops to report me after seeing me in her bathroom. Not that she knew that. Not that Leo knew that.

I didn’t know what his game plan was, but I planned on finding out.

It also wouldn’t tell me where the fuck Briggs was running his business.

It wasn’t like me to care, and perhaps it made me sound callous, but I didn’t care about the human trafficking ring he ran. Sure, innocent human lives were at stake, and there was a small part of me, a small, inconsequential part of me, that pitied those people in such a hopeless situation. But in the grand scheme of things, they didn’t matter.

Just as I didn’t matter, just as no one mattered on this godforsaken earth, but I was sure Lia cared, and a part of mecaredthat she did.

And Theo fucking cared. Him and his bleeding heart.

And in my world, as of now, only Lia and Theo mattered.

And that was all there was to it.

14

LIA

Mael was back.

And I was hiding in the back of the coffee shop like a coward, not knowing how to face him, even if there was a big part of me that wanted to see him.

I wanted to know if the blue of his ocean eyes wasreallythat blue, if the blond hair still looked soft enough to touch, and if his strong muscles had been nothing more than my infatuated mind playing tricks on me. Was he really built the way I had been imagining, and was his mere presence still just as…captivating?

I shook my head and thought back to the coffee sleeve with his number. It was safely tucked into the drawer of my nightstand. I hadn’t put his number in my phone. It didn’t matter when I had the ten digits already memorized by heart.

I didn’t even remember my own father’s number.

But I knew his, and I…

I still wasn’t convinced he had left the number there for me, even if that was the most likely outcome. But why?

“Lia, we need you out front,” Sophia called out by the doorway leading into the kitchen.

Hell.

There was no more hiding.

I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the inevitable encounter, trying—and failing—to prepare myself for the impending grip on my heart. My hands trembled a bit as I tied my apron back on, smoothing out the imaginary wrinkles, stalling for even a second.

“Coming!” I called out, knowing I could no longer stay back here. My voice sounded strained, even to my own ears. This was ridiculous. There was no reason for me to be feeling this way. There was no reason for me to be this nervous. He was just another patron, simply here for a cup of coffee, and that was all.

As I stepped out from the safety of the kitchen, my eyes immediately strayed to him. I didn’t need to look around. It was as if there was an imaginary string connected from my chest to his, leading me to him, no matter what. Mael stood by the counter. His presence was like a light, or a sea, commanding the room just from simply being in it.

I felt like I was suffocating just looking at him. It took me a moment to realize it was because I wasn’t breathing. I took in a huge gulp of air, drawing his attention to me. I froze.

He smiled.

He was even more beautiful than I remembered. It felt almost like a crime that my memory hadn’t done him any justice. The ocean blue of his eyes twinkled in the light as his tan skin caught the sun, casting a golden glow on him that almost looked… ethereal.

Or perhaps I was looking at him through rose-colored glasses.

A quick look around told me other patrons were looking at him too.

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