Page 58 of Ruin Me Gently

My chair scraped against the floor as I pushed up and headed straight for the door. The bell jingled as I stepped onto the pavement, the cold air biting my skin.

He didn’t do anything. Didn’t even move an inch. Just stood there, hands tucked into his pockets, face half-covered by that damn stupid scarf.

I raised my brows at him, lifting my hands in a‘what the fuck?’motion.

He just tilted his head before slowly lifting his own hands in response.

A ‘what the fuck’back?!

Were we mirroring now?

The sheer audacity of this Phantom of the Opera, scarf-wearing, shadow-dwelling, lunch-delivering menace.

He pulled out his phone and tapped the screen.

A second later, my own phone buzzed.

Mr Stalker

Go back to work and eat your damn lunch.

I blinked at my screen, then slowly looked back up at him.

Was he serious? Like,deadserious?

I let out the kind of exhale that could’ve flattened the Seattle skyline and spun on my heel, stalking back inside.

Not because he told me to. Absolutely not.

I just happened to be done standing outside. In the cold. Staring at an apparently nutritionally concerned stalker.

That was all.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Lilith

Tell me something about yourself.

Silas

No.

Lilith

Oh, come on. Pretty please?

She’d been at thisfor days.

The same question, the same persistence, trying to pry something out of me, to find some crack in the wall I’d built between us.

She was relentless, and I, stupidly, was starting to like it.

But I couldn’t tell her a damn thing. She couldn’t know me. If she knew me, she…

No.

She was standing at the counter, brows knit in mild frustration as she stared down at some paperwork.

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