Page 16 of Tag

“Get your head out of the gutter, Ryder Voss.”

He laughed, warm and rich, and for a second, I forgot the chill in the air. “I didn’t even think what you assumed I did. That tells me whose mind is really filthy.”

“That’s a lie. Did you forget I can read yours?”

“And that superpower works through the phone now?”

“Of course it does.”

“Okay. What am I thinking then?”

I grinned. “That I’m always right.”

He laughed again, and I closed my eyes for a second, holding onto the sound like it was something precious. It wasridiculous how much I missed it; how much I missed him. The background faded, and I knew he’d stepped away from whatever noise was around him.

“I miss you, Sass.” His voice was low and soft, stripped of pretense.

I almost came right out and said I had been thinking the same thing mere seconds ago. I didn’t know how to respond without giving too much away. My fingers curled tighter around the railing, the cold metal biting into my palms. I wanted to ask if he missed me the way I missed him, like a phantom limb or a secret kept so long it becomes part of your bones.

I wanted to know if he ever stayed up at night, thinking about the things we never said. If he remembered the promise we made when we were kids, sealed with a dandelion I kept pressed in a picture frame back home that was filled with memories of us.

I didn’t give a voice to any of that, though. I couldn’t. Not when everything already felt like a wire pulled too tight. There were a millionmaybesandwhat-ifscrowding the space between us, but two truths cut through it all right then.

He had a girlfriend.

And I had a boyfriend, sleeping just a few rooms away.

I gave him the safest answer I could. “I’m right here.”

He chuckled, but it was different now, quieter, darker around the edges. “Funny. I can’t feel you.”

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Just beyond the tree line that framed the narrow field behind the dorm apartments. At first, I thought it was nothing, but the glow of a streetlamp stretched long across the asphalt, catching on a figure in a hood. That wouldn’t have been alarming given it was cold outside, but they weren’t moving, and although I couldn’t see their face, it felt like they were watchingme.

“Sass?” Ryder’s voice came through the line with concern.

“Yeah—I’m here,” I replied quickly, my voice uneven as I tried to soothe my nerves.

I reached behind for the door, not taking my eyes off of whoever this person was. Just as I grasped the little wedge to slide it open, the person lifted a hand and waved. Not a wave of greeting, but slow and deliberate, like this was a pageant. Then they turned and disappeared into the trees behind the parking lot, swallowed by the dark.

“What the hell was that?”

“Sanj?” Ryder’s voice sharpened immediately, the subtle shift in my tone not slipping past him for even a second. “What’s wrong?”

I walked backward into the apartment. “Nothing. Some guy was walking around out back and gave me the creeps. Probably a student messing around.”

“At 1 AM? What did they look like?”

I hesitated, scanning the tree line. “I don’t know. They had on a hoodie or a jacket with their hood up. I couldn’t see their face, but they waved at me.”

Silence stretched across the line so long I had to pull the phone from my ear to make sure we were still connected. When he finally spoke, it was low and dead serious. “Why are you outside right now?”

“I’m not anymore. I was on the balcony,” I replied quietly, belatedly cluing in and remembering the fact that Ryder was overprotective of me on a normal day. “It was probably just a student, like I said.”

I was trying to convince myself as much as him, but it wasn’t working. A few hours ago, the same kind of person was near the edge of The Pit, hanging back in the shadows. What if someone had followed me? No, that was ridiculous. I wasn’t remotely interesting enough to have a stalker. If anything, astalker would warn other stalkers to stay away. The second-hand embarrassment I doled out would be a physical pain.

“After what you said earlier,” Ryder continued, his voice cutting through my thoughts, “probably isn’t good enough.”

“Rye--.”

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