Page 57 of Creeping Lily
Bentley Walker.
The name is acid in my mouth.
He steps inside with the kind of slow, deliberate movement that sets my teeth on edge, his eyes locked on me as if he’s neverlost sight of me—not in three years, not for a moment. The air between us feels too thick to breathe. The sound of chairs scraping, cups clinking, even Bethany’s shifting beside me—it all goes hollow, as if we’ve stepped into a separate, sealed-off space where nothing and no one else exists.
He doesn’t glance at Bethany. Doesn’t glance at Amara. Doesn’t even glance at the man behind the counter. There’s no question who he’s here for.
My pulse hammers in my throat, an instinctive, unwelcome reminder of the night he left scars no one could see. The night he became my nightmare.
“What are you doing here?” The words scrape out of me before I can stop them, too quiet for the chaos I feel inside.
He takes a step closer. “Lily.”
It’s soft, too soft—like he’s tasting it, savoring it. Like my name still belongs to him.
Bethany glances between us, brows knitting. She has no idea who the fuck he is, and she’s the one who knows me best. I can feel the questions radiating off her.
I push back from the table so fast the legs of my chair screech against the floor. “I’ll be right back.” The smile I throw Bethany is tight, brittle. She hesitates, but I don’t give her the chance to speak.
I grab Bentley’s arm and drag him outside, ignoring the eyes burning into my back. The moment the café door shuts, I spin on him, every muscle taut. “Why are you here?”
He follows me down the sidewalk, unhurried. That alone infuriates me. Rage burns hot and bright, scraping at my insides. I’ve spent years sealing myself away from the stain of this man, building walls high enough to block out the memory of his hands, his voice, the betrayal that night. And now here he is, as if he’s earned the right to stand this close to me again.
“I came to see you,” he says, voice low.
The sound of it is wrong. Too deep. Too familiar. Too dangerous.
“Obviously. But why?” I snap. “Why now? Why are you showing up now after all this time, as though nothing happened?”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “After all this time,” he repeats, like the words are supposed to mean something to me.
Three years. Three years of silence. Three years of me clawing my way out of the pit he helped throw me into. And now he’s wearing a suit, his hair in artful disarray, like some leading man in a movie I never agreed to be in.
But this isn’t a reunion scene. This is a reckoning.
He didn’t just happen to be in the neighborhood. I know it. And somewhere deep inside, a colder thought seeps in—my stalker’s warning, the cryptic mention of a “visitor.” Was this who he meant? Was Bentley the threat walking toward me all along? And how the hell would he even know that?
“How did you even find me?”
“I’ve always known where you were.”
My stomach twists. How? We’ve had no contact. No mutual friends. No reason. Unless… unless he’s been watching. Unless someone’s been telling him. Unless there’s more to the warning than I realized.
“Why now?”
His mouth tightens, hands slipping into his pockets. “Penance,” he says finally. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you, Lily. About that night.”
The words crack something in me, but not the way he wants.
“There’s no penance big enough to erase what you did to me,” I bite out. “No apology that gives me back what I lost.”
“I’ve regretted it every day,” he says, like that’s enough. Like regret is currency that can buy back the pieces of me he helped shatter.
I take a step closer, my voice dropping to something sharp and cold. “You were my friend before you were my monster, Bentley. And some things—” I lean in until I can see my reflection in his eyes “—are unforgivable.”
Something flickers in his gaze. Not guilt. Something darker. Something that says he doesn’t like the reminder that I once trusted him.
He swallows, looks away, but the damage is done.
