Page 75 of Creeping Lily
“Here.”
I take it, fingers brushing his for a second. The normalcy of the gesture hits me like a lifeline. I sip slowly, letting the cold water coat my throat, cooling the burn.
Justin’s watching me, not in a hovering way, but like he’s measuring every movement, every pause. “You want to tell me what happened?”
The question makes my grip on the bottle tighten. How do I explain it? Three attacks in a matter of weeks, three nights where the air felt thick with death. And now… him. The hooded man who saves me like it’s his job, but whose presence feels as dangerous as it does protective.
“It’s… complicated,” I say finally, my voice weak.
His brow furrows. “How complicated can it be? Bethany said you came running in here like you were being hunted.”
“That’s not the part that matters,” I mutter. I shouldn’t have said it out loud. But my mind is already pulling me back into the fog, to the sharp gleam of a knife and the way my hooded savior moved—precise, practiced, lethal.
“Then what does matter?” Justin leans forward, elbows resting on his knees. There’s no softness in his gaze now, just a quiet demand for answers.
I set the bottle down, my hands trembling. And I tell him. About the library. About the shadow trailing me. About the sudden weight of a man’s body pinning me to a tree. About the knife. About the stranger who appeared like smoke, yanked the attacker off me, and gave me the single word that got me moving—run.
When I finish, Justin’s silence is louder than his questions. His jaw works once before he asks, “You never saw his face?”
“No. The attacker had a ski mask. The other guy… just a hood.”
His gaze sharpens. “Are you sure you saw two men? Not just one?”
“I know what I saw, Justin.” My voice is firmer than I feel.
“This is serious, Lily. We have to tell campus security.”
“No.” The word shoots out before I can soften it. “I can’t handle hours of interrogation. Not right now.”
He pulls his phone out anyway, thumbs moving fast. “Then I’ll tell someone.”
I stare at him, torn between wanting to stop him and knowing he’s only doing what I can’t. My skin prickles under his concern, a strange mix of safety and suffocation.
“Bethany went for coffee,” he says, glancing up. “She’ll be back soon. I’m stepping outside for a minute.”
I nod, watching him leave. The door shuts softly, but theroom still feels too small. I lean back against the wall, my mind dragging me back into the park.
The hooded man’s eyes flash in my memory—shadowed, unreadable, but burning with something fierce. Protective, yes. But not safe.
Who is he?
The question twists tighter the more I think about it, like a thread pulling through the fabric of my thoughts until everything feels frayed.
But it’s not just who. It’s where.
Because somewhere out there—maybe in the fog, maybe just beyond the dorm’s thin walls—he’s still here. I can feel it in the way the air seems to hold its breath, in the prickle along my skin that hasn’t faded since last night.
And I don’t know what’s worse—the idea that he might be gone…or the certainty that he’s not.
38
TITAN
The night air cuts like broken glass across my face as I haul the bastard over my shoulder, his dead weight a living reminder of what he tried to do to Lily.
Every groan that leaks from him is muffled, but I hear them clear as day—ugly little sounds that tell me I’ve hurt him, but not nearly enough. Not yet.
His blood is warm against my back, soaking into my jacket from the cut at his temple. It’s not enough blood. It’ll never be enough until I wring every last drop out of him.
