My stomach hits the ground. “You…you’re going to kill me?”
“Walk,” he says, ignoring the question.
I start walking into the woods as slowly as I can. I have to stall. I have to find an opportunity to run. I have to leave a trail.
I drag my toe in the dirt as casually as I can. If someone comes out this way in the near future, hopefully the scuff will still be there.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “What did I ever do to you?”
“I liked you,” Barry says. “A lot. And I thought you felt it too.”
“We had one date,” I say in disbelief. “And honestly, I’m not surehow you thought we connected. It didn’t feel awkward to you?”
“Maybe a little,” he says. “But that’s because you didn’t give it a chance. You didn’t givemea chance. No one does.”
To be fair, he’s right. I didn’t give him much of a chance, but I also don’t owe him anything, and certainly not my life.
“I thought maybe you just needed some time to get back into dating since you said you’d just started again,” he says, “but then I followed you to that club a few weeks later and saw you practically having sex on the dancefloor. You crumpled up the note I left on your car that night without even reading it.”
I recall the piece of paper I found on my windshield when Ash escorted me back to my car at the casino.
“I thought the note was one of those advertisements people leave on windshields. The last time I got one of those, it was for a psychic reader,” I say as I nearly stumble over a rotted tree branch. Then something clicks into place. “Wait, you were at the club? Were you the one who took the video of me and Ash?”
“Yeah,” he says, disgust in his voice. “I uploaded it to one of the discussion boards I’m on for other guys like me who’ve been unfairly passed over by women, and someone sent it to the media. I just wanted to show people what a slut you were.”
My anger spikes, but I rein it in. Fuck what this asshole thinks of me.
“You refused to let me pick you up for our date, but you lethimpick you up,” Barry says. “I saw it on the news a couple days later. Were the two of you already together when you went out with me?”
“Of course not,” I say. “I knew Ash already, but we weren’t dating yet. It…we didn’t exactly plan to get together.”
“And the rose petals and note I left for you meant nothing?” he asks.
“You mean the rose petals you broke into my house to leave?” I snap back at him as we walk. “What made you think I’d like that? That I wouldn’t find it completely creepy?”
He scoffs. “Isn’t that women’s thing nowadays? I watch BookTok.You all want your own personal stalker.”
I glance back at him. I’m shivering, both from fear and cold, but that observation sends more hot anger down my spine.
“Are you serious? Do you really not understand the difference between fiction and reality?” I ask as I nearly trip again. I take the opportunity to leave another long scuff in the dirt. “Books are an opportunity for people to safely experience something extreme. My friend loves horror as a genre, but that doesn’t mean she wants to be hacked to death by an axe murderer or hunted by a monster wielding a chainsaw.”
There’s silence behind me, and I look around desperately. We’re surrounded by trees, but I’m not sure they’re dense enough to provide cover from gunfire if I run for it. Still, I can’t let Barry push me too far into the woods. The further we get from the road, the more screwed I am.
I make a decision and turn to face him.
“Turn around and walk!” he yells, waving the gun at me.
I shake my head. “No. You want to kill me, do it here. I’m not going to save you the trouble of dragging my body further into the woods.”
He raises the gun more, but his hand shakes, and I dare to hope he doesn’t have it in him to pull the trigger.
“Did you even think about contacting me when you saw the note and rose petals?” he asks.
“I never saw them,” I say. “Ash found them first and got rid of them.”
He makes a noise of disgust and drops the gun a little so it’s no longer pointed at my chest. “Of course he did.”
“How would I have known they were from you anyway?” I ask.
