A pointed. Freaking. Glare. For smiling at him.
Well, looked like rudeness was genetic. Which was absolutely fine. She wasn’t in the market for more friends anyway. Not him at least.
She climbed into her car and pulled onto the road. She hated that she hadn’t been able to watch Avery tonight. Usually she’d leap at any opportunity to spend time with the kid, but with her grandmother and a couple of their part-time workers not feeling well, she’d had no choice. And the decreased staff numbers today meant that most of the prep for tomorrow needed to be done tonight, hence her late evening.
Of course, there’d been the smallest, teeny-tiniest part of her that was also relieved that she wouldn’t be seeing Eastern. It sounded awful, but anytime she thought about what he’d said, something inside her experienced a sharp jab.
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
She pulled onto the road. Each time he touched her, he went out of his way to make sure she knew it was a mistake. But the thing was…it didn’t feel like a mistake. Not to her. To her it felt good and real and right.
She clamped her teeth on her bottom lip, the flicker of pain forcing the heat out of her body. And dammit…she wanted him. A lot. But she wanted him to want her too, without the regret that immediately seemed to follow.
She’d only been driving for a couple of minutes when her gaze went to the car behind her. The driver wasn’t overly close, but they’d been trailing her since she left the shop. They’d actually pulled out at almost the same time she had, from a spot at the curb a few doors down.
They couldn’t actually be following her…could they?
Instead of driving straight, like she normally would have to get to her apartment, she took the next left, her pulse picking up speed when the car also turned.
It’s fine. Maybe they live in this direction.
On the next left turn, she sped up and quickly followed it with a right. For a second, she thought she was okay. The air even started to flow with a bit more ease into her chest.
Then the car showed up behind her.
What the hell?
Maybe it was the thudding of her heart, or maybe she’d just watched too many true crime documentaries, but she instinctively reached for her phone. Instead of calling the sheriff’s station, she called Eastern’s direct number.
He picked up on the first ring. “Sadie? Is everything okay?”
“I’m not sure.”
She paused, and when Eastern spoke again, his voice was on alert. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I think someone’s following me. I keep taking random turns and they’re always behind me. I don’t want to go home in case they follow me there.”
A curse sounded over the line. “Where are you?”
“Adams Street.”
“That’s not far from me. Drive toward the station. I’ll wait for you outside.”
She worried her bottom lip as the car behind her started to put some distance between them.
She sped up and took the next right, her gaze barely on the road in front of her as she looked in the rearview mirror.
“Sadie? Are you coming to the station?”
The headlights of the car kept going straight instead of turning right. The air whooshed from her chest. “They went straight.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I must be on edge or something. I turned, and they went straight. No one’s following me.”
“I still want you to come to the station so I can follow you home.”
She opened her mouth to tell him that wasn’t necessary when her car suddenly shook, almost like it was going over a series of small bumps. What the hell was that?
