“I don’t intend to share you with anyone else, but I got the gist of the package,” I inform him, pushing him back just enough to reach for my shirt on the floor. “I can treat you each as a separate relationship. That won’t be as difficult as the three of you seem to think.”
“Fuck,” he groans, picking me up, leaving my shirt on the floor. “You’re going to be the death of us.”
I smile, letting him carry me to the chair near my bedroom window. He sits with me draped across his lap, his body heat keeping me warm. I allow myself this moment to sink into the heat and the safety and the madness of it all.
And I fully acknowledge this doesn’t feel like falling.
It feels like being caught.
The two dots on my phone screen move closer to the loft, side by side, as I follow their location.
“She’s on her way back,” I tell Silas. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Good.” Silas doesn’t look away from his task. “Come here.”
I circle the kitchen island and stop beside him. His right hand clenches around the mouse hard enough that his knuckles go white. His left hand grips the edge of the desk like it’s the only thing keeping him vertical.
The wall monitor shows the familiar hallway outside of Eris’s apartment.
Then her living room.
Then her bedroom.
I lean in without meaning to.
There’s a man in a black hoodiepaintingher apartment; the color is visibly darker. He’s moved all the furniture just far enough away from the walls to squeeze through… It’s the most bizarre thing I think I’ve ever seen.
“What the fuck?” I murmur, running a hand through my hair. “Why?—”
“He painted her walls,” Silas says, deadly calm, but measured in a way that tells me he’s not sure why either. “Yesterday. He entered through the broken balcony window, propped her front door open so he could go downstairs and get all the supplies.”
Silas fast-forwards the camera feed to Daniel barefoot, missing the hoodie and his shirt, paint flecking his arms. He steps back to admire the walls like he’s finished something sacred.
A shrine.
He’s not just stalking her anymore; he’s completely delusional.
“The apartment felt wrong to her when she walked in,” I say quietly, recounting what Jace told me when he called.
Silas speeds up the feed, tracking Daniel’s movements as he cooks a meal in her kitchen and disappears into her bathroom. He comes out sometime later in a towel with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. And he grins at the camera as he drops the towel and climbs into her bed.
Her.
Fucking.
Bed.
Daniel was in her bed.
Naked.
Under her covers.
One arm thrown over her pillow, face pressed into it like he’s breathing her in.
“He slept there,” I say aloud, because one of us needs to acknowledge what we’re seeing.
“Yes.” That one venom-laced word resonates in my chest like the heavy thump of bass from a speaker.
