“Your footprints.”
Matter-of-fact. Like that was a perfectly normal thing to be doing on a Thursday morning outside Whitestone Hall.
I scoffed and said, “There’s no way.” Between the dozens and dozens of students who’d walked through there that morning, surely any prints I’d left would have faded into the general chaos of disturbed dirt and mud.
Rowan pointed to something near the entrance, a spot where water had pooled and then receded, leaving behind a perfect canvas of damp earth. That gesture, that silent invitation, caused my curiosity to pull me forward.
Students flowed around us like water around stones, oblivious to whatever strange ritual was unfolding. The dirt patch was small, maybe three feet square, trampled by countless feet into a minefield of overlapping impressions.
“You do not walk straight into anything.”
I bristled, every defensive instinct flaring hot and immediate. “Excuse me?”
His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, and my traitorous heart stuttered in my chest. Pulse kicking up, breathing coming faster, heat crawling up my neck despite the cool morning air.
Well shit.
“You circle into places before you enter. Look,” he pointed. “There.” He crouched again, and I followed his movement. My gaze was drawn to the way his jacket pulled tight across his shoulders, the way his long fingers gestured towards a set of faded prints mixed among so many others.
I squinted at the smudges in the mud. “There’s no way to tell if those are mine.”
But even as I said it, I was looking at the prints he indicated. Since he’d pointed it out, I saw the pattern. It was there if you knew what to look for—a series of wide arcs approaching the entrance to Whitestone Hall, then a tight curve away, before finally straightening out and veering off the path to the door of the lecture hall. Not the direct path most people took. Not the efficient route.
“The stride matches your size shoes, they come from the direction of your dorm, and,” he looked down pointedly, “Those are your size andshape of shoe.” I felt his analytical gaze as he assessed my feet. “Why don’t you step over it?”
The challenge in his voice made my teeth set on edge. I obliged, placed my boot directly over the faded impression, and felt something cold slide down my spine when it fit perfectly. Not just close.Perfect.
“How the—"
“Most animals walk in a straight line for energy efficiency.” His voice took on an educational tone, patient and clinical, like he was explaining basic arithmetic. “Very rarely do they make the extra effort to deviate from that unless they are being chased or feel threatened.”
I stared at the print, then at the hundreds of others nearby. He was right. Most of them cut straight paths—direct lines from point A to point B, the way normal people moved through the world without thinking about it. Mine curved, hesitated, approached from angles.
Exposed. That’s what this feels like.Someone peeling back my skin to examine the machinery underneath, cataloguing my tells, my patterns, the unconscious behaviors that gave away more than I’d ever intended to share.
Some primal part of my brain—the part that remembered being watched, catalogued, studied like a specimen in a glass case—screamed at me. Memories of previous life were constantly intertwined and swirling with this one, painting everything with a brush of surveillance and threat.
Edward had studied me like that. He’d watch until he knew which positions made me cry the hardest, which words made me flinch, which friends of his I would do anything to avoid. He’d used that knowledge like a weapon, a currency, a tool of control.
I shoved that memory down and clenched my jaw until my teeth ached.
This man is not Edward. This is not the same.
This was Rowan. Sure, he was strange, and rude, and a gigantic pain in my ass. . . but he was also my childhood friend. He’d appointed himself my protector without asking, and he’d shadowed me for days with a patient inevitability. He was someone who looked at me like I was worth defending, even when I told him to fuck off.
The invasive feeling shifted, twisted, turned into something else. A feeling closer to beingseenrather thanwatched—beingknownversus beingstudied.
“You ever think I just don’t like walking in a straight line?” The deflection was weak, and we both knew it. My voice lacked conviction, lost somewhere between defensive anger and reluctant fascination.
Rowan shrugged, the movement elegant for someone so large. “Or maybe you do not enjoy people getting close to you.” He straightened, and I had to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. Six-foot-five of muscle, looking down at me with those pale, icy eyes. “Regardless, I am glad to see I can find you even when you attempt in vain to be sneaky.”
“It’s creepy how you knew I was nearby.” I shoved my hands in my jacket pockets and tried to sound annoyed rather than unsettled.
His smile widened, knowing and amused and carrying just enough wickedness to make my stomach flip. He extended his arm in a sweeping gesture—lead the way—and cocked his head slightly. “Where to?”
Shit, how can I lose him?Days of trying to slip away between classes, of taking different routes, of varying my schedule, and here he still was. My shadow. My hunter. My—whatever the hell he thought he was.
And now I have him for the rest of the day. Joy.
