‘I’ve never heard your voice,’ I say in the end.
‘I didn’t have one. Not until… after.’
I raise my hand, and he stills the same way he used to. Like a cornered animal, if you moved too quickly near him. Bracing for something bad to happen. I graze my fingertips over the cloth of his mask, marvelling that he’s really here.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask.
‘Not yet, Kat.’
‘I thought you were angry with me after what happened. I thought you’d come back to make me pay.’
‘No. You saved me.’ He doesn’t hesitate.
‘It’s been so long.’
‘Fourteen years. One month,’ he says, lifting me to my feet. ‘Two weeks. Three days.’
A quiet pause as he sets me right in front of him. ‘Fifteen hours and thirty-three minutes.’
The breath goes out of me.
‘Thirty-eight maybe,’ he shrugs.
‘You kept count?’
‘Every day.’
As I stand there barefoot in a freezing alley, with the masked man who has been counting every single minute of fourteen years, I do something monumentally stupid.
‘Come inside,’ I say.
He pulls out his phone, and his whole stance changes.
‘I can’t. Not tonight.’
It feels like a kick.
‘You’ve been stalking me like a freak, and when I invite you in, you don’t want to come? Oh, I get it. It’s only fun when I don’t know you are there?’
‘No. It’s not like that. I’ll be back soon, I promise. And I’ll be watching for whoever is bothering you.’
‘Oh great, you’ll be watching me. So reassuring.’
‘I’ll kill him if he tries to hurt you.’
‘You can’t kill people,’ I breathe, but the shock of his statement is followed by a rush of something hot. He’dkillfor me? It should terrify me, but for the first time in weeks, I feel like someone’s in this with me. He knows about my past. And I know about his.
‘I can. And I will.’
I back up against the wall as he steps toward me, caging me in. I shouldn’t let him, but I have little choice as he very much towers over me. My breath catches when he cups my jaw in his gloved hands, leaning forward until his covered mouth is just an inch from me, those heart eyes blurring my vision.
‘I’ve dreamt about this moment so many times. I barely allowed myself to hope you’d remember me.’ His thumb grazes my throat, making me feel a rush of heat and vulnerability.
Then he steps back, cold night air filling the space between us.
He stoops, picking the knife up from the ground and holding it out handle-first. I take it.
‘Lock the door. Keep your curtains pulled. I’ll be back soon, and I want to see these notes.’
