‘And you’ve been watching where I am ever since.’
‘Yes.’
I steady myself against the trunk of a tree. It’s bad enough that he stalked me, but tracking my whereabouts feels so much more invasive.
‘Show me,’ I say.
He takes out his phone and turns the screen toward me. A map, and on it a small pink dot, in the middle of the satellite image of the woods.What the fuck?
My ears ring; it feels like another constriction tightening around my life. For a minute, I long for the time a few weeks ago when my biggest worry was my coursework and what I would wear to party with Ellie.
‘I’m not sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s a way to keep you safe. Even when I can’t be there.’
Ellie told me once that her family uses a similar app to find each other’s locations. Once, she was drugged on a night out and stumbled out of a club on her own and passed out in a back alley in the city. Her dad found her because of the app; she might have frozen to death in the zero-degree night otherwise.
‘If something happened to me, could you find me?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Anywhere. Immediately.’
I look at the dot.
Six weeks ago, the violation of it would have been too much. But knowing that it’s him makes it feel less invasive. He’s on my side. The one person in the world who knows everything. My good and my bad.
‘You should have told me.’
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘I’m annoyed that you didn’t.’
‘I know.’
I look at the dot on the screen again and reach up to touch the stone at my throat.
‘Leave it in,’ I say. ‘But don’t lie to me again. About anything. We need to be able to trust each other.’
‘Deal.’
I nod.
‘I need to get back to Ellie before she thinks I’ve ditched her. I’ll see you later.’ I turn to go, but Liam grabs my hand and spins me back to him, cupping my face while pulling it to his.
‘I will do whatever it takes to keep you in my life, Kat. My morals are deeply black when it comes to you.’
He covers my eyes and takes my mouth with a heated fierceness. A kiss that reaches into my soul and rearranges like I’m putty under his touch.
‘I’ve loved you since the day we met, Kat. And I will love you to the day I die. If protecting you costs me that, it will be a life worthy of being lived.’
My heart flutters at his words, them catching me off guard in their ferocity.
He loves me.
Liam doesn’t give me the time to respond, kissing me again, his tongue stroking me to a desperate need. I melt into him until he releases me, his mask tugged back into place, and before I can catch my breath, he’s gone.
TWENTY-SEVEN
LIAM
On Friday afternoon,I’m passing the university coffee shop on my way to her flat when I see Ellie through the window.
