I jumped around the corner, brandishing the shoe over my head, and shouted, “Hey!”

A shadowy form leaped up from a crouched position and sprinted down the alley away from me. I lowered the shoe as I processed what I had just seen.

He jumped up. That sick fuck was crouched down, looking through my windows.

Trembling with righteous fury, I ran back into my apartment, where I paced the floor.

Had that been Ryan? I couldn’t tell; it had been dark and I’d been blinded by adrenaline.

All I knew was that I couldn’t stay in that apartment any longer. I grabbed my purse and took off.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR HIM

Is this what a heart attack feels like? I wondered as I sat on my couch, clutching at my chest as I struggled to breathe normally. My entire body felt clammy, my pulse a runaway train. How could I have screwed things up so completely, so irreparably? Had Audrey seen my face?

I shouldn’t have been outside her window. I knew that. Of course I knew that. I told myself I was just there to see if she liked the flowers I’d left her, but that was a lie. I knew she liked the flowers: she had Instagrammed the bouquet that very night, captioning the image Surprise flowers are the best flowers. She’d appended the caption with an emoji of flowers and one of a face surrounded by hearts, and then a string of hashtags, ranging from #flowers to #someonelikesme.

No, the truth was that Audrey was a drug to me, her small, heart-shaped face a high I couldn’t stop chasing. Once I had been able to control myself, but now that she was here in DC, breathing the same air I was every single day, I had fallen completely off the wagon.

And so I stood outside her window for hours. My stomach rumbled and my legs cramped and still I didn’t leave. I was mesmerized by her sleeping form, could have watched her chest rise and fall all night long. She was so perfect, so dizzyingly, heartbreakingly perfect, that part of me longed to wrap my hands around her delicate throat and press a thumb against her windpipe gently, lovingly, until she stopped breathing, so she would stay just like this forever.

I wouldn’t, of course. It was just another intrusive thought. Utterly harmless.

And then disaster had struck in the form of a stray cat. It had sauntered into the alley and begun rubbing its thin, flea-ridden body against my leg. Repulsed, I had swatted at it, and it had retaliated by hissing and lunging for me. I jerked out of the way and my knee smacked against the glass of Audrey’s bedroom window.

I froze, the thump as loud as a foghorn. I readjusted my position and cautiously looked down through the window to see her stirring.

I should have run. I should have fled before she could see me, but I was caught in her thrall. I remained in place, half of me thrilled at the inevitable confrontation, half of me aware it was tantamount to suicide. Go! I screamed at myself. There would be no happy ending if Audrey found me outside her bedroom window. It was Audrey herself who snapped me out of my reverie. Her objection—Hey!—had broken through to me, smacked my sense back into me. I leaped to my feet and ran.