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I find myself curling deeper into the shadows, out of sight. My heart is still racing, though now for an entirely different reason.

Something about him has me wanting to press my face into the window. I want to see him. I want to see the man that’s been creeping inside my house, leaving me flowers, and mutilating any unsuspecting soul that dared to touch me.

Was his hand on the knob, ready to come in? What stopped him?

As if hearing my thoughts, he cocks his head slightly. Intently, I watch him slowly turn his head to the side. And ever so slightly, he raises his chin, the moonlight revealing his wide mouth and a sharp jaw.

I huddle deeper into the wall, feeling his eyes on me. There’s no way he can see me. Yet somehow, I feel his gaze piercing me anyway. Like little, sharp knives grazing my skin before digging inside me.

And then he smiles, his mouth stretching into a wicked smirk. My breath hitches, and my lungs fill with fire.

Oh, this is funny to you, asshole?

Before I can process what to do—what I’m feeling—he turns and walks away, disappearing into the tree line. Slow and purposeful, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.

chapter 11

The Manipulator

D aya said Nana was the freak, but I’m starting to wonder if it was her mother that was the freak. I skim through the diary, reading over her words.

I’m sitting in the same rocking chair Gigi used to sit in to write in her diary while her stalker watched on. While she let him feast his eyes on her, and got off on it too, apparently.

Snapping the book shut, I throw it on the footstool before me, the furniture rocking from the movement of the heavy book.

I sigh heavily, pinching the bridge of my nose to ward off the blooming headache.

I mean, what was she thinking? Letting a strange man watch her, come into her home, and touch her? That’s insane. Certifiably insane.

What’s truly insane is the fact that I found this diary, and a stalker found me on the same night. I don’t want to think about what that means.

The wind blows outside the window, rattling the glass. Storm clouds are rolling in, the ever-present weather that plagues Seattle like bad acne. Just when you think we're going to have a lovely sunny day, a storm cloud pops up, ready to burst.

Okay, gross, Addie.

A loud thump sounds from the kitchen, causing me to nearly jump out of my seat. Heart pumping heavily in my chest, I look towards the direction and find nothing amiss.

“Hello?” I call out, but no one answers.

Attempting to even my breathing, I

turn back right as movement from the corner of my eye snags my attention right outside the window. My head snaps in that direction and my eyes zero in on whatever it was I just saw. It’s nearly pitch-black outside save for the moonlight and a single light outside my front door.

Another flash of movement causes me to nearly plant my face against the glass. It’s a person, walking towards my house, having emerged from between two large trees. My eyes narrow into thin slits as the person’s shape becomes more apparent.

He’s back.

After two nights of nothing, the son of a bitch actually came back.

My hand drifts over to the end table next to me, snagging the butcher knife I’ve been carrying around with me since he broke into my house last. Turns out my security cameras are useless with him. The second he left, I checked them just to find out that they didn’t catch sight of him.

When Daya looked into it, her face dropped, and her eyes went wide with terror. He spliced the cameras. Hacked into them and made it appear as if nothing was happening while he was walking through my house while I slept.

She said not only did he splice the camera feed, but he did it so well, it was untraceable. The only reason Daya was even able to come to that conclusion is because she knows how technology works and she does the same thing herself for her job.

This guy is dangerous—in more ways than just his violent tendencies.

I grip the handle in my fist and settle it on my lap. As he nears, my heart pounds in my chest, matching each step he takes towards me.