Page 5 of Hunted By Fear

Now's the part where normal people would leave, and I probably should, but don’t.

“Let me get a cinnamon roll too,” I tell her, sliding the ten-dollar bill she’d just given to me as change back to her. “Keep the change.”

“Thank you!” She smiles at me for a second before moving to grab my diabetic-inducing treat, thankfully not something I have to worry about as a demon.

I already regret my decision to stay.

The little mortal I know would never look at me like that.

What the fuck did he do to her?

At first, I thought maybe she was faking not knowing me. Afraid of facing repercussions from Rome, but the longer I spend in her presence, the more I see it’s genuine.

How?

With my pastry and my coffee, I move to one of the few booths in front of the window and have a seat. I feel her eyes on me for a moment before she once again busies herself doing some task. Pulling my phone from my pocket to appear busy, I shove a bite of the pastry in my mouth and almost gag on how sweet it is.

Fuck, I should have looked for something else, but this was the first thing I saw, so I went with it.

Asta would fucking love this, I think, shaking my head.

With her distracted, I let my mind wander, pressing against her subconscious only to find a wall.

One I’m very sure was not there the last time I saw her.

Weird.

Not everything is locked down, though, and while I let my fingers scroll aimlessly on my phone, I slowly sift through what I can access.

Every last bit of it is a lie.

I hadn’t dug into her head when she was living with us, more interested in avoiding her than anything else. But regardless of that, I know this isn’t right.

If it were, she would have no reason to fear Rome. He built the perfect lie and trapped her in his web.

Fuck.

Business has been pretty slow today, which means I passed the time taking stock and trying to stay busy. If I stop for too long, I end up thinking about Rome, and with him gone for at least the next week, I need to keep busy.

It doesn’t help that we’ve never been apart this long, not since we met back in middle school. No, we’ve always been connected at the hip; our parents used to tease us about how we would end up married someday.

I’d thought they were crazy back then. He was my best friend, but now here we are, married, with our own little shop and our dream house.

It even has a wraparound porch!

Once the shop starts giving us a more constant income, he’ll be able to quit his job, and we can focus on building a family together.

The thought of a little boy or girl with his dark hair and my light eyes… Just imagining it makes my heart skip a beat!

Life has been far from a cakewalk for us, but we're together, and that’s all I could ask for.

The guy who came in not long ago is still sitting in one of the booths, eating his cinnamon roll so slowly I’m tempted to ask if there's something wrong with it. Usually, people eat them fast, while they're warm.

But I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t a bit strange, so I leave him alone.

Something about him feels…off.

I don’t know how else to describe it. He’d seemed standoffish when he first came in, but the way he looked at me was almost as if he recognized me. Which is weird because I’ve never seen him a day in my life.