Page 15 of Little Author

I hadn’t planned to follow her.

But with Elodie, there was a pull I could not resist.

She radiated guilt like heat, and it clung to her skin, soaking into her clothing. You could smell it from blocks away if you were a hunter and knew your prey.

I was.

So, when I walked past the fogged-up window of that shitty little bar and saw the outline of her hunched shoulders inside, I paused. Her shoulders were tense, awkward. But so was her smile…she was pretending.

I walked in slowly, quietly. I didn’t need to be fast. She wouldn’t see me. She would never know until it was far too late for her.

I kept to the walls. No drink. No noise. Just shadows, leather, and the sound of my boots pressing into the warped floorboards.

And there she was.

Perched on a barstool like a kid sitting outside the principal’s office.

Her legs were crossed tight, fingers white-knuckled around her glass, and her hair a little messy, probably from pulling at it in frustration.

She always did that when she wrote something she wasn’t supposed to. It was a cute little tell of hers.

She was talking to a man. He was slouched over his drink, soft-jawed with messy hair. A face that didn’t know what to do with itself. Hell, maybe the owner of the flowers I came all over in her bedroom.

Hello J. Fancy dying for touching what’s mine?

I didn’t like the way he looked at her. It was as if she were a relic from a life he wanted to forget.

He made her small.

My Little Author didn’t need someone making her feel small. She could write away anyone’s existence.

Her pen was her weapon.

And now…so was I.

Why the fuck do I want to protect her?

I need to know how she knows the truth of my crimes. I need to kill her and get the rat she found the information from. That was all.

I stepped deeper into the bar. Still invisible. She was too distracted, too eager to prove something. The kind of desperation that soured the air. I breathed it in and felt my pulse steady. They looked like they were in some therapy session, sharing their feelings in a rainbow of fucking sunshine.

Gag.

Maybe I will just kill her in her sleep to avoid the ‘how do you feel about that’ moments.

A feeling of déjà vu knocked me on my ass, and I shook my head, but the memory was taking over.

It was a Thursday.

I remember that because I hated Thursdays. Therapy days. The ones where they brought me into a concrete room that smelled like antiseptic and bad breath and tried to pick apart the monsters they swore they saw in me.

They always wanted me to talk. Like naming the thing would make it less sharp.

I never did.

I sat in the plastic chair, chained at the ankle, watching a black scuff mark on the wall. Thinking about nothing. Waiting for the hour to pass. Listening to the second hand of the wall clock drag its feet like it resented the job.

And then the door opened.

Not all the way, just cracked. Just enough for me to see the outline of someone standing on the other side. Not a guard. Not my shrink. Not the staff I was used to ignoring.

It was a woman.

I couldn’t see her face. The hall light was behind her, bleaching the edges of her in gold. But I saw the shape of her. The posture. The tension in her spine, the slight tilt of her head, like she was looking at something just out of view.

She held a folder. Clutched it too tightly. Like she felt like it would vanish if she didn’t keep it close.

My pulse… changed.

That had happened before. When I was younger, when I’d first started seeing the shape of it. The pattern. The type. My chorus line of beautiful song birds was ready to sing their songs of death.

She fit every fantasy in my fucked up mind. The vision of everything I ever wanted in my prey. Every other girl I had was just slightly off. Some had a tone of brown hair that didn’t quite fit, a body that wasn’t curvy enough, eyes that took me out of the illusion.

Not this girl. Her back was exactly what I wanted, the slight curve of her soft jaw line, the freckles so pronounced I could taste them. Her hair was a chestnut chocolate. My cock throbbed in my jumpsuit, and I groaned.

“Mr. Patel? Are you alright? Is this uncomfortable for you? Maybe we should stop for the day.”

I flexed my jaw, grinding the irritation. It was all I had for the plump therapist who looked like all the other morons who called me into this damn room to “talk out my feelings” all these years in my hell.

I wanted to be free. I was a beast they couldn’t tame. I just needed to bide my time. It would fall apart. All they had would dissolve between their fingers.

My marks were never about the face. That is the thing people never understand. It’s not about beauty. It’s about posture. About sadness. About the soft, breakable air of someone pretending they’re whole when they’re already rotting under the surface.

The ones who flinch even when they laugh.

The ones who look like they never sleep all the way through.

This woman had all that.

Even from behind a door.

Even with half her body hidden by light.

I needed to see her face.

I leaned forward in my chair, just slightly.

Chains clinked. I watched her shift, watched her mouth fall open, and her tongue dart over her lip before her teeth bit down hard.

She was nervous. Hesitant. She didn’t know I was looking, but something in her body felt my eyes. And it wasn’t just fear in her body.

She stepped back.

The door closed, and the spell broke.

But that shape…it burned behind my eyelids.

She was the absolute perfect flower to break.

A blonde walked in. The jingling alarm, the door slamming shut, and the jarring sound jolted me from my memories.

Jesus.

The scent of cheap perfume hit me first, that overripe vanilla smell that they sold at department stores. It made me nauseous.

She walked like she’d never been told no. Like she’d only ever lived in mirrors and the spotlight. Her heels clicked loudly against the floor, and I hated her instantly.

She went straight to the man beside my Little Author and draped herself across the bar like a warning sign.

My Little Author froze.

God, I felt it in my bones, the way her entire body tensed, like she’d just taken a bullet and was trying to pretend it hadn’t pierced her. She was hurt, and I was trying to smother my dick from hardening at that look of pain coating her face.

She tried to interrupt. I watched her lean in and speak to them, watched her nails tap the table they sat at.

They ignored her.

What will the author do with such a plot twist? I laughed to myself, keeping my head down and leaning more into the wall for a better look.

She laughed suddenly. It was loud. Too loud, and way too forced. Like she was trying to take up space, but shrinking at the same time.

It was beautiful. Fucking intoxicating, and that pain and fear written on her face made those memories filter faster through my mind.

It was her.

All those years ago, she had been there. She was my shadow at the prison—the “student” who asked permission to listen to my therapy sessions.

Is this how you know things you shouldn’t? Snooping into my files not given to the media?

Intrigue filled me, and I didn’t notice her staring at my smile.

Her eyes locked with mine, and I kept my smile. To her credit, she didn’t look away until her idiot boy toy chortled about some other dumbass past memory shared with the flashy blonde.

I stood up and walked by the old jukebox, watching her unravel with every second as she sat there. Watching the blonde touch the man’s wrist, his arm, running her bony fingers in his hair. The moron was eating it up. He barely noticed Elodie still beside him.

I enjoyed this far too much. Watching as Elodie fell apart in silence, the way girls like her always did.

She looked down at her lap, clenched her jaw, and bit her lip. I could practically hear the click of her teeth grinding.

I wondered if she was getting wet again. If the humiliation curled into something hotter. If the sting of being nothing to the man beside her made her ache the way I wanted her to ache around my fucking cock. If she was raw and split open, dripping with self-loathing and wanting.

She didn’t belong here.

Not with people like that.

She belonged to darker things.

Quiet things.

People like me.

My hand curled into a fist inside my coat pocket, and my fingers curled around something small and circular.

I smiled.

The black button.

Do you have the one I gave you in your pocket, too, Little Author? What part of your story will that be?

Elodie stormed off from the obvious couple and nearly ran into me. I picked a song I knew she would notice. The one that I always requested during my therapy sessions. This would confirm if she truly knew as much as she thought she did.

Sure enough, as soon as the first syllables played, her eyes snapped to the jukebox and then to me, her plump lips opened to…sing. It was an old-school American rock song. Most Brits clutched their damn pearls, but not her.

“I love this song! Not sure anyone really knew of it anymore. I’m Elodie…who are you?”

I looked at her outstretched hand and smiled, but didn’t grab it. She squirmed like a bug. She didn’t like being ignored.

“Okay then. Guess everyone here is a raging sack of knobs. Good to know.”

“Would you write this scene differently, if given the chance?” I didn’t bother hiding my accent from her. I wanted her to wonder.

She was seething in her own little world. Angered by the laughing couple in the corner. Her hands were on her ears, trying to drown out their voices. She didn’t recognize me. She wanted to bait me, but she didn’t see the monster she lured was in front of her.

The media and the overuse of photo editing applications over the years had altered my face. It took away my tattoos, trying to make me pure for the public’s eyes.

Did my Little Author fall for the media’s version of me? What will she think of the real me? Unpolished, raw, and the broken pieces they tried to hide.

Anger silently simmered beneath my blood.

Would my piercings and visible tattoos have her running to a cop?

“Ha. Yeah, I’d cut out that slags wagging tongue and make her eat it for one, maybe slash some manners into her rude ass. They are awful. He’s practically glued to her!”

I listened to every word, nodding my head.

“Well, you have an imaginative mind, Little Author.”

Elodie looked up at me, seemingly seeing me for the first time, and her breath caught.

“I…”

I reached forward and ran my thumb over her lips, feeling her body fall into me.

“Your mind is beautiful,” I said softly, a dark whisper in her ear.

She gasped and pushed away, laughing nervously. “Oh. I am a dark romance author. I write psychological romances. I get carried away sometimes. Sorry…”

I knew she wanted my name, and I smiled wider when she frowned at not getting it.

“What do you write?”

She was searching my eyes, her brain spinning, but not putting the pieces together correctly, like a CD that played the wrong lyrics for the song you wrote down when you recorded it.

“I write about um…a serial killer...and uh love?”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Love. How cute.

“It’s a niche genre. Not many people get it.” She was trying so hard to keep that delicious flush from creeping up her neck.

“Why doesn’t he kill her?” I was genuinely curious about the warped version she had created in her head about me.

“Because she’s the one.”

It was simple. Stated like a fact, and I admired her boldness in her own beliefs.

“Interesting.” I amended. “So he would do everything for her correct? Protect her like some black knight in shining midnight armor?”

Now she laughed. “Yes. I guess so.”

“Interesting,” I said again, before I gripped a lock of her light brown hair and let it slip through my fingers as I walked away.