Page 32 of Only for Him

“Giselle,” Ida says. “What. The. Fuck.”

That’s as good a summary of the situation as I could come up with.

“Too much for you? Little late to back out, now. Remember, we made friendship bracelets.”

“I’m…” she scans the bar idly, not looking for anything but the right words. But when she finishes her sentence, there’s excitement coiled in her voice. “Scared for you.”

I know she’s not done, so even when the silence gets awkward, I wait.

“It’s fucked up,” she finally says, her voice rising with every syllable. “But in some twisted way, that level of devotion is kind of hot. Like, who do you have to kill to get that kind of attention in this city?”

The urge to reach up and twist Serena’s earring is so strong that I do it without thinking, only to remember that they’re gone when I touch my naked earlobe. A prickle of self-loathing blooms in my gut.

Instead, I let my eyes trace the lines of the booth’s vinyl until I’m sure I can speak. I won’t tell her everything yet, but I need to tell her something. Just to test the waters.

“He’s also sending me pictures. Of me. In my own apartment. Through the window.”

Ida’s face goes still. “Jesus! Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” I want to laugh. Instead, I look out over the crowd. “I don’t know. I feel like—” I trail off.

“Like you’re beingstalked?” Ida supplies.

I nod.

She raises her glass, the last dregs of her Manhattan sloshing around as she does so. The more she drinks, the redder her face gets. She calls it her “man-bait” and claims that it gives guys a reason to tease her about it before she goes in for the kill.

“Maybe it’s fate,” she says, a little dreamy. “Maybe you finally found your nemesis.”

I scowl. “Homicide detectives and psycho murderers don’t mix, Ida.”

“Tell that to every woman who’s ever written to Charles Manson. It’s a thing.”

“Kind of wish that it wasn’t.” But her logic is unassailable.

We both look up at the same moment: there’s a shift in the room, a new pressure in the air. I scan the crowd for blue eyes, for a shadow that doesn’t belong, but all I see are drunks and grifters. Nobody is looking at us for more than a fraction of a second.

But the feeling sticks, and the hairs at the back of my neck are standing up like tiny barometers of doom.

“What is it?” Ida asks, voice low. “Is it him?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s weird. It’s like I can feel when he’s around, you know.”

She does that lawyer thing, turning her attention into a laser. “You have to stop pretending you don’t want this.”

“What?”

She leans in, dropping her voice even further. “You’re always chasing the most dangerous thing in the room. Remember freshman year? You told that football player you were saving yourself for Jesus just so you could see if he’d punch through a wall.”

“That’s not the same.”

“It’s exactly the same. Only now you’re hunting a guy who’s willing tokillfor you.” She sits back. “You don’t want safe. You want sharp. You want dangerous. You want something that can hurt. Especially if that something can hurtyou.”

I chew on that, picking at the corner of a napkin until it dissolves under my nail.

We both watch as a pair of men at the bar look our way, then look away, then back again.

They’re textbook: one tall and lean, the other compact, both with the posture of bankers trying to pass as bad boys. They raise their glasses in our direction, then turn to each other, laughing at some inside joke.