Page 21 of Psychotic Obsession

Shit.

I researched you. I paid someone to get information. I stalked your entire presence online, including your ex, your best friend, and her family, and found articles on your family online. I even know your address, the car you drive when you aren’t walking to work, and what classes you took in college.

I gulp. “It was a wild guess.”

She stares at me as I click in her belt and move away, needing to put space between us before I do something stupid, like kidnap her. The thought of taking her back to my apartment and locking her in my room with me sounds like a dream. She’d be scared to start with, but then she might get Stockholm syndrome and fall in love with me.

I blink and turn on the engine, my hands shaking as I grip the steering wheel. What would she do if she knew how badly I was prying into her life?

She bristles as I pull out of the parking space, her fingers digging into the leather seat. The radio isn’t playing and she isn’t talking, and I feel nervous energy filling the car.

Swallowing, I glance at her while at a stop light. “Still wet?”

Her eyes widen. “What?”

“From the rain,” I clarify, noticing the way she’s clenching her thighs as I speed up. “It was raining.”

Her lips move, but it takes her a second to close her mouth and shake her head.

I’ve made it awkward. I asked if she was wet, and she thought I meant something else, and now she thinks I’m a weirdo. Fucking perfect, Tobias. Well done, you fucking idiot.

Silence passes between us again, and then she finally speaks.

“My mother was always strict when it came to their money. I was to earn my way into the world without having any luxury, even though she was born into wealth too. As soon as I was old enough, I went away to study. I got a job and a car that was hardly road legal, and she watched me struggle.”

I keep driving. I keep listening.

“I guess it was a good way to teach me, but even when I was struggling to pay rent and wearing the same sneakers for three years, she never helped me. So no, I wouldn’t say I was rich. Even now, I rent an apartment with my best friend because I can’t afford a place on my own. Which is ridiculous, because I have a mortgage with?—”

She stops, her head moving to the side to stare out of the window. “Never mind.”

“You have a mortgage yet you rent?”

She nods but doesn’t look at me. She’s upset.

I feel the urge to kill that fucking ex of hers. He hurt her. He must have. Did he hit her? Yell at her? Break her heart? Cheat? Lie? Manipulate?

“If it makes you feel any better, I come from a rich family who give me everything, and it’s not as lavish a lifestyle as you think. They hang everything over my head and threaten to cut me off if I ever step out of line like I’m still eighteen.” I let out a derisive laugh. “I have my own income now, but they never let me forget it.”

“People suck.”

I nod and then tilt my head toward the sidewalk of the hotel entrance.

“Gabriella texted and said she was going to Justin’s place,” she tells me, staring at her phone. “He’s okay, right? I don’t need to worry about her?”

“The worst he’ll do is fuck her and move his interest elsewhere.”

For some reason, she doesn’t frown. “Gabriella will likely do the same.”

All of a sudden, I wonder if she has been sleeping with people after breaking up with her ex. How many? Who? Does she like them? Does she still talk to them?

“I felt younger tonight,” she says, slowly taking off her seatbelt. “I’ve been so focused on work for so long, I forgot to enjoy myself. Thank you.”

I hated every second. The only reason I endured the arcade was for her. When she was pouting every time she didn’t win on the crane machine, I wanted to smash it to smithereens and give her every prize.

Aria slips off my jacket and leaves it in the seat as she climbs out of my car. I try not to stare at her ass, but my eyes fail me. One day, I’ll have my tongue buried inside her as she screams my name.

Aria stands by the revolving door and turns to me. “Did we get tricked into a double date?”