Page 34 of Don't Go
I shoved the bag into my purse and stepped to the side.
He stepped to the side.
I stepped the other way.
He stepped the other way.
He was, apparently, not leaving.
I gave up on the pretense and looked at him. "Are you stalking me, Cross?"
He held up his own white paper bag. "In a pharmacy?"
I shrugged. "It's where I'd start. Easy access to the prescription drugs."
He smiled.
The corners of his eyes moved, his shoulders dropped a quarter inch, and his face — his whole face — went somewhere I hadn't seen it go before. The polished edges went soft. He looked briefly like a man I would have wanted to know in another life, and I wasfuriouswith him for it.
He shoved both hands into the front pocket of his hoodie. "Could I walk you somewhere?"
I shouldered Bonnie's bag and started for the door without looking at him. "I'm walking home. Three blocks. You can walk if you can keep up."
I went out the door.
I didn't slow down. I wouldn't have slowed down if he had been falling behind. I wouldn't havechecked.I'd been leaving rooms before people could ask me to leave them since I was nineteen, and I hadn't — against considerable odds — lost the technique. The technique was: Go faster than they expected, and don't look back.
He caught up to me at the end of the block.
He fell in beside me without making a thing of it, one hand holding his medicine bag, the other in his hoodie pockets, matching my pace exactly. I wasn't going to acknowledge that he had matched it.
He looked at the side of my face. "You didn't even give me a chance."
I threw him a glance and faced forward again. "It's up to you if you can keep up. Don't expect me to make up for your shortcomings."
He laughed under his breath. "I don't have shortcomings."
I bit the inside of my cheek to hold back a smile, and I lost. "Not in that hoodie, you don't."
He glanced down at himself. "What's that supposed to mean? You don't expect me to always be in a suit, do you?"
I kept my eyes on the cracked sidewalk. "No, but you can at least put in some effort."
He laughed again, longer this time. "Are you baiting me?"
I let myself grin at the sidewalk. "Maybe." I let him have a beat. "For a man who likes his drinks a specific way, I thought you'd have better style."
He turned his head to look at me. He didn't slow down. "Will you ever let that go?"
"Never." I tipped my chin up at the corner of the next block. "It's the most pompous thing I've ever heard come out of a human mouth. You're not used to the wordno, are you?"
He thought about it for half a step. "Truthfully? No, I'm not."
I waited.
He continued, "That's why I like you."
I walked another four steps before I trusted my mouth to participate in this conversation. "You enjoy being around people who don't like you."
