Page 340 of Faking the Goal

Kentaro moves before I can hide my reaction.

He crosses the small space between us and sits carefully on the edge of the bed. For the briefest moment, his hand hovers beside mine, as if he is no longer certain he has the right to touch me after what I said last night.

The hesitation hurts more than it should.

I close the distance myself.

My fingers slide between his, and his hand immediately tightens around mine—not enough to hurt, only enough to tell me he is still here. That despite everything I said, some part of him was waiting for me to reach back.

His thumb brushes slowly over my knuckles.

Last night, I told him he needed to stay away from me.

Right now, I cannot bear the thought of him moving even an inch farther.

Maybe I am selfish. Maybe holding his hand contradicts every frightened argument I threw at him only hours ago. But with Detective Matthews standing at the foot of my bed, preparing to reopen a part of my past I could barely remember until recently, Kentaro's warmth is the only thing keeping me anchored in this room.

His fingers lace more firmly through mine, and strength moves through me with the pressure of his palm.

I look back at the detective.

"All right," I say, drawing in a careful breath. "Tell me what you found."

Detective Matthews starts with the night of the attack.

They pulled footage from the hockey house, the surrounding streets, and every nearby business with a camera facing the parking lot. Charlie appears in several clips—or at least, they believe the dark figure moving through the shadows is Charlie—but never clearly enough to identify him. His head stays lowered, his face completely covered, leaving them with little more than an approximate height and build.

The only vehicle entering and leaving the parking lot around that time belongs to Conrad.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

God...

I should've told him not to leave.

I should've listened when he offered to stay until the guys got back from the away game. I should've admitted I was scared instead of insisting I'd be fine.

Five more minutes.

That's all it would've taken.

Five more minutes...

And maybe none of this would've happened.

Kentaro's hand tightens around mine as though he can somehow hear the accusation forming inside my head.

With every new detail Detective Matthews reveals, it feels as though hope is quietly bleeding out of me, one fact at a time.

Charlie had planned everything too carefully. He knew where the cameras were positioned and exactly which stretches of the parking lot they could not reach. He knew when campus police usually passed through the area. He knew which side of the house would be quietest and where he could wait without anyone inside spotting him through a window.

He even knew when I would be alone.

The realization sends a cold ripple over my skin.

It is as though he has been there before—not once, but enough times to learn the rhythm of the place. To know when the players leave, when they return.

Maybe Charlie is simply that methodical. Maybe he spent weeks watching from a distance, memorizing every camera angle and patrol route until he found the perfect opening.