Page 64 of When Darkness Calls

For like an hour…

Alright, alright, I know. It was dramatic. A little petulant. Very childish. Whatever. Sue me for being a little upset that my best friend kind of ditched me and I’d be spending yet another night all alone in this house.

Does the rare sighting of my shadow make it a little easier?

Yes, definitely.

Has our strange little…companionship become something I’m slightly obsessing over?

Also, yes.

However, I can’t necessarily reply to his text from this morning asking if he wants to hang out and watch movies all night because I don’t want to be alone. No matter how much I kind of want to.

At least then I’d know for certain the cold eyes watching me would give me a break.

No, I’ve only opened that text about three hundred times since I woke up, staring at it, and wondering what I should say, if I should respond, and what it might mean if I do.

But all of that doesn’t quite explain how I found myself sitting on the corner of my couch, an untouched bowl of popcorn sitting beside me, and Grayson on the other side.

He’s leaned back, legs spread wide in front of him as he stares blankly at the TV, his hand splayed across the back of the couch, fingers ghosting along my shoulders.

Grayson had shown up about an hour ago with little to say about his arrival other than “Cade said you needed some company,” as he pushed his way past me into the hall where he unlaced his beat up canvas sneakers, leaving them laying right next to mine.

An image I totally did not mull over, nor did I dwell on the fluttery feeling in my stomach when I had seen it. Nope, not at all.

The fluttery feeling also has not stuck around, and it definitely hasn’t gotten stronger since we strolled in here taking our seats and turned the movie on.

I don’t know why I’m so nervous. For fuck’s sake it’s just Grays.

Gaps of silence aren’t unusual for us when we’re alone, at least before his stint avoiding me they weren’t, and they were always pretty comfortable. Just the two of us enjoying the peace we could find together, sometimes interrupting the silence with whatever thought popped into our heads. Often about whatever show, movie, or interest we were currently watching or fixated on.

But since he’s been talking to me again, we’ve not really had a lot of time alone. Only a few minutes here and there while we waited for Cade to rejoin us. Those minutes are easy to fill with small talk. This though? This is different.

We have the whole night ahead of us.

And I’m seriously about to piss myself.

I feel like I did when I was twelve and I had a horrifically dawning realization that I was in love with him. And it changed fucking everything.

Two seconds in the same room and I was on the verge of having a heart attack for how fast my pulse would race. The human manifestation of a tomato walking around trying to act super cool and mature to impress him.

As if it really mattered.

Can you feel the metaphorical eye roll?

And here I am now. Fucking nineteen, having yet another epiphany that I still have a schoolgirl’s crush on my brother’s best friend.

He just had to waltz up to my room shirtless the other day, and just had to look like that, and give me that sly fucking smirk when he caught me checking him out. Then Liz just had to interrogate me over it, making me actually think about how I feel about him for the first time in years instead of being pleasantly oblivious or ignorant of it.

And he just had to be nice—the asshole—and come over tonight so I wouldn’t be alone. Just had to sit right there instead of one of the other chairs. And just absolutely has to have his fucking drool worthy hand so goddamn close that if I breathe too deeply it will graze across the base of my neck.

The thought has my face heating, heart thrumming rapidly in my chest, and my stomach flipping over itself.

The ghost of his touch sends chills down my spine.

It’s driving me fucking crazy. I could scream. I could—

“Can you please stop touching me?” My tone is harsh and I wince at the words.