Page 36 of Stalked By the Shortstop
Not just during late-night tutoring sessions or the night classes I’d taken during the summer. I might not have the proof, but I’d felt him. I’d thought I was imagining things, that I was being absurd, but I hadn’t been. Jason had been lurking, watching me what I was almost sure had been on a daily basis for the last two months at all different times of the day.
Something came over me.
I didn’t turn to check if he was behind me. My heartrate spiked. I knew he was there. I could feel him.
My mind raced as I kept walking across campus in a fog. My headphone blared as I tried my damnedest not to think. I tried to distract my thoughts from forcing my ears to figure out if I could hear just how close his footsteps were behind me.
He’d approached me on Friday after tutoring. Opening the door for me. Why? Had he thought I wouldn’t remember him from the elevator? Had it been an accident or had it been time?Had we been on that elevator together by accident? Had the fight between him and the Omega been real or fake?
My head spun with unanswered questions.
But I knew for certain he wasn’t playing games. This wasn’t some stupid game or bet. This was real. I wasn’t going to try to convince myself otherwise.You’re my girl. One day my wife and mother of my future kids.His words repeated in my head softly as I passed the dorm building and kept walking. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew exactly where I was going to make him chase me.
Where this would end with him telling me the truth and me telling him mine.
Because if I was honest, the fact alone I was walking and not running away, not screaming for help, was answer enough. Jason hadn’t been wrong. I was his.
But that also made him mine.
13JASON
When I was on the outfield, I had trained my entire life to see every single possible outcome, to be where I was needed out on the field and not miss. But nothing could have prepared me for this.
Not even close.
She knew.
I wasn’t sure how she’d found out, or fuck, how I even knew that she was on to me, but I could feel it right through to my goddamn balls and the marrow in my bones.
Sadie knew I was stalking her.
She didn’t look at me. She walked right past me like she had done so easily for the last couple of months, not even sparing a second look in my direction as I leaned against a tree in the darkness.
But I’d felt it.
This uncanny awareness of being found out. And I wasn’t ashamed to admit the thrill of the chase started to prickle to life at the back of my neck. I gave her a good distance before I pushed off the tree and started to follow her. I gave her a wider berth than I ever had while I followed her.
Sadie’s steps were sure. Steady.
But there was something off about her.
I couldn’t put my finger on it as she played whatever pop music in her headphones as she walked, carrying that damn way-too-heavy book bag on a shoulder. There was something about the way her breathing seemed to be a little too quick, too shallow. Something about her back being just a little too straight.
My little bird knew.
She knew she was being hunted by the big bad beast inside me.
I’d known this could be a possibility.
That one day, sooner than later, she’d figure it out.But this soon?I shook my head, and my steps picked up speed when I noticed she passed our building. She went through another, and I followed her. I tried to catch up, get a little closer, but she was too fast and people were coming and going for their buildings, probably to get something to eat or head to the laundry rooms to get clothes washed.
She took a sharp right then a left, and we were back outside. That’s when I was finally able to take in my surroundings as I tore my gaze from the back of her form, and my feet immediately halted me to a complete stop.
We were at the baseball field.
The practice one.
Oh, little bird, what are you up to?I wondered. Something primal and almost ruthless started to awaken inside of me, more of the beast, who didn’t give a shit about boundaries when it came to Sadie.
