Page 240 of Primal

I choke on a laugh. “Is that even a thing?”

She twists at the waist, sweeping her phone’s beam down her side until it catches the bark-shaped welt across her lower back. “Does this look bruised to you?”

“Jesus. That tree really left its number.” My chuckle melts into a grimace. No idea what my back looks like. Even with the hoodie, it’s starting to sting.

“Anyway, he did this whole ‘press you close and wheeze like Darth Vader’ thing. Which, okay, fine, I’m into it. His hands got busy”—she wiggles her fingers—“but like, hello, take off the damn gloves first.”

A branch cracks in the distance. Neither of us flinches.

“Then those three little college brats showed up,” Kristy continues, “squealing like they’ve never seen a shirtless, masked predator with a knife before. Like, seriously? Get your own damn Ghostface, bitches. And poof—he bolted after them—mid-grope, can you believe that?” She sighs. “Men are so predictable.”

Until they aren’t.

“Oh, my God, Payton, your neck.”

I slap a hand over the hickey. “What about it?”

She grins. “Damn. Someone went full Jack the Ripper on you.”

I hesitate. “Uh. Yeah. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Okay—we did it.”

Kristy’s eyes go wide. “Damn. And here I thought I got lucky. And we? With one of the Ghostfaces?”

I nod.

She squeals. “Was it, like, scary-hot or just I-need-therapy hot?”

I open my mouth. Close it. How do you explain ‘The guy who fucked me into next week against a tree is my nerdy neighbor who definitely wasn’t supposed to be here’ without sounding clinically insane?

“It was … intense.”

“No shit. Which Ghostface was it? The one with the nice ass, or the one who—”

“My neighbor.”

“Whoa.” Her phone’s beam jerks upward, casting a horror-movie glow on her face. “You’re telling me one of the Ghostfaces is some guy who lives next door to you?”

I nod. “Technically, he lives across the street. And his name’s Kade.”

She squints. “Wait. Did he follow you here? Because that’s either serial-killer energy or … I don’t know, aggressively romantic?”

“Maybe he signed up in advance?”

“Okay, so worst-case, he stalked you. Best-case, he just happened to show up at a kink-fueled cosplay orgy and picked you out of a crowd?”

“Pretty much.”

“Girl. That’s not a meet-cute. That’s a true crime podcast.”

Kristy’s still yammering, but my brain’s already sliding sideways.

Did IT Guy know I was coming here before yesterday?

Or was it just some unholy twist of fate—my quiet, flannels-and-sweaters-wearing neighbor deciding to moonlight as a knife-wielding fantasy at the exact same Halloween fest I happened to attend?