Page 136 of Letters From A Stalker

His smile returns, but when he looks at me again, something about his attention changes.

I narrow my eyes. “What?”

Daniel studies my face with increasingly inappropriate interest. “What’s been going on with you?”

The question catches me off guard enough that my hand stops halfway back to my plate. “What’s been going on with me?”

“That is usually how questions work, yes.”

“Nothing.”

“Mm-hm.”

I know that sound. “What?”

He points his fork vaguely toward my face. “You look different.”

There it is again. Kai said almost the same thing at our last appointment, though somehow having Daniel say it while examining me over a burger feels considerably more threatening.

“Different how?”

“Good different.” His gaze narrows with theatrical concentration. “Relaxed. Flushed.”

My cheeks immediately get hotter, which is deeply unhelpful. Daniel’s expression changes. Oh, no.

“No,” I say before he has even opened his mouth.

His eyes widened with delight. “Did you get laid?”

I burst out laughing. “Daniel.”

“You did!”

“I did not say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” He lowers his fork and points at me as though presenting evidence to a jury. “Julia, I’m gay. We have radar for this shit.”

“Oh my God.”

“Who is he?”

“There is no he.”

“Girl, you cannot bullshit a bullshitter.”

I reach across the table and swat the back of his hand. He laughs, pulling it out of range before I can do it again. For one dangerous second, I consider telling him. Not the truth, obviously. There is no version of “I knowingly let my actual stalker come inside wearing a balaclava and then had the best sex I’ve had in years” that results in Daniel calmly finishing his burger. But I could turn Ghost into somebody else. A man I met. A one-night stand. Something unexpected that I’m not sure will become anything more. It isn’t even completely false. I did meet him outside my usual life, and I genuinely have no idea what happens next.

The problem is that Daniel knows me. He knows I don’t go to bars alone. He knows where I spend most evenings and that my social life consists largely of Tessa dragging me places and me complaining about it beforehand. The second I invent a mysterious stranger, I’ll need a location, a meeting story, probably a first name, and knowing Daniel, within ten minutes he will want to know his profession, blood type and whether he has ever been arrested.

I take another fry instead. “I’m not discussing my sex life with you.”

His grin becomes unbearable. “That is not a denial.”

“Eat your lunch.”

“Oh, this is so much better than a denial.”

“Daniel.”