Page 35 of Letters From A Stalker

“Yes.”

“Did the number surprise you?”

“At first.”

“And after that?”

I shift against the chair and instinctively start pulling my fingers into the cuffs of my sweater before catching myself halfway through. My hands stop, trapped awkwardly inside the fabric, and I look at him because I already know he noticed. He has. There’s no comment and that somehow feels worse.

“Now I just think everybody probably does it,” I say.

“They do.” The answer comes without hesitation, and I look up from the phone.

“You agree?”

“Of course.” He adjusts the notepad slightly against his leg before continuing. “Most people aren't asking for an honest assessment of someone’s emotional state every time they say, ‘How are you?’ It’s a social exchange, and I’m fine is convenient. If we gave complete answers every time a coworker asked how our morning was going, nobody would get anything done.”

A reluctant smile pulls at my mouth. “So I spent an entire week collecting useless data.”

“I didn't say that.”

“It was heavily implied.”

His eyes narrow slightly with amusement. “The number itself isn't particularly important. I’m more interested in when you said it and what was happening immediately before.”

I sigh because, unfortunately, I already know what he means.

“That’s the part I didn't like either.”

“Why?”

“Because there was a pattern.”

He doesn’t immediately ask what it was. He simply waits, his attention steady enough that I know the question is there without him needing to voice it.

I look down at the list and continue before he even asks me to. “Usually someone thought something was wrong. One of my coworkers noticed I was quieter than usual during a meeting, and I told her I was fine before she even finished asking whether I’d slept badly. Nanna said I sounded tired, and I reassured her before she had the chance to worry. Tessa asked about my hand, and my boss gave me another report when I was already buried in work and asked if I could handle it.”

“And every time, you told them you were fine.”

“Pretty much.”

“Were you?”

I give him a look, a look that if looks could kill he would have dropped dead.

A faint smile appears. “Fair enough.”

I rub my thumb along the side of my phone, watching the screen dim beneath my hand. “That wasn't actually the part that bothered me most.”

Kai waits for me to continue, and this time his silence doesn't irritate me because I'm already trying to figure out how to explain something I don't entirely understand myself.

“Sometimes nobody asks.”

His hand went still against the notepad. It happens so subtly that I might have missed it had I not been watching him watch me. His expression doesn't change in any obvious way, but something behind it does. The easy attentiveness disappears for half a second beneath a stillness that feels almost too complete, and his response comes a fraction later than I expect.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean sometimes I said it anyway.”