Page 223 of Stay Scared

“You could have left the mask off.”

“I could have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Cade comes closer and stops just outside touching distance, the skull filling what little light reaches us.

“I wanted to know what you would do when you saw it.”

Still difficult. Still pushing. Still Cade.

I reach up and hook my fingers beneath the edge of the mask. His breath catches.

“Find out.”

I pull.

Cade lets me take it.

His bare face appears beneath. He looks worse than he did six weeks ago in a quieter way. The bruising is gone, and the wound beneath his ribs has healed enough that he moves normally.

The hunger has not healed at all.

His eyes move over my mouth, my throat, the place beneath my coat where Rook left the scar, then return to my face.

“You look good.”

“You look homicidal.”

“I have been behaving.”

“You look angry about it.”

His expression confirms it. “I hated every day.”

I study him.

“You actually stayed away.”

“You told me to.”

“That has never stopped you before.”

His jaw shifts.

“I know.”

There is nothing defensive in it. That catches me more effectively than an argument would have.

Six weeks without a visit. No delivery waiting downstairs. No anonymous message designed to make me wonder whether it came from him. He did not manufacture an emergency, ask Mark for updates, or appear somewhere public and pretend coincidence had put him there.

For Cade, absence required effort.

“What did you do instead?”

His brow creases. “Instead of what?”

“Showing up at my apartment and explaining why my boundary had an expiration date.”