“I’m too experienced to make that kind of mistake. I just…” Freaked out. “I lost my focus.”
“And fell. On the footpath? A step?”
“Oh.” She frowned, eyes skimming his face. “Right. Of course. You don’t know me. I’m a figure skater,” she said, skipping over her credentials as one of the UK’s youngest Olympic medalists, and her multiple world records since. “I fell on the ice, during training. I landed badly and my ankle splintered.”
“Ah.” He frowned. “This makes sense.”
“What does?”
“You reminded me of a ballerina last night, when I saw you.” When I felt you beneath me, she wondered silently, reminded of the way his body had pressed to hers.
She sighed softly. “Anyway, the ankle means I have to rest and recover, so I thought I might as well come here.” She bit down on her lip, keeping the rest to herself. But was that ethical? If he was going to stay here, didn’t he have a right to know she’d cast him in the role of her guard dog? Her first line of defense?
“There are other reasons,” she said, so quietly he had to lean closer to hear.
“Would you like to share them?” He prompted, sensing her hesitation.
“I’m not famous or anything,” she said after a beat, eyes downcast. “But I’ve competed at an international level for a long time. Within the sport, I’m—,”
“Benji’s mentioned you,” he said after a moment. “I remember now. You’re very successful.”
“It never feels like it,” she admitted, twisting her lips to the side. “One of the hardest things about being a professional athlete is how those goalposts keep shifting. There’s always something more to aim for.” But that wasn’t what she wanted to discuss. Focusing her mind, she continued slowly, “About two years ago, weird things started to happen.”
“Weird things? What does that mean?”
“At first, stuff went missing. Small things, so as you’d barely notice. Like one of the lanyards I wore to access the backstage area of a show I was in at the O2 Arena. That’s not a big deal; I was issued a new one. But the week after, it was one of my leotards—slightly more important as each one is hand crafted and hand stitched to size, they’re pretty irreplaceable, at least at short notice.”
“Another competitor?”
“It was a performance, rather than a competition. We do them to stay fit and raise awareness. It’s good practice. But—that doesn’t matter. The point is, a month after that, in Amsterdam, my sweater was taken while I was performing. And then, the notes started.”
He was quiet, and she had to pause. Apart from the police, she’d barely spoken about this to another soul.
“They were creepy, right off the bat. Menacing. Someone was watching me. Taking photos of me.” She shivered and couldn’t stop. “For a few months, it stopped, then started up again, and it was almost everywhere I went. The photos became more brazen, the most recent ones were taken in my home.” She gnawed at her lip until it felt like she might draw blood. “I’ve started to feel as though I can’t escape.” She looked around wildly, eyes on the windows and walls. “Until I came here—the middle of nowhere; the edge of the earth. Surely here, I’m safe.”
“And then, last night, you thought he’d found you.”
She jerked her head in agreement. “I was so scared.”
“I’m sorry,” he frowned. “I had no idea you were here, or I wouldn’t have forced my in.”
The apology was the last thing she’d been expecting. “It’s fine,” she was surprised to hear herself say. “A mistake, obviously.”
He nodded slowly.
“But if you stay, you’re at risk. If this person finds me here, he’s going to find you too, and the truth is,” she sucked in a breath, forcing herself to confront the truth she’d been wanting to avoid. “I don’t know what he’s capable of.”
Leonidas stood, prowling towards the windows, his back moving as he stared out, the air crackling in his silence. “So you want me to go, and leave you to defend yourself?”
“I can handle it.”
“You and your trusty rolling pin?” The words were a joke, but his tone was scathing. He turned to face her slowly and the anger in his eyes made her tremble. “You’ve just said it yourself: you don’t know what he’s capable of. What if he comes with a gun? You’d be gone before you could so much as lift the rolling pin.”
“If he had a gun, he could have used it at any point.”
“Someone like this wants to scare you. They get off on the power. You are being hunted like an animal; that doesn’t mean he won’t move in for the kill when he’s ready.”
Her pulse was thready, her stomach in knots. “I know that.” A whisper. “But I can’t…I don’t know what else I can do.”