Like the type you’d deliberately change paths upon seeing to avoid being smashed by his disastrous energy.
He’s in his usual jeans and hoodie. His now longer hair flops to one side, kissing his forehead.
I almost forgot just how tall Creighton is and how small I feel in comparison. How his broad shoulders block the sun and he becomes everything I see. Unlike the past, though, right now, the difference in height and physique feels downright threatening.
It’s in the aura. In the way he stares at me with enough dispassion to dry up the blood in my veins and watch me as I shrivel and die.
I blink twice, but he’s not disappearing. If anything, he gains more presence.
Arealpresence.
My heart beats wildly in my rib cage and I could swear he feels it through my skin and my clothes.
It dawns on me then.
At this moment where my breasts are crushed against his chest and my space is filled with his cologne.
This isnota dream.
It’s more real than the breaths I’m inhaling and the air that’s mixed with his distinctive clean scent.
I step back, not-so-subtly forcing some distance between us.
Creighton’s brow dips from my breasts to my waist and down to where the dress stops above my knees.
It’s a miracle I don’t catch fire under his ruthless intensity before he slides his scalding attention back to my face.
“It’s you,” I murmur.
“You expected someone else?”
I’m not ready for the onslaught of his perfectly calm, deeply rich voice. That voice does unpleasant things to me, like turning me absolutely obsessed to the point where I attempted everything under the sun just so I could hear it again.
Including watching and rewatching some old videos in which I was bugging him to speak more than a few words.
But that’s neither for here nor now.
I take another step back. “Where am I? Where have you taken me?”
His expression, cold and callous, gains a sinister edge. “Somewhere no one can find you.”
“W-what?”
“We’re on a faraway island no one can reach. Not even your father and his gang of serial killers.”
My lips quiver, but I force myself to remain calm. “Where’s Cecily? What have you done to her?”
“Probably back to catch her classes.”
“You…made her trick me?”
“No force was involved. She agreed to help on her own, though she thought I only wanted to talk to you. I told her nothing about this plan.”
My limbs tremble the more I stare at his lifeless eyes. It’s like I’m looking at a stranger, a person without a core, a heart, or morals.
A being that’s designed for vengeance.
That’s all Creighton ever wanted, and that’s the only thing he’s actively pursued ever since he found out about my family’s involvement in his tragic childhood.