Chapter 7. Your Kind

Wren POV

The asphalt was cold under my bare feet. I barely felt it.

I'd renamed him in my phone on the way down the stairs. My hands had been shaking so badly I'd misspelled it twice.

STALKER: Go back to bed, Wren.

He'd used my name. Of course he had. He'd probably known it before I'd unpacked a single box.

I crossed the street without looking both ways, which my mother would have called a sign of mental illness, and stopped at the edge of the streetlight. He was right there, just past it, under the maple. Hands shoved in the pockets of his hockey jacket. Shoulders up near his ears like he was cold.

He didn't look cold. He looked like a wall someone had built in a hurry.

"Stop," he said. "Right there."

I stopped. Not because he told me to. Because my body did it for me.

Because this close, his scent was everywhere. Woodsmoke. Frost. Black pepper. Even through Dr. Ash