married to my killer

chapter 6

NAOMI POV

CHAPTER 6

I stood in the doorway of the storage unit for a long time, looking at the message on my phone.

Everything alright at the unit? Saw the gate log and didn't realize you still had a key to that place.

I typed three different replies and deleted all three of them. Anything I sent back would tell whoever this was something. That I was scared. That I was confused. That I hadn't expected to be caught. I didn't know yet who I was talking to, and until I did, I wasn't going to hand them anything for free.

I put the phone in my bag and locked the unit behind me, my hands steadier than I felt.

On the drive home, I ran through everyone it could be.

Carla had seen me leave the house that morning. She could have mentioned it to someone without thinking twice about it an offhand comment, nothing sinister. Edmund already knew I had a business background, already knew enough to hand me a set of files with my father's old company folded quietly inside them. If he suspected anything, this was exactly the kind of message he'd send friendly on the surface, a warning underneath it.

Or it could be someone else. Someone I hadn't even met yet.

I didn't have an answer by the time I pulled into the driveway, and not having one bothered me more than almost anything else that had happened since I woke up in that dress four days ago.

Julian was in the kitchen when I came in, sleeves pushed up, doing something with a pan that smelled like it was probably going to be dinner. He looked up and smiled the second he saw me, easy, unguarded, the way he still did every time, like my walking into a room was something worth noticing.

"Hey. How was your friend?"

"Good. Fine." I set my bag down harder than I meant to. "Long drive."

He turned the burner down and looked at me properly, the smile fading into something more careful. "You okay? You look a little" He stopped himself, like he wasn't sure the word he wanted was allowed. "Rattled."

"I'm fine."

"Naomi." He said my name the way he used to say it in the first version of this, back when I still let him get away with saying it like that. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to tell me. But don't tell me you're fine when you're not. I'd rather you just said nothing at all."

I hadn't expected that. I'd expected him to let it go the way he let most things go, the way I remembered him letting things go for an entire year, right up until it cost me everything.

"It's stupid," I said, which wasn't a lie, exactly. "I got a weird text. From a number I didn't recognize. It just spooked me a little."

"What did it say?"

I almost told him the truth. Not all of it not the gate log, not the storage unit, not any of the actual danger sitting underneath the question but enough of the shape of it to see what he'd do with it.

"Just something that made it sound like someone was watching me today. Probably nothing. Probably a wrong number, or some scam thing."

Julian didn't laugh it off the way I expected him to. He set the spoon down, wiped his hands on the towel over his shoulder, and crossed the kitchen to where I was still standing with my bag on my shoulder like I hadn't decided yet whether I was staying in this conversation.

"Can I see it?"

I hesitated. Handing him my phone felt like handing him more than a text message. But I did it anyway, and watched his face while he read it.

Something shifted in his expression. Not an alarm, exactly. Focus. The particular stillness of a man doing quiet math he didn't want me to see him doing.

"That's not a scam text," he said, handing the phone back. "Scam texts don't know what building you were in."

"I know."

"Do you want me to find out whose number that is? I can probably"

"No." It came out faster than I meant it to. "No, it's fine. I'll figure it out."

He looked at me for a second too long, the way people look at you when they know you've just told them the edited version of something. But he didn't push. He just reached out and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, an old habit, gentle, and said, "Okay. But if it happens again, you tell me. I mean it."

"I will."

I wouldn't. We both probably knew that.

He went back to the stove. I stood there a moment longer, watching him move around a kitchen like nothing in the world was wrong, and thought about how strange it was that the same man who was going to fail to save my life could also be the only person in this house who'd noticed, immediately, without being told, that something was.

I still didn't know who'd sent that message.

But I knew, standing in that kitchen, that whoever it was had just made one thing very clear: I wasn't the only one paying close attention in this house.

I just didn't yet know if that made me safer, or made me the only one who hadn't realized the game had already started.