Chapter 5: Somebody Is Already Watching

"Who else has that number?"

Christian's voice comes out low, controlled in a way that scares me more than shouting would. He's still staring at his phone, thumb hovering over the screen like it might bite him if he touches it wrong.

"Three people," he says. "My father. My mother. And Wyatt, if he lost his and needed a burner." He shakes his head slowly, jaw tight. "This isn't from any of them."

"Then it's spoofed." I lean closer, studying the photo again on his screen, the two of us framed through the tall library window from the courtyard below, close together under the single lamp, our heads bent toward each other like we belong in the same small circle of light. "Someone wanted you to know they could reach that number. That's the message. Not the photo itself."

His eyes flick up to me, surprised, like he wasn't expecting a stranger from a rainy staircase to think in threats and angles instead of panic. "You sound like you've done this before."

"I read a lot of true crime while I make coffee for people who don't tip." It's meant to lighten the room and it doesn't, not really, but he huffs something close to a laugh anyway, and the tightness in his jaw eases half a degree, just enough that I can see the boy underneath the fear again.

He sets the phone face down on the table like that will stop it from ringing. His hand isn't quite steady when he does it. "I need to think."

"You need to breathe first." I pull my chair closer, forcing my own voice into something steadier than I actually feel, because somebody in this library has to be the calm one and it clearly isn't going to be him tonight. "Look at me. If whoever sent that wanted proof they'd rattled you, they already have it. You spiraling in front of me right now is exactly what they were hoping for. We don't even know who they are yet."

"You're very calm for someone who just found out she's being photographed by a stranger." He says it almost accusingly, like my composure is one more thing he can't quite make sense of.

"I'm not calm. I'm from a family that doesn't have the luxury of falling apart in public. We learned a long time ago to do it later, alone, where it's cheaper." I hold his gaze when I say it, and something in his face changes, softens, recalibrates around me in a way I feel more than see.

"Okay." He exhales, long and slow, dragging both hands back through his hair. "Tutoring. Real tutoring, starting right now, so that if anyone ever asks why we were up here at this hour, at least that part is true." He pulls his laptop closer and opens a half finished essay so riddled with red editing marks it looks like it's bleeding out on the screen. "Lindqvist wants a close reading of the unreliable narrator chapter. I have four sentences and a headache."

I take the laptop from him, scan what's there, and something in me settles into familiar ground, the one place in this entire strange evening where I feel completely sure of myself. "Your thesis is buried in your third paragraph. Pull it to the front. And stop apologizing to the reader in your own essay, you write like you're afraid Lindqvist is going to reach through the screen and yell at you personally."

"She might."

"She won't if the essay's good." I start typing, restructuring his opening while he watches over my shoulder, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off him, close enough that focusing on verbs and topic sentences takes real, physical effort. His breathing slows beside me, steadies, like watching my hands move across the keys is its own kind of anchor. "Here. Read it back."

He does, quiet, his voice low in the empty library, and when he finishes he looks at me like I've performed a magic trick instead of basic editing. "That's better in one sentence than anything I've managed all semester."

"Because you know the material. You're just scared of sounding like you actually care about it." I glance at him sideways, studying the line of his jaw in the lamplight. "Rich boys aren't supposed to try too hard, is that it? Might ruin the whole effortless act."

Something flickers across his face, quick and unguarded, there and then buried before I can name it fully. "Something like that," he admits, and for a second the honesty in it startles both of us.

We work for almost an hour after that, real work, my hand guiding his through paragraph after paragraph, correcting a comma splice, pushing him to defend a claim he's afraid to commit to. Somewhere in the middle of it the fear from the photograph recedes into background noise, replaced by something quieter and far more dangerous, the easy rhythm of two people who fit better together than either of us expected or wanted. He makes a dry joke about Lindqvist's grading curve and I laugh before I can stop myself, a real laugh, the kind I don't usually let out in front of people I'm afraid of losing. He watches my laugh like it's the most interesting thing that's happened to him all week, and for one long, unguarded second, neither of us looks away.

The lamp flickers once overhead. Somewhere below us a door slams shut in the wind, and I jump at the sound before I can help it. Christian's hand moves instinctively, like he means to reach for mine across the table, and stops himself halfway, curling his fingers back into his palm instead. I pretend not to notice. He pretends not to notice me noticing.

"We should probably talk about who has motive to threaten you over a coffee shop tutor," I say, mostly to fill the silence before it turns into something neither of us is ready for.

"Later," he says. "Please. Just five more minutes of pretending I'm a normal person having a normal night."

I almost tell him this doesn't feel like the kind of night either of us gets to call normal again. I don't get the chance.

His phone buzzes against the table, sharp and sudden in the quiet, and we both go still at the same instant, like the sound has physically frozen us in place.

He looks at it. He doesn't move to answer it.

"Christian."

He turns it over slowly this time, jaw set, and whatever color was left in his face drains out of it completely, all at once, like someone has pulled a plug somewhere behind his eyes.

He turns the screen toward me without a word.

It isn't a photo this time. It's a single line of text, from the same blocked number, sitting stark and black against the glow of the screen.

Does she know what happens to the girls you get bored of, Christian? Ask Kate.

I read it twice. Neither of us says anything. Outside the tall window, the courtyard lamp flickers once, then steadies, and somewhere down on the ground floor, so faint I almost convince myself I imagined it, a door creaks open that nobody walked through.