Unraveling You 03 Awakening You Read Free

shoving it aside.”
     
    “I am.” She ceases bouncing her leg. “I’m just really tired of all of this and those damn people. Why can’t they just leave us alone?” Regret fills her eyes as she looks over at me “Sorry, I know I’m making this worse.”
     
    “You don’t need to apologize.” I slump back in the seat. “Besides, I’m the one making this worse. I brought this on everyone.”
     
    “Don’t you dare say that,” she starts to protest, but stops talking when Detective Rannali strolls up.
     
    His white, button-down shirt is wrinkled, his tie crooked, and his hair is disheveled. “Sorry to make you wait. It’s been a long day.” He nods his head at his office door. “Come inside. There’s some stuff I’d like to talk to you about.”
     
    The three of us simultaneously rise to our feet, file into his office, and take a seat in front of his desk. Once everyone gets settled, he opens a folder that contains the note I found tonight.
     
    “So, ever since this all started, we’ve been wondering why the Soulless Mileas are so fixated on you—leaving notes, stealing your knife, taking your hair—yet they never actually make any threatening moves. We’ve had some theories, but we couldn’t be positive.” He glances from the note to me. “This note is starting to confirm our suspicions.”
     
    “And what are you suspicious of?” Lila asks, grasping onto Ethan’s hand for support.
     
    She has been doing that a lot lately, revealing just how much stress this ordeal has been putting on her. It makes me feel so damn guilty all the time because it’s my fault. I brought these people into their lives. I brought the stress into their lives.
     
    The detective closes the folder and overlaps his hands on top of it. “When I was first put on your sister’s case,” he speaks directly to me, “I remembered interviewing this woman in the neighborhood who believed the people who took Sadie stalked her first. She reported seeing people breaking into the house. I didn’t look into it too much, because the source had ended up being highly unreliable. But, over the last few weeks, I’ve been noticing a pattern.”
     
    “They’re doing the same thing to me.” My fingers curl around the armrests of the chair, and my fingernails scrape at the wood. “And, eventually, they’re going to try and take me.”
     
    Lila gasps, covering her hand over her mouth. “That’s not what’s going on,” she says in denial.
     
    “I never said that,” the detective says with caution. “I just said that there are some similarities between your case and your sister’s. And the note, well, it’s just more proof that you need to start being extremely careful.”
     
    “How can I be more careful?” I ask, dumbfounded. “I already spend no time alone. There’s an alarm in the house. My therapist walks me to my car.”
     
    “We’ll do more to keep him safe.” Lila places a hand on mine. “It’s going to be okay.”
     
    “No, it’s not.” I stand up, ignoring their protests to come back as I exit the office.
     
    I want to walk out the front door of the station and just start running until my legs give out. Run away until I feel safe. But nowhere is safe, and running away is only going to put me in harm’s way. So, instead, I wait for Lila and Ethan by the glass entrance doors. They don’t show up for another thirty minutes, and by then, Lila looks like she’s been crying.
     
    “Is everything all right?” I ask her as she strides up to me.
     
    “Everything’s great.” She folds her arms around me and yanks me close, despite my rigidness. “Everything will be okay.”
     
Lies. Lies.
     
Everyone lies.
     
Lies to save me.
     
Lies to break me.
     
Lies to make me ache.
     
How many more lies are in my future?
     
    “What do we do now?” I ask Ethan from over Lila’s shoulder as she continues to hug me so tightly I can barely breathe.
     
    “The only thing we can do,” he replies,