“Do you have frostbite yet?” she asked.
Eric couldn’t help but grin at the sight of her. She’d changed from before. Taken a shower, twisted her hair into a thick braid, and scrubbed her face free of makeup. She’d decked herself out in a pair of mismatched pajamas covered by a ratty flannel robe. And on her feet, of course, she wore a pair of hot-pink bunny slippers.
“Nice slippers,” he said with a nod toward her feet. “Those are even hotter in person.”
She glowered at him as she climbed into the passenger seat and tucked her feet beneath her, out of sight. “Here,” she said, shoving a thick down comforter in his direction.
He took it greedily and wrapped it around his shoulders. It was big enough to go around him twice, but he held out the excess in her direction—a silent offer to share. For a moment, he thought she would refuse. Her eyes darted to his face and back away. Then she shimmied an inch closer and wrapped her side of the blanket around her arms.
Eric cleared his throat. Did she see the tweet just now? He couldn’t quite summon the nerve to ask. He had a million different things he wanted to say to her, but he didn’t dare speak. He knew that one wrong word could send her scurrying into the house for good.
Tessa broke the silence, and Eric choked at her chosen topic of conversation. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”
“Now that’s an understatement,” he said with a dry laugh. “Trust me, I wasn’t expecting you to.”
She looked down at her lap. “I just wanted to make that completely clear.”
“Message received.” He knew he should leave it at that, but he couldn’t quite manage to bite his tongue. “To be fair, Tessa, I did just spend the past five months texting with a girl who wouldn’t even send me a selfie.”
“So what?” Her head snapped up, and her eyes flashed with defiance. “That means I’m obligated to sleep with you?”
“No! I’m just saying, if I wanted to get laid, I can think of easier ways.”
Tessa pressed her lips together. Her gaze lingered, and Eric turned his head to give her a better view. Even in the darkened car, he could see the way new color stained her cheeks when he looked her full in the face. Was she thawing toward him? Just a little? He rocked his body toward her and knocked his shoulder lightly against hers. “Hey, look at you, outside your house again. Twice in one day!”
She slid down farther in her seat, pulling her shoulder out of range. “It’s not like I feel safe in there anymore,” she said. “Not after he was in my house.”
Eric scratched his nose, unsure how to respond. “Do you want me to take you somewhere else?”
“No.” She shrugged. “Nowhere else to go, really.” She sounded matter-of-fact, but Eric couldn’t quite read the expression on her face.
He paused, waiting for her to say more.
She let out a noisy breath. “Shouldn’t I be better now?” Her mouth scrunched sideways, and her voice tightened with frustration as she spoke. “I mean, logically, I was afraid to leave my house because I could feel him out here. Somewhere. Somehow. I could sense that he was still watching me. Now that he’s locked up, I should feel safe. That seems only fair, right?”
Eric raised an eyebrow. He had a feeling it didn’t work that way. A phobia was an irrational fear. It didn’t respond to logic. It had no sense of fairness. And he could tell from her expression that Tessa knew it too. He longed to reach out and squeeze her hand, but he didn’t want to spook her. He ventured a hesitant smile instead. “So I guess that means you can come to my show tomorrow in Santa Fe?”
“If you think that’s happening, then you’re the one with mental problems.”
She met his eyes, striving for a withering glare, but she couldn’t quite manage it. He broke into a grin, and he saw her cheeks flood with color once again. She turned away, but not fast enough to hide the involuntary smile that popped onto her own face in response.
“So that was really you?” she asked. She kept her eyes averted, plucking stray feathers through the comforter’s outer shell. “All that time? That was actually you texting? Not some publicist or something?”
“Nope. All me.”
“I’m just trying to process it.”
“Take your time.”
She stole another look, and he forced his face into serious lines. No more cocky grin. Her forehead crinkled as she studied him. “Tell me the truth,” she said. “How many other fans did you have this going on with?”
“None. Tessa, I’m telling you, it wasn’t like that. It was only you.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Why would you even talk to me in the first place?”
Eric thought back to that morning when he first became aware of her account. He’d been a total mess that day, driven by unchecked anger and the thinly veiled anxiety that lay beneath. He hadn’t yet learned how to control it. Only her calming influence had taught him how to cope.
He shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. He turned away from her and looked straight out through the windshield. “Talking to you helped me. You helped me through a lot of things.”
“But why?” she asked, incredulous. “You’re Eric Thorn. Why would you need help from someone like me?”
“You already know all this, Tessa. It’s nothing we haven’t talked about before.”
“When? In the police station?”
“No! Tessa, you know me.” He leaned toward her, his eyes growing more intent. “I’m not a stranger. We’ve been talking every night.” She opened her mouth to respond, but he continued before she could speak. “You know all those times we were talking about Eric Thorn, and I said some theory about him, and you accused me of projecting? Remember? Well, it turns out I wasn’t projecting, Tessa. I was telling you things about myself. Real things. Stuff I couldn’t tell anyone else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Hating what I do? Feeling trapped? Getting locked into a bad record deal and forced to act like a male stripper? Does any of this ring a bell?”
She nodded slowly but didn’t answer. For a moment, her eyes went far away, and he thought he might be getting through to her. Then she returned her attention to the comforter’s frayed seams. “But what about all the other stuff?” she asked. “Like you told me how some coworker got stalked. What was that? Just some story to make me feel like we had something in common?”
“No!” He reached for her arm, but he let his hand drop without making contact. “Tessa, I didn’t even know about Blair. That was true. All of it.”
She looked up, blinking rapidly.
“Dorian Cromwell,” he explained. “I was a total wreck last summer after Dorian got killed.”
“Did you know him?”
“No, that’s not the point!” Eric’s voice rose, and he took a deep breath to control it. “I just felt like a sitting duck. It only takes one copycat, you know? It’s only a matter of time before the same thing happens again.”