Stay With Me (She's With Me #2) - Jessica Cunsolo Page 0,16

my eyes blue. I thought maybe this time it would be different. Maybe as Hailey I could live comfortably and make new friends, get involved in school, and just live normally.

I didn’t know then that because I was Hailey, people would die.

For a few weeks I was constantly paranoid. I refused to take my sleeping pills, which meant I was completely sleep deprived, which only made me more paranoid, and the vicious cycle continued.

After a few weeks of nothing out of the ordinary happening, I let my guard down. I started feeling like a regular, normal teenage girl with regular, normal teenage-girl problems. I even got a part-time job at a clothing store at the mall.

Being Hailey was working out so great. Everyone was super-nice, I made lots of friends and even went out on a couple of dates. My boss was cool and I loved my job. I got to work with my new best friend, Ashley, and on our Friday-night shifts, our boss would order take-out for everyone. Even the new jujitsu gym I’d joined was bigger and better equipped than the last two. I finally felt at peace, like I was finally somewhere I could call home.

When I made it three months without receiving any odd phone calls or death threats, I cried tears of joy for ten minutes straight, then celebrated by eating an entire Nutella cheesecake all by myself and not even regretting it. But like always, my happiness didn’t last too long.

This time, the way Tony made his reappearance was different. It was like he didn’t care about toying with me and teasing me anymore—he just wanted the job done, to fulfill his own twisted sense of justice. He skipped the phone calls and death threats and break-ins, and went straight to finding me.

A couple of days after I started my senior year as Hailey Johnson, I was completely unaware of how I would never get to be Hailey again, never get to see my friends again.

It was like any other day. I drove to work, walked into the mall and waved hi to Frank, one of the security guards I’d gotten to know, and started my regular weeknight shift. The mall wasn’t too busy but I was still finding things to do to keep myself occupied. We were about to close, the mall shutting down in twenty minutes, when I took a quick break to eat my Nutella sandwich and text my friends.

Ashley stuck her head into the back room. “Hailey, there’s a guy here looking for you.”

“Is it Hunter? I told him I was still hungry and he likes to surprise me by bringing me food.”

As I stood up, Ashley shook her head, her eyes shifting to look at something behind her, something on the other side of the door that I couldn’t see, and I noticed how she was sweating despite the usual chill in the store.

“He … he told me to tell you that he’s your father. He was very adamant about that.”

I froze where I was. “Ash, you know my father is dead,” I said slowly.

I’d been best friends with Ashley for months, practically since the first day I’d moved here. I hadn’t told her how my dad died, but she knew he was gone, and by the way she was acting, she was uncomfortable with the man out there.

She nodded her head slightly but her jaw was tight, her movements stiff. Now I was positive something was wrong. All that was in the break room was a table and some chairs, a microwave, a small filing cabinet, and a bulletin board with some memos for the staff.

“Okay, I’ll be right out,” I said loud enough for the man I assumed was right behind Ashley to hear, the man who’d been hunting me for almost a year now.

Ashley, who had been working here for years and who’d gotten me this job, exaggeratedly looked back and forth between me and the small filing cabinet, telling me a story that I got immediately.

“I’ll tell him you’ll be right out,” she said, disappearing back behind the door.

I couldn’t help myself. I peeked out the staff door and the floor practically fell out from under me. It was him. He was tapping his foot and glaring angrily at everyone who crossed his path. I didn’t even have to see his face to know who it was. I saw him every night in my nightmares. He’d found me. He just hadn’t followed his usual