Page 83 of Haunt the Mall

“Yes.” But that wasn’t the point.

Rocking his body, Victor bit the inside of his cheek. “I’m going to kill him.”

“What? I don’t care about him. I’m asking if—”

Victor flung open the door, then stormed into the theater. “He better not be hiding under the seats.”

“What are you doing?” I hurried in after him. “We’re still talking.”

His eyes flashed as he scanned the rows. “I can almost guarantee if he was skulking around theater thirteen—”

Sam popped up about halfway back on the far end and dabbed at his face with a paper towel. “Uh, hi.”

Was he hiding back there? I shook my head and pinched my brow. “Victor, he was probably cleaning.”

“He needs to leave. Immediately,” he growled, positioning himself between us.

God, I’d never seen my Spider-Man like this. Looming. His features twisted in hate, in shadows.

“Get out,” he boomed.

Sam winched and scurried down the steps. But when he glanced at me, Victor shot toward him. He snatched him by the scruff of his shirt and yanked him off his feet, eliciting a squeak from the scrambling teen.

“Don’t even look at her,” Victor growled. “If you so much as sniff in her direction I’ll rip your fucking nose off.”

“Woah." I grasped the back of his shirt, woozy with shock. Where was this coming from? “Victor, you can’t say that." Not to a coworker.

He shook Sam again. “I warned you once. But you thought you could be a sneaky little creep. You think you don’t need boundaries?”

Sweat poured down the squirming, pale teen’s face. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Let him down. You can talk about this.” I tugged on the back of Victor’s shirt with increasing panic. This was a lawsuit waiting to happen.

He brushed me aside and dragged a kicking and thrashing Sam to the hall. It was like my boyfriend couldn’t hear or feel me at all. He had hulked out. I was invisible.

“Now, you take this shirt off and leave it at the door. I never want to see you again.” Victor shoved him into the hall.

Sam sprawled onto the floor with a cry. The bright red carpet underneath him looked like a metaphorical pool of blood. And for what?

“You fired him for telling me you’ve been seeing other women?” I whispered.

“No. I’m firing him for stalking my girlfriend,” he spat.

Girlfriend, he called me.

Ten minutes ago, I’d have kissed him for it. He loved me. He wanted me. Only me, right? I was his wife in another life. Or a death, I guessed.

But right here, right now, he treated me like his property. A sex kitten to play with until Halloween.

Sam stared at me, but I knew even less about him than Victor. Was he stalking—or was he being punished for talking to me?

The monster inside me screamed in agony. You stupid girl, you don’t know anything.

I barely knew either of the men in front of me. I didn’t understand, I couldn’t see. I’d loved the guy Victor had been when he was alone with me. The one he studied in the movies, maybe.

What if everything he was doing was to cover up the fact that he was using me? What if he was fucking other girls in theater thirteen? He was fighting for me. Or was this more about marking his territory?

Did Victor ever really love me?