Read Every Breath You Take for Free Online Page B

differently.”
    “That you are. At any rate, I dare you to bust out an umbrella next time it rains. Or eat a chicken wing. Or let an ambulance go by without touching your nose,” she said, laughing. “And when you do, let me know if the world came to an end.”
    “Listen, I’m an old man. I don’t change my ways so easily.”
    “How old are you, anyway?”
    “Just turned thirty-five in May. Like I said, old man.”
    “Oh, come on, that’s not old,” she said. “Sixty is old.
Seventy
is old.”
    “Would you still go out with me if I was seventy?”
    She hesitated and they both laughed. “So, I’ve got this thing tomorrow night for work, and if it’s not too late, I’ll call you afterward,” he said.
    “Okay, sure.”
    “All right. Talk then. Good night.”
    “Bye,” she said softly before reluctantly hanging up the phone. She sighed, that warm, woozy feeling she got every time she talked to Jason, oozing across her skin.
    Natalie changed into a pair of shorts and a tank top and did her usual nighttime routine before she slid into bed. She turned over on her side to sleep.
    It was no use.
    Natalie flopped onto her back, slipping into that frenetic space between exhaustion and exhilaration. A weak moan escaped her lips, the memory of his recently realized kisses skipping across her mind. Soft. Sweet. Warm. Toe-curling. Mind-blowing. Panty-dropping.
    The apartment was quiet except for the odd creaks of the walls and random groans of the pipes, the faint sounds of cars and buses from the street below. She replayed every detail of their conversation: work (busy for them both); favorite foods (Italian was her favorite, though he loved Thai, which she avoided since she was allergic to peanuts); last book read (she’d just finished this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, he’d just started a business bestseller); favorite restaurants. His questions, her answers. Her questions, his answers.
    She liked him . . . really liked him.
    He could be
It
.
    It
. . . that mythical thing she’d been searching for her whole life that had eluded her grasp.
It
was more than being cute or funny or holding the door open for her or just being a nice guy.
It
was sharp . . . smart . . . confident . . . fun . . . funny.
It
would be her rock, her biggest cheerleader, and her most steady confidant.
It
would be her partner.
It
would have her same ambition and drive, her innate desire to succeed.
It
wouldn’t demand she forgo her dreams and desires and bend herself to its will.
    Sweet, funny, eccentric Jason. Sharp, smart, confident Jason.
    He could be
It
.

“Just tell them what they want to hear.”
    Man, you’ve been going about this all wrong. All that screaming and crying and carrying on you’ve been doing—that ain’t gonna get you shit. Naw, naw, man, you got to play the game. If you really want to get out of here, you got to make them think that you swallowing all this shit they’ve been spoon-feeding you about, uh, “understanding your actions,” and, uh, “knowing there are severe consequences” and that you got to learn how to “control your impulses.”
    Man, fuck all that noise.
    You want to get out of here? Tell them what they want to hear. That
’
s it. That
’
s the secret.
    Just tell them what they want to hear.
    Flynn
’
s advice, dispensed over a rousing round of dominoes on game day—held every Tuesday—rolled around his head like a tumbleweed. Flynn, an imposing six foot wall of concrete with broken patches of white stubble littering the edges of his face, had finally interrupted his daily ravings to offer him some words of wisdom and friendship, both of which he was grateful for.
    Being locked up in here for all these years—he couldn
’
t stand it anymore. She was out there, without him. He couldn
’
t make them understand they were standing in the way of true love. They were too stupid to grasp it. He
’
d tried reasoning with them, screaming it at the top of his lungs, crying