ugly faces staring down with the focus of a rabid dog, his fingers climbing up my thigh, knuckles dragging against my panties.
I try to jerk away again, but swallow hard when I can’t fight. My strength has waned, my bravery forgotten, and fear dances in to take up court and chill the breath in my lungs.
Ice water is my blood and all the sweat from dancing is suddenly too slick for me to tugs my wrists free. They just twist together, the bones aching, my heart doing a helpless tap dance in my throat.
Damn it. I’ve really gone and done it this time.
But then I’m yanked forward, the fingers clamped on my wrist letting go, my body tumbling down to the dirty floor where my hip strikes sharply, pain radiating across the bone.
Swiping the mess of black hair from my face, I glance up, not sure what I’m expecting, but it certainly isn’t to see the meathead held against a wall by another man who is just as tall. He has to be a bouncer.
Thank God he was paying attention.
The new man holds Meathead’s arm at a painful angle behind his back, a bicep flexing as his face comes to down to whisper to the asshole who thought he could push me around.
I’m not sure I’m seeing it right, adrenaline is now flooding in to mix with the alcohol in my veins, but I could swear I see the color drain from Meathead’s face in response to whatever the other man says.
He’s terrified, a wet trail soaking down the leg of his jeans.
The other man releases his arm to step back, and the jerk who had his hands on me runs off into the crowd, knocking a few people aside who were unfortunate enough to get in his way.
Then the new man turns around, my eyes lifting and out of focus.
He’s handsome, I think. Square jaw, dark hair, cruel lips, broad shoulders, tapered waist - that upside down triangle upper body that only lucky men are born with.
Either I’m drunker than I’ve ever been, or he’s gorgeous.
I have to be drunk.
Gorgeous men like that don’t work in Goth clubs.
He marches over to grab my arm and lifts me up, but I’m unsteady on my feet, the adrenaline-alcohol combo making it impossible to balance on my legs.
“Time to go, baby bird. You’ve had enough to drink.”
Baby bird? What the hell does that mean?
I open my mouth to ask, but his t-shirt brushes my face as he tugs me against him to walk me forward, the scent of his cologne so dark and decadent that I inhale deeply, rolling every note across my tongue.
He smells of fire and deep caverns, of spice and forbidden places, of mysteries and clandestine gatherings. Everything that haunts me and keeps me awake at night.
It’s an exquisite scent that reaches between my legs and whispers dirty words in my ear. My knees grow weaker as I lean against him.
“I’m not a baby bird,” I argue, unsure if he can understand my slurred words beneath the thump of heavy music.
His chest shakes with laughter as he draws my arm up to wrap over his shoulder.
“You are a baby bird. Out here flapping your wings when you don’t know how to fly yet.”
Whatever. He doesn’t know me. There is no way a stranger can see what even my closest friends never noticed. He’s just a bouncer pissed I caused a scene and is escorting me out.
On the outside, I’m a girl who had too much to drink. But on the inside, I’m dying.
Not from sorrow.
Not from pain.
But from something much deeper and more horrifying.
There is no easy way to explain what I feel when I stand still long enough to think of it.
The closest I can come is the feeling of being set free in space, what a person must feel if they are floating away watching the Earth grow smaller. They’re swallowed by the cold and the darkness, but instead of panic, you feel an odd resignation...an acceptance that you’ll never return home.
They say if you were to watch a person encounter the event horizon of a black hole that they would remain frozen in place forever, at least as far as you could tell, because time stops inside that hole. Just disappears.
And maybe that’s how I feel.
That I don’t exist in time.
That I’m stuck in place without hope of going back or moving forward.
It isn’t that I’m lonely. I prefer being by myself. Just that there is