Not that he would know that. He’s only just met me.
“Where are we going?”
“You’re going home,” he answers, his voice a smooth baritone that vibrates against my ear. “I’m calling for a cab.”
The club feels too crowded all of a sudden, my stomach twisting over a lack of food and too much to drink. It’s far too hot now, the chill of fear abandoned for the heat of panic.
“I think I drank too much.”
“I know you did.”
We weave through the crowds, my feet stumbling, his arm tightening on my waist to keep me upright, the heat of his body comforting in a way. I won’t fall on my ass, not with a steel band locked around me.
Everything is closing in on me, so fast, so thoroughly.
The walls are caving in, the people blending together in one big lump of flesh. We bump into something. There is a jostling, a voice complaining, but that steel band never releases me as the room becomes a tunnel too narrow for me to pass through.
“I think...”
He moves us faster, but not enough. My legs are giving out, my head feels heavy and gross. There is no music now, just a steady thump of bass. I can’t keep my eyes open despite my best effort.
“I think I’m passing out.”
The man says something I can’t understand, my body giving out. A whispered curse, a hiss of sound, and as my legs became jelly and my body is heavy as stone, I begin to fall, only for another steel band to lock beneath my legs and lift me up.
My face turns into his chest, a hard plane beneath soft cotton.
Fingers gripping into the fabric of his shirt, I breathe him in again before the blackness swallows me whole.
“You smell so familiar...”
I’m not sure if the words really leave my mouth.
Ari
Well, this is unfortunate.
Not only does it look bad that I am carrying out a half-dressed girl who is barely conscious, but I am doing so after having stalked her for several years.
Not that anybody knows our history, but still, mine isn’t a face I want associated with Adeline Kane. And here I am, cradling her to my chest in full public view where any person can give a detailed account of me for a lovely police sketch.
I should have stayed home tonight. Hell, I should have kept going without turning back on the night I killed her father. But here I am, carrying his tragic daughter out of a nightclub she isn’t old enough to be in.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda, right?
Son of a bitch...
We broke free of the crowd and are approaching the front doors when the bouncer’s eyes slide my direction, his brow lifting in silent question. Only Adeline has the power to conjure my ghost and make it visible to the world.
And in my line of work, that is less than acceptable.
Spinning on my heel, I give him my back before he can dedicate my features to memory. Thankfully, he isn’t paid enough to give too much of a damn. Back into the crowd, I tuck my head low and push forward to find a service hall leading to another door.
Adeline is too still against me. Too quiet. It’s the alcohol, I know that. But it disturbs me more than I want to admit.
Even in sleep, she is too large for her skin. Even unconscious, she spreads out like wildfire and engulfs her space. Maybe even more so while sleeping because she can slip free from her restraints.
Adeline cries in her sleep. She talks. She screams. She fights. She never rests.
I should know. I’ve watched her.
But I’ve never allowed myself too close. I never enter her room while she is home.
You smell so familiar...
Her words come back to me, and I know it is impossible.
This is the first time I’ve touched her.
The first time I’ve ever been near her.
Except, that isn’t exactly true.
I was close to her once, but we were separated by a sheet of glass.
It was the first night I learned she walked in her sleep.
Adeline was still sixteen at the time, her father’s body not yet cold in the ground. I’d kept watch outside her bedroom, tucked in a shadowed corner staring in through her window like the creeper I am.
She was thrashing that night. Crying. Her fingers curling into her sheet as her body arched from the mattress. But then her eyes opened, and I thought she’d woken from the nightmare.