Page 156 of Pareidolia

I need…

I need.

I have to get out of here. I fish in my wallet and tear the few bills I have out, crumpling them as I drop them onto the table next to my untouched food. When I stand, I half stumble, and Janine actually reaches out to steady me.

“You okay there?” The soft drawl of her voice is so sweet, and where her hand touches my arm, I can feel a spark of something.

Heat.

Liquid.

Lust.

The cramp in my chest gets worse, and it takes everything I have inside me to straighten up and offer her another smile. “Yeah, sorry.”

Her eyes trail to the food on the table and she frowns. “Was there something wrong?”

Fuck. I’m better than this.

I’m better at pretending to be a person than this.

“No… just… got a call. I was going to ask for a box.”

It’s a lie. I was going to leave it and… what… head back into the forest, back to Nox, who is probably standing in the trees looking like a smug asshole because I can’t even pretend to be human for twenty minutes while I take a break from him?

The lie seems like it’s good enough for her, though, because she offers me a smile and brushes red nails against my arm as she nods. “I’ll get that for you.”

Lust.

She wants to fuck me. She wants me to take her back to her house and spread her thighs and make her feel good.

Fuck. I shouldn’t know that. I mean, I can read it from her body language, but I shouldn’t be able to feel it pressing against my skin like a hand threatening to slip around my throat and force-feed me the taste of her desire.

I take a deep breath as soon as she clacks away on her heels and try to steady myself. I just need air. I need to get out of this enclosed space that’s slowly filling up with more and more people who are…

Fuck, they’re so full of feelings.

Wants and desires, anger, lust, need… things I can’t wrap my head around that feel warm and sweet.

Happiness?

Hope?

My fingers lift, digging into the leather of my jacket. When I press down, something presses back—the tendrils beneath my skin are dancing like they hear music I can’t understand.

I don’t know the tune.

I turn, ready to leave the food on the table and fuck whatever Janine from middle school thinks of me, but a hand stops me. It presses into the center of my chest as I try to move.

“Alex Michaels.” The sound of that fucking name grates on my nerves, but the hot wash of disgust that rolls through me where that hand touches is enough to consume me. I glance up at the man, and it only takes me a second to process who he is.

A friend my father used to drink with—he was at our house all the time. The years haven’t been kind to him. His gut is bigger than it was before, and his hair is thinning out. There are lines at the corners of his mouth where a frown has carved residence in his skin.

“What do you want, Blake?” There’s no point in trying to deny who I am… not when he said it so confidently. Apparently I’m not changed enough to hide in this town after all.

I wonder if some part of me knew that when I came back here.

“How about a bit of fucking respect?” he hisses out, and my hand automatically drops to the table behind me. The steak knife wasn’t sharp enough to steal, but it’s sharp enough to tear across his throat.