Page 11 of Intrepid

“Well, I’ve got a … roommate to bitch out, and a long day of class tomorrow. So I’ll …” See you? Likely not. “Thanks again.”

“Anytime, angel.”

With a nod and a truly awkward smile, I spun around and jogged up the stairs toward the front of the apartment. I turned to see that he’d waited until I reached the door before he fired up the bike and took off.

If I were my mother, I’d have gotten his phone number.

But I wasn’t, so I dragged my exhausted, adrenaline-sapped ass to bed.

* * *

Dude. You don’t just leave a fucking party without telling anyone.” If Bea hadn’t been holding an ice-filled sack to her already blackened eye, I’d have knocked her in the face.

Fortunately for her, she’d gotten home after I did the night before, so the hours of sleep I managed in between held my temper in check.

“I left you?” My forehead twitched with a frown as I stared at her. “Are you high? Again? I watched you leave! You left me there!”

Aside from that shittiness, I’d spent half the morning searching for the bracelet I’d worn the night before—my mother’s bracelet. The one I hadn’t bothered to take off in, oh, about eight years. The other half of the morning, I’d spent sobbing over the loss, making a promise to myself to look for it more thoroughly once I got home from class. With a tricky clasp, it wasn’t the first time I’d lost it, but my fear was that it’d fallen off in that shithole, where I’d never find it again.

“Sweetheart, we looked all over for you. It’s you who left us first.” She threw her hands up in the air. “Dax, Simone, Theo, some friend of Dax’s. A whole damn search party went after your ass!”

“Which friend?”

“Hot guy with the hoodie.” Knees pulled into her chest, she bit down on a granola bar. “How’d you get home, anyway?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but the hoodie guy drove me home. Who is he?”

“Never met him before. Dax says he’s kind of crazy, with some of the stunts he pulls. But damn, he was right up my alley. So, he gave you a ride, huh?” The taunting tone of her voice made me want to smack the double entendre from her lips.

“What happened to your eye?” I asked, ignoring her question.

“Yeah, so, remember the guy I was with? Theo?”

“The guy you walked away and left me and Simone stranded for? Yes.”

“Okay, anyway.” She rolled her eyes, packing her cheek with another bite of granola. “He accidentally spills his beer on this asshole at the party.” A piece of food popped out of her mouth as she garbled the words. “So Theo apologizes up and down, but the guy is fucking psycho, or something. Says he was looking for someone and lost sight of whoever it was. So he starts wailing on Theo. Then I step in to break it up, and one of them, I still don’t know who, knocks me in the face.” She lowered the makeshift icepack to reveal a purple mess beneath and the red bloodshot whites of her eye, the sight of which left me blinking to hold back a grimace. “So we left. I heard the place got shot up right after that. Somebody took a bullet to the chest, I guess. Good thing you skipped out early.”

I inwardly rolled my eyes, gathering up my books for class.

“You still don’t leave a party without saying something, though. Seriously, I thought I was going to wake up to hear about your dead body floating down the river, or something.”

“Well, lucky you. I’m still here.” Books in hand, I headed toward the door.

“I am glad about that,” she shouted after me. “Just so you know!”

* * *

The mind had a tricky way of dealing with trauma, so it really didn’t hit me, until I had just breached that thin membrane between consciousness and falling asleep. Every time I started to drift, I’d hear a gunshot that’d snap me awake. That’d happened about a dozen times in the night, so when I finally reached my first class of the day, I could hardly keep my bowling ball head propped up long enough to stay awake.

Warm plastic slid across my tongue, as I sucked the saliva from my pen and pushed it into the side of my cheek. My hygienist would’ve probably chided my ass if she saw me, but first classes made me nervous, sitting surrounded by a bunch of strangers, and I needed something to distract me from the heavy tug of sleep pleading for one quickie snooze and the absolute disgust at having lost my bracelet.

“I didn’t peg you as a Criminal Justice major.” The familiar voice behind me snapped me awake like a cold bucket of water. I swiveled just enough to see sprawled legs that led up to a slouching body, and those striking blue eyes, staring down at me from the seat directly behind me.

Ty. The guy from the party. Holy shit, talk about a small world.

“Are you in this class?” I asked over my shoulder, trying not to rouse the few students who, like me, preferred the seats at the back of the lecture hall.

“No.” The deep vibration of his voice tickled my ear and cast a shiver down my spine.