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“Damn it, Emily. Why?”
She continues screaming. I can’t hurt her. I never want to hurt her. I love her. But if she doesn’t stop screaming, what choice will I have?
Her screams bring security officers, as I knew they would.
I resist the niggling at the back of my neck. I could leave now. Let her go and hightail it out of here. I have the ability. You don’t do what I do on a daily basis and not know how to make yourself invisible when you need to.
But letting her go…
Not a viable option. She’s mine. She belongs to me and no one else.
More security surrounds us as spectators are shooed away.
“Put the knife down,” one of the officers says. “Put it down and we’ll talk. You don’t come out of this alive if you don’t.”
“Fuck off!” I shout.
Emily goes more rigid against me. Something changed. Does she see someone? Someone who means something to her? The man whose shirt she’s wearing?
The slithering anger snakes through me. I’ll fucking end him.
“Emily!” A man’s voice.
Emily shakes her head slightly. Is she communicating with him? Damn it!
“Emily!” The voice again, this time hoarser.
“Who is that?” I whisper. “Tell me who it is so I can end you both.”
She shakes her head vehemently.
“Let her go!” Again the damned voice. “Take me instead!”
A security guard grabs a man—a dark-haired man wearing board shorts and no shirt.
The anger again. So much anger. So that’s him. A fucking surfer boy. An island bum. Really, Emily?
The officer pulls him away, beyond where they’ve taped off the area. He paces around, raking his fingers through his hair.
“That?” I say to Emily. “That’s who you’re fucking?”
She doesn’t respond. Still stays rigid. The blade knicks her skin slightly.
“Damn it,” I say. “You’ve made me hurt you.”
“You always hurt me, Lucifer,” she says. “Always.”
“No. You make me do this. You make me.”
The island guy again, and he’s mouthing words to her. I love you.
No fucking way. He can’t have her. He can’t have what’s mine.
God, I need a drink—a fucking shitload of bourbon will get me through this. I think again about releasing her. I can still run, still get away.
“Let her go,” an officer with a bullhorn shouts. “You hurt her, you go down.”
“If I die, we both die!” I shout back.
Surfer boy runs then, crashes through the taped boundary, and—
A gunshot.
Fuck.
A gunshot.
Pain lances through me, but I hold steady. I hold steady… I hold steady…
But my brain has no more control over my body, and the knife… The knife… It falls from my grasp, tumbles to the ground.
In slow motion.
All in slow motion.
Emily runs away.
Away from me.
And I fall…into nothing.
4
KATELYN
I wake up to the warmth of the morning sun on my face. The light from Luke’s lone window streams in, casting a luminescent veil over the small studio.
Instinctively, I reach for him.
Then I jerk upward. “Luke?”
The bathroom door is closed. He’ll be out in a moment.
I crawl over to the edge of the bed and sit up.
And then I notice…
The suitcase—the suitcase that was sitting on his bed that he moved to the floor last night—is gone.
I stand, and it hits me. I woke up in the middle of the night. I woke up and he wasn’t there.
No. I nearly run to the bathroom and pull the door open. “Luke?”
He’s not standing at the sink.
He’s not sitting on the toilet.
I throw back the shower curtain.
No Luke.
I open the mirrored cabinet above the sink. The bottle of hair color is gone, but he left his contact case and solution.
No big deal. He probably has travel sizes he uses. I grab the contact lens case and open it. I suck in a breath.
A pair of contacts sits inside the case. But they’re not regular clear contact lenses.
They’re brown. Colored lenses. Made to make eyes look brown.
“Oh, Luke…” I say aloud. “What have you done?”
My heart sinks and sadness sweeps through me.
He left.
Luke left without telling me.
My eyes glaze over, but I grab hold of the sink with both hands. No. I will not lose it. I’ve worked too hard to begin taking my life back.
I will not ruin it over any man.
Not even Luke Johnson.
Except that I love Luke Johnson.
How can I? How can I love a man so quickly? Especially after all I’ve been through?
I need a friend. I need to talk.
“Get a grip, Katelyn.” The strength of my voice surprises even me. I close the mirror cabinet and face myself. My glassy eyes are front and center. I sniffle a little. “You will not,” I say to my reflection, “lose what you’ve accomplished. You will not.”
I take a quick shower, dress, and leave Luke’s apartment, not bothering to even try to lock the door.
He left me here. Without so much as a note. If he gets robbed, I don’t give a damn.
