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My head still felt fuzzy from the copious amounts of wine that was consumed after the dads picked Mimi up last night. Aurelia, Brynn, and Penelope were still upstairs sleeping it off, but I’d awoken feeling antsy.
Nightmares had plagued every bit of my own sleep and it felt like, whenever I closed my eyes, I saw flashes of all of the misfortune I’d witnessed in my twenty-six years.
The few moments of the car accident where everyone was still alive but stuck as it sunk into the river, my mam’s face and her lips moving soundlessly as she told me something that I couldn’t quite remember.
Then waking up in the hospital surrounded by strangers who seemed to know more about me than I did them.
Giving myself a firm shake, I pushed the nightmares and the memories away. Bad memories were a lot like ghosts. If you gave them any attention, then they gained more power over you.
Putting my earbuds in, I scrolled through my phone until I found my usual running playlist and once the first few strains of SIX started playing in my ears I kicked off into a light jog.
There was nothing better than a morning run to clear the cobwebs of a bad night from my mind.
The pound of my feet as I sucked in a breath of cool air and let it out on another beat, the sheen of sweat clinging to my skin, the upbeat music playing in my ears.
It was just what the doctor ordered.
Well—it would have been—had I ever gone to see the doctor. Yet another lovely phobia of mine to add to the pile that always sat just underneath my skin.
Aurelia constantly tried to get me to go, but outside of the medical checkups required for figure skating, I could count on both hands the amount of times I’d seen one of those assholes in the last fifteen years.
The dulcet tones of the six wives of Henry VIII faded in my ears and shifted into something more somber as I turned the corner of one of the high rises and caught something out of the corner of my eye.
I was being followed.
My inner ramblings screeched to a halt even though my feet kept going.
Who could it be? Richter? He’d been warned about showing up in random places, but I could still hear his cajoling voice as he tried to convince me to go out for another date despite the fact that we’d never even gone on a first one.
I kicked up my pace, swallowing the sudden lump in my throat.
I just needed to get to the sound. There were always police officers at the sound, even this early in the morning.
The edge of the fog that always hung over the water in the morning came into view.
Finally, I risked a glance over my shoulder and what I saw peeved me right off.
It wasn’t Richter running after me. No.
But it also wasn’t someone I was happy to see.
Conjuring up every single self-defense lesson that the dads had drilled into all three of us growing up, I turned to face my pursuer and promptly punched him in the throat.
Enzo Santoro went down like a bag of bricks, splayed flat on the ground.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I spat, standing over the groaning alpha. Ripping out my earbuds, I shoved them into the pockets of my leggings. “Why are you chasing me like some kind of psychopath?”
I hadn’t gotten creepy vibes from the alpha before, but I suppose my creep-radar had been wrong before.
“I wasn’t chasing you,” he managed to rasp, holding a hand to what would surely be his bruised throat. “I called your name twice and didn’t see your earbuds.”
“Just because you weren’t chasing me doesn’t mean you weren’t following me.” I wanted to give the man’s side a kick for scaring me so badly.
Enzo made another noise of pain. “I wanted to talk to you without Leith or Artie around and I know we both run at the same time.”
That made… sense, but I was still pissed at him.
With a sigh, I held out my hand to him and he gratefully took it and let me pull him to his feet. He was still wheezing a bit, but it didn’t seem like my punch had done any real damage.
