Stairs, more stairs, two left turns and a door. The sign says "Staff Only," but the glowing green one above it says "Exit," so I push through it anyway and find myself outside.
Rain falls in a barely-there mist. Icy air slithers down the front of my dress and wraps around my ribs like a lover with cold hands. When I steady myself against the wall, something digs into my lower back.
I fumble behind me and push a button for a heat lamp.
A red glow floods over my shoulders and heat slowly follows. As the timer tick, tick, ticks quietly above me, my eyes adjust in the weak light.
I'm in some sort of courtyard, little more than a pocket of air trapped between four rock walls.
They jut out just above my head to form a shelter, then climb all the way up to the sky and frame a shaving of the moon.
Soggy cigarette butts litter the concrete; a rusty lawn chair darkens a corner, and beside it, half a plastic cup of beer.
Guess I'm having a meltdown in the staff smoking area.
A sob escapes me, chased by a strangled gulp to fill my lungs back up. The lump in my throat feels different tonight. It tastes like despair, and for the first night in three years, there's no fire behind it.
I've never been a quitter, but everyone knows that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is a sign of madness. There's only so many nights I can shiver on a street corner, only so many shifts I can pick up at the hospital, only so many rompers I can knit.
That one sentence, five words, and thirty-five characters has ground me down to my bones.
Being good is tiring, and when it's not in your nature, it's goddamn exhausting.
A sudden burst of light to my left makes me flinch. A red glow spills out from beneath a leather boot like a bloodstain. My gaze crawls up to find another boot resting against the wall, then inches over black clothes, black ink, and a black heart, until it sparks on green.
I freeze.
Gabriel's stare reaches out from beneath his heat lamp, cuts through the mist, and lazily probes mine. Then it falls to my lips, runs down the curve of my throat and across my thighs. By the time it touches my heels, my skin's raw.
I let out a breath coiled in a shiver. How long has he been standing there, in the dark, watching me? It feels invasive, like I've just caught him lurking in my closet while I change. But my embarrassment barely has time to rise before a dangerous thought drags it down deep.
Here I am, again. Alone in the dark, with the Boogeyman.
I can do nothing but stare as he tugs a crumpled cigarette from behind his ear and tucks it into his mouth. He strikes a match against the wall, lights it, and blows out a red-tinted tendril of smoke.
His gaze shifts to the sky, voice worn smooth with disinterest. "You cry often?"
I can't find the strength to lie. "Every night," I mutter, dragging a tear around my cheek. Can't find the strength to care about my makeup, either.
His jaw tightens, like my self-pity offends him. Another drag on his cigarette, then he disappears behind a cloud of smoke. When it dissipates, he's looking right at me.
"You know the bakery on Dip's main street?"
I nod.
"Money laundering front."
I've never really been sure what money laundering' means, only that the bad guys do it in movies. Still, I let out a little puff of shock, because it feels like the right response. And I'm glad I do because I like the way his eyes brush over my lips again, and how amusement twitches his own.
"You're kidding."
"Nope." He scratches his beard before adding, "And their homemade' carrot cake is from Costco."
This time, my shock is genuine. My mouth falls open, and a laugh of disbelief slips out of it. "Okay, now you're definitely kidding. They charge like five dollars a slice. Goodness, someone should report them."
He cocks a brow. "To who?"
"The police, obviously."
He wipes the back of his hand over his mouth. The people-pleaser in me hopes it's to hide a smirk. The thought of making the Boogeyman smile, or dare I say it—laugh, injects a dose of delirium into my bloodstream.
Silence bubbles in the thin strip of dark separating our lights.
The tip of his cigarette crackles with every inhale; the timers of our respective heaters tick over, out-of-sync.
I scrape at the wall and fuss over the sequins stitched to my dress.
Trying to do something, anything, to make it less obvious that I'm gawping at him sideways.
Eventually, he flicks the butt toward the pile of others, and when he looks up at me again, his eyes are rimmed with that familiar cold disdain.
"You really are the Good Samaritan, huh?"
It sounds like an insult, but before I can feel the sting, his heat lamp clicks off and plunges him into darkness.
My stomach plummets, but my pulse climbs. Silence crackles in each second that passes, and I hold my breath, the sickest, darkest part of me hoping he doesn't turn the lamp back on.
Fists clenched, I stare into the void from beneath the safety of my own lamp. There's nothing but the hiss of rain and the tremble of my heartbeat.
Taking a step sideways would be a terrible mistake.
I do it anyway.
Another step brings me into the path of the night's chill. Another, and the darkness swallows the tips of my heels, my legs, and then the whole of me.
Even the icy rain sizzling on my bare back couldn't make me cold; the heat licking up my chest is too hot. It radiates from his body, the tension, the thrill of it all.
When he finally speaks, his voice drags through the void, rougher than gravel.
"Do you invade every man's space?"
"Do you want to hear it's just you?"
That slipped from my lips like melted butter and I don't regret a single word. Being in the dark with this man is like drinking liquor. It loosens my tongue, strips me of my inhibitions.
Silence. It sends me spinning. It rushes straight to my head, steals all my oxygen, and any ounce of decorum I have left.
"I knew you had a crush on me." It comes out in a breathless, frantic whisper. "Oh, my God. I knew it."
"Do I look like the type of man who'd have a crush on a girl who has a lip gloss for every day of the week?" he grunts.
My laugh is warped and manic. "What kind of girl only has seven lip glosses?"
A dry huff of amusement dances down my sternum and coils between my breasts. There's no insult on this earth, thinly veiled or not, that could rip this high away. It's too late: his silence was too long and too loud, I've already snatched it up and saved it to obsess over later.
A lick of heat brushes over my cheek. It skims across my jaw and hardens into a touch on the corner of my mouth.
Every nerve ending in my body turns toward that single point of contact. They vibrate as his finger carves a line of fire along my bottom lip.
Oh, God. My jaw falls slack, and I let out a desperate, ragged breath. I'd fear I was hallucinating if it weren't for the faint taste of tobacco on his fingerprint. I've never had a craving for nicotine, but Christ, the taste of secondhand smoke is enough to turn me into an addict.
His question comes out thick, dripping with restraint and something darker. "When's your date?"
What?
Oh, right. David the tadpole. I forget his existence on the best of nights, let alone when I'm five inches from Gabriel Visconti's six-pack and precisely zero inches from his touch. He's the last person I want to think about right now. Hell, I don't want to think about anything else at all.
In the light, I'd never be brave enough to act like this. I don't recognize this version of me: I'm all heat and hedonism instead of self-preservation and common sense.
Maybe that's why I tilt forward, just enough to feel my next breath clash with his own.
"Why? Trying to figure out when I have space in my schedule?"
He tugs on my bottom lip so hard my thighs clench. "So I know when to free up my own."
Adrenaline bursts through me like a blown-out fuse. The smoke is hot, burning through my veins and warping every moral I have.
That sounded like a threat, but it isn't enough. A bead of sweat trickles down the nape of my neck, and though I can't see farther than my nose, my vision tunnels into a tight line. All I can think about is digging deeper, ripping the jealousy from him with my claws. I need more.
"Don't worry," I breathe. "You'll find out when I post about it on my Instagram page."
The air tightens before the click. A half-second warning before the dark shatters.
Light, in the most violent shade of red, floods over us. My pupils shrink and I recoil. When I find my bearings, I realize Gabriel has turned the heat lamp back on.
He's stone-still, dead silent, and far too close for comfort. His glare could scorch wet earth.
A cold realization grips my neck and tugs me backward.
The dark doesn't just hide all sins; it makes you forget what fear is supposed to feel like. Standing there, dripping in the color of blood, Gabriel Visconti embodies it.
His glare burns with every bad deed he's ever done and doesn't regret. Every fight he's ever won is set into the hard lines of his jaw, throat, and shoulders. That scar on his face is the only fault line in something otherwise indestructible.
Light or dark, I must be out of my damn mind.
The only part of him that moves is his eyes as they track my shaky retreat.
My back thumps against the door; I turn to open it.
But two quiet words bring me to a stop.
"Cancel it."
They drag up my spine like a match, threatening to reignite everything the light just extinguished.
"And if I don't?" I croak.
His pause is dense.
"Then I guess I'll see you there."