I knew that if I backtracked and took a different route, I could cut her off. I ducked around a low hanging spider and down a narrow makeshift hallway then blocked off her escape.
She yelped and crashed into me.
I caught her arms. “Do you like a chase?”
Her breath was coming fast. “I didn’t realize I did until just now.”
I dropped my hold to her hips. “Want to run again?”
She licked her lips, her glasses gone from earlier. “Would you chase me?”
“Fuck yes.”
She bit her lower lip, then twisted out of my grasp and backed her way down the hall.
I strode forward, slow and purposeful. I tipped my head in the way I remembered the character did to fill his senses.
It had the desired effect. Amber’s eyes widened and her mouth parted.
I’d always been the good guy.
The responsible guy.
I kind of liked being her dangerous guy.
7
amber
His eyes werelike twin dark holes in the dim light. The mask was just unsettling enough to make me feel alive.
I’d been going through the motions for so many months. Train, interview, rehearse, play—rinse and repeat. I loved my job and everything about music, but I’d gotten into a serious rut by the end of the tour. My life was restricted because it had to be. I wasn’t like some famous musicians who could still go out on their own.
But here I wasn’t Ambrose.
I was a woman who was flirting with a safe kind of danger. I knew Tate would never hurt me, but this version of him was just different enough from the boy I’d grown up with that I felt an echoing hunger in him.
We were both trapped by our lives in different ways.
I bumped into one of the large, seven foot animatronics and gave a startled gasp which dissolved into laughter. I ducked under the creepy arm of the monster and felt Tate at my back.
Instead of grabbing me, he flicked his fingertip down my back.
It made my nipples tighten and the fear response thrum inside of me. I swung around and slammed into a stack of hay bales. Tate caged me in, one arm over my head.
He was so tall that he literally loomed over me. He smelled of crisp autumn nights and a hint of beer on his lips. Of our youth and yet not the same at all.
I trailed my fingers up his chest to his shoulders, my breath stalling in my chest.
“Remember when you almost kissed me?”
He groaned. “Yes.”
“Do you have a broken heart this time?” I asked on a whisper.
“No. Do you?”
“Mending,” I replied, surprised at the honesty.
