But when my foot nudges her, she jumps off the bed with a low, irritated meow. So she isn’t where the noise came from. Sleep taunts me again, but the prickle in my neck tells me I need to get up and check it.
Silly really. It’s February and freezing outside. The place is old, and old houses creak and crack and respond to wind. It’s not the first time I’ve woken to such noises during the winter or stormy nights.
Except when roughened pads gently stroke my cheek, my heart clenches with a sudden jolt. Someone isherein my house and touching me. Someone broke in.
Terror clamps my nerves, rendering movement impossible when survival means reacting—grabbing the nearest weapon, which, embarrassingly, is a kitchen knife in the next room. Not useful in this instance.
The touch glides down my cheek and over my lips, pushing into my bottom one. My brain races with every possible solution, but fear frazzles those very thoughts too.What do I do, what do I do, what do I do…?If I pretend to be asleep, it might anger the intruder, but waking means fighting.
Then there’s Millie to consider. Whoever this is better not touch a single strand of fur on her body or else there will be hell to pay.
The touch disappears, leaving an unexplainable electrical current through my limbs. An awareness that tells me he’s standing above me.
This is it. I’ll open my eyes and?—
Lips press down on mine, and with a lurch, I shove my hands into an impossibly wide chest and push upright, practically flipping myself over to the other side of the bed to get away. My room is pitch-dark, and my head is still sleep-dazed, so everything is a blur of motion that’s difficult to keep up with.
A muscular arm bands around my waist, stopping my escape before it fully goes anywhere. A scream rips from my throat as the chilling reality settles upon me as his body comes down on top of me. Chances are, my strength won’t get me out of here andI’ll exhaust myself too soon, but my instincts that screamescapedon’t care, sending arms and legs careening into the form.
His knees encompass my thighs as his hands cuff my wrists, pinning them to the side, doing exactly as I predicated and leaving me stuck. My screams shift to a sob, ready to plead with whatever humanity may linger within his soul as shapes become visible.
And then I wish they weren’t when I come face-to-face with my past.
The obscure soul kneeling above me. The eyes filled with chilling darkness that visit my dreams almost every night and stalks me through my day. The tattoos up the side of the neck I’ve been dying to make out are now concealed by a black leather jacket instead of the orange jumpsuit. His hair’s longer and messier, with the very signature smirk that once made me breathless.
It does again, but for a few reasons this time. My heart thuds against my sternum as I try to get free from his hold and sit up, only to be pinned down in ways no different than he’s affected me for months. There is no freeing myself from the man who once stoked such a strange visceral reaction within me when we sat across from one another in a prison’s visitation room.
The prison he’s no longer locked inside of.
“Y-y-you’rehere. You’re back… You’re…Cade.”
Cade is inside my house.
Cade is out of prison andbroke into my house.
The sick parts of me jump, eager, and want to embrace the reunion. They’re the parts that took his request for a picture and showed up in person instead. But the logical side that once wrote the goodbye letter urges me to get free, run away, and to call the cops.
Trepidation drips chilling doses of reality down my bloodstream when he hums. “Fuck, I’ve missed your voice,sweetheart. Missed the way you say my name. My memories never could get it quite right.”
“What are you… Why are you…?” Nothing comes out right. I should be running and screaming, not that it did me much good the first attempt. I should be fighting his hold, yet his touch numbs me.
“I’m here for you. Obviously.”
Because I fucked up a year ago. I stopped by for a final visit, only he never realized it was the last one, not until he received my letter. Our goodbye was written, and only one-sided. I was a coward without speaking the words.
Which means, this whole time of wondering if he’s moved on…he hasn’t.
“Light,” I gasp out, needing this much. I roll to the side and into his arms, tipping my head to the lamp beside my bed.
Cade’s eyes seem to almost glow as he studies my face, before conceding with a sigh. He releases my hands but doesn’t move off me to lean over and pull the cord to my lamp, bathing the room in a soft glow I have to blink through as my vision adjusts until able to take him in fully.
The fire in his eyes is manic. Almost…possessive? It can’t be right, but there’s something alluring and dangerous in his expression. Something my psychology degree would love to dissect and remind me to run from.
That’s when I notice what the night hid from me: the specks of dried blood on his shirt and cheek, and his hands smudged with it.
My feet push into the bed, scrambling until my back hits the headboard, somehow able to get free from beneath him but in no way less trapped either. “Wha…” Words are lost within a dry mouth and rough swallow. “What—who’s blood is that?”
Cade brings one hand up to his face, twisting and turning it in inspection, as though only seeing the blood for the first timehimself. There’s a tattoo on his knuckles I don’t recall from last year, but the bloodstains conceal whatever it is.
