PROLOGUE
He comes at me before I’m even fully through the doorway — a blur of fists and fury. No warning. No words. Just impact.
My back hits the floor hard, the breath punched out of me, and suddenly we’re rolling.
He’s on top of me, swinging wildly, one punch catching the side of my jaw so hard my vision whites out. Another lands. My head cracks against the tiles. He’s stronger than he looks. Desperate. Like this is the last thing he’ll ever do.
I grab at anything — shirt, skin, air. My hand hits metal. Small. Cold. A knife. I don’t think. I just move.
I drive it up into him.
The sound he makes isn’t a scream — it’s a choke. A wet gasp.
His hand flies to his throat and comes away red. He blinks at me like he can’t believe it.
I pull the blade back and strike again.
Again.
Again.
Hot blood hits my face, my clothes. His body jerks, then slackens, collapsing over me with dead weight.
I shove him off, choking on the smell. My heart is hammering so hard I can hear it in my skull.
Silence settles. No shouting. No footsteps. Nothing but the drip of blood on tile.
And then… I feel it.
The sense of being watched.
Not by him.
By something else.
Somewhere in the room, a tiny red light glows.
Chapter 1
TOM
I’m sweating. Not a polite shimmer across the forehead, not a dignified glow. Sweating in that full-bodied, damp-shirt, regretting-my-life-choices way.
It’s the middle of July, thirty degrees outside, and somehow even hotter inside the sauna that is Revolution on Baldwin Street. Whoever thought to host a speed dating night upstairs on the balcony should be charged with crimes against humanity. Bristol’s early evening might be glittering outside, the bars humming with life on a sunny Thursday, but I’m trapped in a steam-bath-cum-enforced-small-talk-nightmare that serves overpriced cocktails in jam jars.
I tug at my shirt collar and silently curse myself for wearing pale blue cotton. The sweat patches are practically performance art by this point, a mood ring for anxiety. Although out of view, I can feel the damp vertical line spreading across my back, essentially waving at those behind me.
The long balcony bar has been stripped of its usual mid-week thrum and repurposed into speed dating central. Fairy lights droop overhead, trying their best to look whimsical, but the overall effect is less romance in the city and more student union at closing time. Tiny round tables dot the space, each with a number card propped up like they’re awaiting a pub quiz team.
I sit at table four, alone, pretending to read the “rules” sheet in front of me as if it contains spoilers for the end ofStranger Things. I already know the rules: five minutes per person, rotate when the bell rings, give them a tick if you fancy seeing them again.
Nothing complicated.
Except the dating itself, which is very complicated indeed. Complicated, gruelling, exhausting. Like trying to find love during a fire drill.
I scratch the stubble on my chin. It’s “deliberately rugged,” the sort of thing handsome men in coffee adverts have, but really it’s a by-product of a broken razor and an afternoon of talking myself into leaving the house. My brown hair — flecked with grey that arrived uninvited and now refuses to leave — needs a trim. It puffs at the ears like it’s trying to eavesdrop on better lives.
I’ve been here twelve minutes, avoiding eye contact with the other gentlemen as much as feasibly possible, while also taking in every inch of them without being clocked.
