“Ouch.” She makes a face. “Good luck with that. Stairs are your only option.”
“Yeah.” My hand hovers over the door handle. “Lucky me.”
She walks away and I’m alone with the stairwell door and the memory of what happened there exactly one month ago.
I turn slowly. Look at the stairwell door.
The emergency exit. The stairs I used to take all the time. The ones I’d climb at two in the morning without a second thought.
The ones I haven’t taken in exactly one month.
Not since that night. Not since I heard Marcus confess to murder while I stood frozen in the dark. Not since I became the witness to something I can’t report and can’t forget.
Alex once told me I had balls of steel for walking those stairs alone at night.
Doesn’t feel very balls-of-steel right now.
Right now I’m having second thoughts.
Swallowing my nerves—swallowing the memory of his voice, of the confession, of the fear that rooted me to that spot—I reach for the door handle.
I pull the door open.
The stairwell opens in front of me. Concrete and metal and shadows. The same stairs I’ve climbed a hundred times. The same air that always smells faintly of industrial cleaner and old building.
Except now it feels like a crime scene.
Breathing through the butterflies—no, not butterflies, butterflies with razor blade wings shredding my stomach from the inside—I step inside.
The door closes behind me with a heavy thunk.
Shutting me in.
An odd feeling settles between my shoulder blades. That prickling awareness of feeling watched. Of not being alone.
I lean back against the door, my eyes slowly traveling upward toward the top of the stairwell.
One flight. That’s all. Just one flight of stairs.
I’ve done this hundreds of times.
I can do it again.
“Fuck it.” I say it out loud. To the empty stairwell. To myself. “Just do it, Dylan. Go. Go. Go.”
Except nausea builds in my stomach. Bubbling like acid reflux. Like my body is physically rejecting the idea of climbing these stairs.
It takes all of my willpower to step toward that first step.
My heel clicks once. Echoes.
Clicks twice.
Blood pounds in my ears. My heart races like I’m running a marathon, not climbing stairs in a building where I work.
I blow out a breath. Force Dylan Wells—scared, anxious, ghost-seeing Dylan—deep down inside.
And slowly allow the badass version of myself to emerge.
