I tapped the glass, meeting his eyes with a glare.
He watched me for a second, something like pity in his eyes before he started making me another.
While he was making it, I pulled up a blank note on my phone and labeled it‘Scene’.
It wasn’t peaceful and mysterious like cigarette smoke at midnight, drifting in coils across the bright neon signs as the world grew cold and quiet. It wasn’t loud and chaotic like a train tearing down the tracks, blasting its horn for all to hear.
No, it was silent, quick. A life stolen in the midst of the night in an alley far from here. A body disappearing without a trace.No evidence, no anything. Just gone. Easy, painless.
Maybe not quite painless. There was somebody out there who would notice the absence. Notice the light going out, but it didn’t matter.
The life was taken.
The body gone.
And he got away with it like he always did.
His silver-blue eyes glinting like fallen stars in the midnight sky. Pride wasn’t the word I would use. He didn’t care. He knew he would get away with it. He knew nobody would catch him. He knew there would be no repercussions to the life he had stolen.
It wasn’t pride, it was something much darker and much deeper.
And those eyes were staring right at me now. Because there was someone in this world who would know that this life was taken.
Me.
I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It seemed like I always was. I saw him take the life, I saw him clean it up. I saw him make sure there was no evidence left behind. I stayed and watched the whole thing until it was just me and just him, standing in an alley in the dark city in the middle of the night.
I should run.
I needed to run.
But all I wanted to do was lean in closer—
“Hey.”
I flinched on instinct, turning my phone away and I looked up to find a stranger standing just beside me.
My brows furrowed, my mind slowly working. He had said something, I was sure of it. “Sorry, what?” Maybe I shouldn’t have gulped that drink down so quickly, my mind was slowing.
He gestured to the seat. “This taken?”
There were only five people here. No, that spot wasn’t taken, but there were also other spots open. But before I could stumble out a response, the man in the mask slid into that very seat, sliding his glass over with ease. “Yes,” he said, his shin knocking against my foot.
I pulled it in tighter, my heart slamming as I quickly turned back to my drink, my entire body going stiff. This couldn’t be happening.
I was imagining it.
His scent drifted over, teasing my nose with a beautiful mixture of light rain and pine trees. Woodsy. Fresh. Like the time my dad had taken me hiking when I was a girl just to get away from the bright flashes of the camera lights. The one and only time we had managed to get away. I never got to go back to that trail, not once.
My eyes flicked up to Jake who gave me a look before following the new patron to his seat.“Please, for the love of God, don’t leave me,”I thought towards him.
But, of course, he was already gone.
I swallowed and locked my phone. There was no way I was going to keep writing with this man sitting right on top of me.
I wrapped my hand around my glass and glanced back towards the curtain, my mind buzzing with the alcohol. This was just perfect. I closed my eyes and let the cool glass bite into my hand while the warmth of the too close body seared the right side of me. I felt like I was sweating. Was I sweating?
I shivered involuntarily, my skin flooding with goosebumps, pebbling my nipples, causing me to hunch over just to hide them. I didn’t need another reason for anyone to look at me.
