A sound leaves him, low and muffled, like he’s speaking through water. I take a step toward him, scared that one wrong move might shatter the moment entirely, but as soon as I do, he steps back. Panic claws up my throat, and suddenly I’m running. I’m sprinting so hard my lungs burn, yet he only slips further away, dissolving and fading between every jagged breath I manage to take.
Then he’s just… gone.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
The word loops endlessly in my mind, growing less real as my alarm blares like a siren. I fumble for my phone, swipe at it with a groan, and drag my palm down my face.
My head’s a fog of dreams I can’t quite remember—just fragments of darkness and hands that felt too real that left me waking up feeling dazed and confused.
I swing my legs over the bed and plant my feet on the cold floor, elbows on my knees, head in my hands, trying to piece together what the actual fuck is wrong with me.
Because there’s definitely something broken inside, not just off, but wired the wrong way.
It’s been two days since I saw Phoenix at Lawson’s, and now he’s vanished.
Poof.
Gone.
Like he never fucking existed.
No midnight touches.
No shadow-lurking bullshit.
No smart-ass messages just to remind me he’s thinking about me or that he wants me to think about him.
Which, obviously, I do.
I haven’t stopped since the second he walked away from me.
This is what he wants. He wants to get in my head.
The dark little bitch who lives in the back of my mind, the one who sounds too much like him, takes this moment to crawl her smug ass to the surface.
“He never left your head. He’s in you just like you’re in him.”
She’s not wrong, and that’s the worst part because I feel him everywhere. He’s under my skin. He’s in every breath I take and every twitch of my thighs. Every time I close my eyes, he’s right fucking there, and all I see is the way he looks at me, like he’s ready to break me, but he’ll keep loving me for it.
By the time I push through the office doors, I’ve almost convinced myself I’m fine.
Betty’s at the front desk, glasses perched on her nose, her eyes lifting the second I walk in.
“For someone who doesn’t have a boyfriend, you’ve got a lovely package waiting for you,” she teases, raising an eyebrow with a small smile that says she’s been dying to tell me this since the second it arrived.
My eyes narrow. “What kind of package?”
“I set it out on your desk. You’ll see.”
The second I open my office door, I’m met by a massive, overcompensating bouquet sitting dead center on my desk—all pinks and yellows and oranges.
It’s way too bright, way too loud, and so not me.
They’re nice, I guess, in that generic, bought-from-the-cute-flower-shop kind of way. But I hate flowers like this, and I can’t lie—the first thing I feel is smug because if these are from Phoenix, then he doesn’t know me at all.
