I yelp, spinning toward the sound.
He’s lying there, hands behind his head, the faint city glow from the window catching across his bare chest and the tattoos inked over muscle and skin.
“You were moaning,” he adds lazily, and I thank every God in existence that the room is too dark for him to see my face.
“Where am I?” I manage.
“You were very drunk,” he says, voice rough with sleep. “I carried you out of the bar.”
I rub at my temples.Bar. Shots. Nancy.The memories hit all at once, and so does the hangover. My head throbs. “I need to get home. My brother will be worried.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” he murmurs. “Wait until morning.”
I swing my legs off the bed. “No. I can’t stay here.” My voice shakes more than I mean it to.
He sits up, pulling on a pair of joggers, and the shadows shift around the hard lines of his body. I try not to look. I fail miserably.
“I have to scan the elevator card,” he says.
I follow him through the apartment, still stunned by how impossiblyhimit is — sleek, expensive, dangerously clean. The kind of place that looks like it’s never seen chaos, even though its owner probably lives for it.
When he presses the button, the elevator doors slide open with a soft hiss. I step inside, trying not to notice the way his eyes linger on me, or the tension buzzing between us like static.
Then he moves closer. Slowly.
I should step back. I should say something, stop him before this spirals. But my breath catches, my heartbeat stutters, and when his lips find mine, every logical thought disappears.
He kisses me like he’s starving, like he’s wanted to do it for a long time. I hit the wall of the elevator, and his hand fists in my hair, tugging gently as his mouth claims mine. I grip his shoulders, nails biting into warm skin, dizzy with need and confusion and the wrongness that feels far too right.
When he finally pulls away, we’re both breathing hard. He swipes his card against the panel, the soft beep breaking the silence.
He steps back, eyes unreadable. “Sorry,” he mutters.
The doors start to close, and I’m left staring at him, chest heaving, mind spinning.
Sorry for what?For kissing me?
The elevator clicks open, and for a second, I’m dizzy from the motion. I step out onto the corridor, and my stomach flips. This is my landing.Warren lives in my building.How the hell did I not know that?My hands fumble through my bag for my keys; they’re always impossible to find in amongst the crap I keep in here. I look up, and my heart drops into my feet—my apartment door is wide open. “Isaac!” I hiss, half a laugh of irritation ready to hit him for leaving it like this. If he’s gone out and left the door unlocked, I’ll kill him.
I stomp across the hall and push inside, then my eyes land on him and the world tilts. Isaac is folded forward, slumped by the couch. His T-shirt is dark with blood; a knife stuck through the side of it like a brutal punctuation mark. Time stands still, and my heart beats loudly in my ears. All at once, everything becomes both unbearably loud and horribly distant.
For a long, stupid second, I don’t move. My mouth is dry, my legs leaden. My breath has dropped out of me, and I taste metal even though I haven’t touched anything. I take one step closer, and the smell hits me, copper and iron and the clean, along with the choking scent of panic. My knees threaten to give, and my phone slips from my hand, clattering on the floor. It bounces, skitters, and I don’t even register it until it slides to a stop beside his still hand.
I scramble after it, my fingers find it somehow, whilst my eyes never leave him. I’m shaking so hard the numbers blur on the screen as I dial. My voice is a raw thing when it comes out, half-sob, half-howl. “Please–yes, my name’s Leoni Dove. Please come quick. My brother… he’s been stabbed. He’s not breathing. He’s at The Riverside Apartments, flat Six—please hurry!”
As I speak, images trip over one another in my head. Us laughing, playing hide and seek, the way he’d tease me over boys. A smile pulls at my lips as tears slip down my cheeks. Then a cold, gut-clenching guilt claws through me. Why was I at the bar? Why did I leave him alone? My throat closes, and I gag on a sound that’s more like grief than words.
I crouch beside him, ignoring the wet slick on my palms, and put my hand to his cheek. It’s sticky and warm. He doesn’t move. The reality of it presses down, heavy and obscene. I’m sobbing now, a sound I’ve never heard myself make, and the voice of the dispatcher cuts through my sobs, “Stay with him. Help is on the way.”
Stay with him. Stay with him.I repeat it like a prayer and press my forehead to his, because there’s nothing else to do but be here, and wait while the room spins and everything feels terrible and broken.
I don’t know how long I sit there, a minute, an hour, the sound of my heartbeat louder than anything else. I rock slightly, my palm still pressed against Isaac’s cheek, whispering nonsense I can’t even hear myself say.
The knock on the open door barely registers at first. Then a voice, firm and calm.“Emergency services.”
Two paramedics rush in, followed by a police officer. The hallway fills with noise—shoes squeaking on the floor, a radio crackling, someone asking me to step back. I can’t. I can’t move.
A gentle hand touches my shoulder. “Miss, please, we need space to work.”
