Breathing.
Circulation.
I start pressing.
I count out loud because someone once told me that numbers give you something to hold onto when the world is slipping through your fingers.
“One. Two. Three.”
The blood keeps coming. His chest doesn’t rise. Someone is screaming nearby, and it takes me a devastating second to realize the sound is coming from me.
“Stay with me,” I growl, pushing harder. “Stay with me, damn it!”
I don’t stop. I can’t. The world narrows until there’s nothing left but the rhythmic thud of my hands and the sound of my own ragged breathing.
Then something cuts through the dark.
Music.
At first, it feels like a hallucination—a bright pop beat bleeding into a scene where it has no right to be. It grows louder, pulling at the edges of the nightmare until the road, the blood, and his face start to dissolve.
My eyes snap open.
For a second, the disorientation is absolute. My heart is pounding against my ribcage, and cold sweat is trickling down the back of my neck.
Then the ceiling comes into focus. My apartment.
And the Spice Girls are blasting up through the floorboards.
I drag the heels of my hands over my face and let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a dark laugh. The nightmare lingers, leaving that familiar heaviness in my gut that doesn’t vanish just because the lights are on.
I glance at the clock.
1:21 a.m.
“So that’s how this is going to go,” I mutter to the shadows.
I lie there for a moment, trying to slow the adrenaline. I’ve just come off a week of brutal, soul-sucking shifts. All I want is sleep.
The song ends.
I hold my breath, hoping for a miracle.
Another one starts.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
There’s movement below me. I hear the muffled vibration of footsteps. Then a woman’s laugh. No, that’s not a laugh. That’s a goddamn cackle.
I stare at the ceiling. “Fantastic. My neighbor is a witch.”
Then comes an enthusiastic, “Woot woot!”
I blink.
Madison—the high-powered, razor-tongued woman who looked like she’d rather die than be seen in anything less than a power suit—is a ‘woot woot’ girl?
I pull the pillow over my head, but it’s a lost cause. The bass bleeds through the mattress. Now that I’m awake, I can hear exactly how the sound travels.
