His grip on my arm doesn't loosen.
"Yeah." He tilts his head, studying me. "Yeah, I definitely know you."
The room is loud and bright and full of people and I am standing in the middle of it with a stranger's hand gripping my arm and the future I was holding five seconds ago is falling through my fingers like water and I can't breathe and I can't move and the only thought in my head, the only one, clear and cold and absolute, is:
It found me.
26
MAYA
"Yeah. I definitely know you."
His fingers press into my upper arm. I feel each one individually, and the bar noise folds away like someone turned the volume dial down and all that's left is his voice and my pulse and the practiced smile I build on my face one muscle at a time.
"I think you're mistaking me for someone else."
My voice comes out even. Calm. The rehearsed version, the one I practiced in the bathroom mirror of my LA apartment after the third time a stranger approached me in a grocery store. Steady eye contact. No flinch. Give them nothing to confirm.
The man tilts his head. The ball cap shadows his face but his eyes are still on me, that knowing look, that sleazy half-smile.
Behind him, two men with beers in hand. One of them nudges the other.
"Come on, Darren." He tugs at his friend's sleeve. "Let the girl be. She's clearly not interested."
"Yeah, man. You're being weird. Let's go."
The man, Darren, hesitates. One second. His eyes on my face. Then the grip loosens. His hand drops.
"Sorry." He steps back. Lifts both hands. "My mistake. Thought you were someone I knew."
He turns. His friends pull him toward the bar, one of them clapping his shoulder, the other saying something I can't hear over the blood in my ears. They fold into the crowd. They're laughing. They order drinks.
Just a group of friends. Out for a Friday night. Looking to have a good time.
I exhale.
Slow. Deep. The kind of breath that comes from the bottom of my lungs and carries all the air I've been holding for the last thirty seconds. My fingers are tingling, the adrenaline draining out through my extremities, and the bar noise rushes back in like water filling a space that had been vacuum-sealed.
I stand there. My arm throbs where his fingers were. My body is still tight, shoulders drawn, spine rigid, the old wiring humming at full voltage. I scan the room. Exits. Faces. The distance to the table where the men are sitting.
Nobody else is looking at me.
Nobody.
The man is at the bar now. His back to me. His friends are arguing about something, animated, already moved on. It was nothing. A mistake. A drunk guy at a bar who thought he recognized a face and was wrong.
I'm too far from LA. Enough time has passed. It was nothing.
The adrenaline is still in my blood. I can feel it, the jittery chemical residue of the fear response, making my hands unsteady and my heart beat too fast and my skin prickle with a heightened awareness that has nowhere to go now that the threat has evaporated.
I look at our table.
Jace is laughing, leaned back, gesturing with his beer. Owen is beside him, one arm on the table. Reid is across from them, solid, arms crossed, watching the room, and as I look at him his eyes find mine across the crowd and hold.
The adrenaline shifts.
The same chemical urgency, the same heightened awareness, the same prickling, electric need for contact, for grounding, for something solid and real to anchor me to the fact that I'm here and I'm safe and the world didn't end in the last thirty seconds.
