Carrson Ashford is gone, vanished like smoke, like a dream turning to nightmare the moment you wake.
I stop and sweep the space one more time, irritation burning hot in my gut. I was right behind him. There’s no way he could have disappeared that quickly. Unless he knows more than I do.
That’s fine. His disappearance only confirms it. I’m getting closer to the truth, to him.
Because Carrson Ashford isn’t just a man.
He’s a door.
Somewhere behind him are the people who decide who lives…and who doesn’t.
I won’t stand on the outside anymore.
I’m getting in.
Chapter three
Thin Air
Becky
The second time I see him is completely by accident, which is infuriating considering how hard I’ve tried to throw myself in his path. I figured out his class schedule, but he never goes to lectures. Doesn’t even show up for quizzes or tests. I heard rumors he likes a certain coffee shop, so I sat there for hours, drinking mug after muguntil my heart thundered and my hands shook.
Still no Carrson.
I try a different approach and show up to the parties his fraternity throws. They’re huge affairs with music blaring and drunk people puking into the bushes. I wear my most slutty outfit, pull out my fishnet stockings, only to get turned away. Not on “the list.” I even try bribing one of the guys working the door with fifty bucks. He shoves the money in his pocket, smiles, and tells me to get lost.
Fucker.
That was my grocery money. For the next month, I live on ramen and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
All that effort. All for nothing. Which is why, when I’m on my daily jog and stumble across him in the woods a mile outside campus, I almost can’t believe my eyes.
He’s there.
As if I pulled him out of thin air. As if, finally, the universe has decided to give me something back. Which, quite frankly, I deserve, after everything that’s been taken from me.
Carrson stands in a clearing where the trees thin and the ground is littered with dry leaves and twigs. It’s fall, the air cool and dry. Sunlight filters weakly through the treetops, breaking through in narrow beams of light. Dust motes and pollen drift from above, spiraling as they fall.
It reminds me of the paintings I’ve seen by Rembrandt and Botticelli, where the heavens split open just enough to cast light on the chosen.
None of it touches Carrson.
Like even the light knows better.
Darkness shapes him instead. Broad shoulders. Narrow waist. Muscle defined not by size but by precision, as if each line, each curve, had been trained into being, a body built with intention.
He’s shirtless. Sweat slicks his skin. It drags down the planes of his chest, disappears along the grooves of his abdomen. His hair is damp, pushed back, the dark strands nearly black. Athletic shorts hang low on his hips, the jut of bone visible above the waistband.
A punching bag hangs from a tree branch, red and scarred. The trunk behind it is worse, riddled with jagged white gouges, the bark shredded like an animal hasbeen carving into it for years. I find the source a second later. Two knives. Short black handles, sunk deep into the wood. Right next to Carrson.
He drives his fist into the bag like his life depends on it. It jerks back, then swings, spinning from the force of him as he changes his stance and strikes from the opposite side. Each punch is targeted. Violent.
He hasn’t seen me yet, which gives me a few extra seconds to look, and I take full advantage becausewow. I narrow my eyes, searching for flaws, and come up empty.
Which is…annoying.
I shouldn’t be surprised, though. Money breeds beauty, and most of the kids on this campus, including Carrson, are rich as sin.
