If he notices, he doesn’t show it. His smile only softens with compassion as he gestures behind me. “Don’t worry … they’re gone. You’re safe now.”
Safe could not possibly be the word he means.
But … he saidthey.
He wants me to believe he isn’t one of them.
But he’s here—in the middle of a forest—where I just ran for my life…
As established, I don’t believe in fate.
“My name’s Sawyer,” he says after a beat. “What’s yours?”
I blink at him, mouth dry, throat hoarse from screaming. I expect him to offer something else. Something useful or comforting. But he just waits and lets that disarming, compassionate smile soften his face.
“Luna,” I finally answer in a hushed voice, one pitch away from a humiliating whisper.
Sawyer holds out his hand; lets it hover when I don’t go to take it.
“Welcome to the Shadow Sanctum, Luna.”
CHAPTER 2
SAWYER
EIGHTEEN HOURS BEFORE…
Slouched over a book in the dim light of Saratoga Springs’ swankiest hotel bar, I try not to listen to the couples quarrel behind me.
The woman’s hushed pleas reek of shame as she grovels to the bearded shark across the would-be cozy two-top. His voice? Raised. Angry. No care for privacy or for humiliating his wife of three years (I can’t help but notice details).
I’ve never seen this couple before tonight, but I feel as though I know them intimately. The woman carries on with her pleas, begging for forgiveness after stealing a kiss with her boss at last year’s holiday party—the victim of a bad sitcom.
You can tell by the husband’s muted anger that this isn’t their first time discussing the issue. Which means this quarrel, this degradation happening within earshot of curious strangers, is for nothing. A painful drag of the inevitable versus one finalblow. It’s only a matter of time before he decides thatonce a cheater always a cheater. As if people are incapable of change.
A subtle whiff of perfume announces the bartender before she speaks. Clean musk with a fading floral edge.
“Whatcha readin’, honey?” she asks, voicealmostsmooth.Almostconfident. Pretty.
My eyes raise to a woman who fits the part.
Non-prescription glasses hang low on the bridge of my nose, the plastic piece a little too wide to keep them steady—though I’ve learned that’s part of the charm. Pushing the glasses up, I lift the book to show the cover ofThe Talented Mr. Ripley.
A chair scrapes at the desolate little two-top as the husband finally gets the nerve to storm from the bar. When the wife follows, I half turn with the impulse to stop her. Nearly beg her tolet it go.
He’s the type of man to interpret the book I’m holding as a cautionary tale about a man with an identity crisis. Forging new personalities, the core of who he is tangled in lies until truth fractures.
An English professor might agree, but no one stops to ask themselves if Mr. Ripley got it right. If perhaps, the monotony of life could be cured by a little fuckingflexibility.
Embrace the chaos. Forgive; forget; have a beer.
“Mmm and here I was pegging you as a Dickens man.”
I tilt my head. “Are you kidding? Nicholas Nickleby rules my life.”
“Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.” She gives me a flirtatious wink that has me smiling.
She’s beautiful, in an unassuming way. Four-inch hair the color of apple cider lays flat on her head. Her lips stretch in a toothless grin that wants so badly to be youthful but is too sad, too tainted with a hundred tinder dates gone wrong.
