8. Annie
Eight
Annie
M y teeth are still chattering with fear as I let myself into my apartment, checking back over my shoulder for the hundredth time. The door closes with a snap, and I thread the security chain—as though a flimsy thing like that could keep a man like Dean Kinnear at bay.
He’s big. Strong. As agile and powerful as a panther. The way he hunted me so easily in that laser tag warehouse… the way he brushed aside those locks in the escape room like they were cobwebs…
It all makes sense now.
Dean Kinnear didn’t leave our suburb to lead an ordinary life. He’s some kind of agent or enforcer; an assassin or spy. The type of person who wears a knife strapped casually to his body.
“Oh god.” My damp palms scrub against my pants, and I stare dry-eyed through the peephole at the corridor outside. Empty. He didn’t follow me here… as far as I can tell. “Oh hell. This is bad.”
My apartment is small and kinda messy, with books and magazines left in piles by the walls and yesterday’s sweater tossed on the sofa. This morning’s empty coffee mug is at the breakfast bar in my tiny kitchen. My neck cracks as I whip my gaze around, peering into every shadowy corner in case Dean beat me here somehow, but there’s no movement.
I’m alone.
Skin clammy with sweat, I turn back to the peephole and stare out into the corridor without blinking. My fingertips twitch as they remember the smooth hilt of that knife.
Can’t believe I kissed him.
Can’t believe I pressed up against him like that, rolling my hips to the beat, humping his thigh and sucking on his wicked tongue.
My lower belly gives a traitorous throb at the thought, and my next breath is shaky. I squeeze my thighs together, still watching the corridor like a hawk. Stupid body. It has zero survival instinct.
Because Dean Kinner is a dangerous man. A dangerous man who pretended to be his twin brother and let me drag him all over the city tonight, for mysterious reasons of his own. Why the hell did he let me do that?
Maybe he was bored.
Or maybe he had something terrible planned for me—a violent fate.
But even as the panicked thought crosses my mind, my hind brain dismisses it immediately. If Dean wanted to hurt me, he could have done it a thousand times tonight. And up until the moment my fingertips brushed his knife, there wasn’t a single moment with him that I felt anything less than perfectly safe.
Secure.
Cherished, even.
Oh, god .
A low buzz starts in my backpack, vibrating against my spine, and I nearly jolt out of my skin. It takes an embarrassingly long time for my stressed brain to calm down and recognize the sound: my phone buzzing as I receive a call.
Dean?
Despite everything, I whip the backpack off so fast my shoulder twinges. Then I remember: there’s no way it’s Dean calling me. He doesn’t have my number. If he really didn’t follow me home, he doesn’t know where I live, either. The thought staggers me, and I slump against my front door, head spinning.
Tonight was a random meeting. A one in a million chance.
And there’s no way for Dean to contact me again.
I freaked out and ran away, and now there’s no way for either of us to reach out. I took that one in a million chance, and I tossed it into the wind. Shit.
Did I do the right thing?
It was smart to run from a man with a knife. Rational.
So why does my chest ache like crazy? Why am I blinking away sudden tears?
My hands are clumsy, and it takes forever to dig my phone out of my backpack. When I see Wyatt’s name lighting up the screen, I sniffle and swipe my thumb to accept the call.
“H-hello?”
“Annie,” my best friend says, brisk and familiar. There are faint beeps and the hum of conversation in the background—hospital sounds. “I got pulled into an emergency surgery and forgot to call. I’m so sorry. Were you waiting in the bar long?”
“Um.” My wrist dabs at my nose as I sniffle back tears. Was I waiting long? Not really, because I found Dean and lassoed him with a feather boa. And he let me. “No.”
“You sound upset.” Wyatt’s tone is flat, but it’s not because he doesn’t care. This is how he gets when faced with emotional outbursts: he goes into problem-solving robot mode. Sometimes it drives me completely insane, and sometimes, like tonight, it’s as comforting as a warm blanket. My eyes close, and I take a shuddering breath. “That’s completely reasonable. I’ll reimburse you for whatever activities you had booked, and we’ll do the bachelor party another night. Are you free on the 15th?”
To relive everything that happened with Dean? No, thanks. I am not.
“That’s okay. I know you were only humoring me with the whole bachelor night thing. I wanted it more than you did.”
I can hear Wyatt’s frown, even through the phone. “It was important to you, though. I wouldn’t have missed it deliberately, Annie. I promise that I forgot.”
My laugh is watery. “And I believe you. Seriously, don’t worry about it. We can do a movie night or something soon.”
Wyatt hums, but he doesn’t sound convinced. “I don’t like leaving things like this. You still sound upset. Did something happen tonight? Something other than me being a terrible friend, I mean?”
Hm. Did something happen tonight?
Did something happen ?
My head tips back against my locked door, and a slideshow of the weirdest, most fun night of my life plays in my brain like a movie reel.
Bumping into Dean in that bar, and prodding at his ‘fake’ tattoos. Feeling the first butterflies explode into life in my belly as he looked at me with those brown eyes, flecked with gold.
Laughing and shrieking as he hunted me through laser tag. Marveling that my serious bestie had found his playful side.
Cringing behind Dean’s broad shoulder to hide from that creepy Jack-in-the-box.
Teasing Dean by the food trucks, making him read every menu with me and giggling as his stomach growled.
The club. That dance. That kiss .
And the knife.
“No,” I say, rubbing at my forehead. “Nothing happened tonight.”
Nothing I can talk about without shattering into a thousand heartbroken, confused pieces anyway.
Because what if I ran away too soon? What if I had stayed with Dean and let him explain? What would we be doing right now? How would my future unfold?
I wanted him for so long. Missed him for so long, and tonight I had him… then I tossed him away.
“Alright, well, if you’re sure,” Wyatt says. “You can always talk to me, Annie—”
“Do you ever hear from Dean?” I blurt out. There’s a shocked silence at the other end of the line, and I get why. Ever since he left our suburb and never looked back, Dean is one of those topics that Wyatt and I Do Not Discuss. Not because we ever outright agreed on that rule, but because it was always a sore spot for us both. And why poke the bruise, you know?
Wyatt’s too practical to dwell on something outside of his control. And for me… the way I felt about Dean always felt too private. Too personal to share with someone else. Because Wyatt would think it was a mere teenage crush, and even back then I knew it was more.
So much more.
“I, ah. Sometimes, yes.” For once in his life, my best friend sounds flustered. “He texted me last year to say happy birthday. I didn’t respond.”
My heart soars.
“Can I have his number?” My voice goes extra high and scratchy with my request. “Please don’t ask me why.”
“But… Annie…”
“Please, Wyatt. I can’t explain yet but I will one day soon.”
A long-suffering sigh crackles down the line, then Wyatt takes the phone away from his ear, grumbling faintly as he digs up the number. My phone buzzes against my ear, then Wyatt’s voice is back, crisp again.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Annie. He wanted nothing to do with us, remember?”
We’ll see about that.
“Thank you. Hey, want to get lunch tomorrow? We’re both in work.”
Wyatt and I work at the same hospital, though he’s a big, fancy doctor while I manage the hospital laundry. Hey, patients need clean sheets, right? We’re both helping people in our own way—and that’s what I remind myself of whenever I start feeling small and insignificant. Without clean sheets, the patients would be screwed. All of our contributions matter.
“Of course.” Wyatt sounds relieved at the offer, like I might still be mad at him for standing me up in that bar. And maybe I would be more annoyed if Dean hadn’t been there; if I hadn’t gone on a crazy, dreamlike adventure. “One o’clock?”
“You’d better not stand me up again,” I tease, and when we both hang up, I’m so much lighter than before.
There’s a phone number in my texts. There’s a lifeline. There’s hope.
Dean and I already got our second chance at this. But maybe we can have a third.