Chapter 6 #3
The very first unopened email in his inbox is from the same chocolatier company that makes the chocolate-covered black cherries soaked in liquor—the ones I’ve received every year on my birthday since I woke up from the accident.
With sweat-slicked fingers, I bend over the keyboard, grab hold of the mouse, and click on it.
It’s a promotional email showcasing the new flavors they added.
I type the company’s name into the search bar.
A few emails containing receipts pop up.
I open the first one. It’s dated three days before my birthday.
I open a second, dated the same but from the year before.
This can’t be a coincidence.
Every time I got the feeling I knew Kaiden since waking here after the umbra attack flashes through my mind.
I miss a few letters as I type the word “flowers” into the search bar.
I have to delete them and start again several times.
Sure enough, there’s a receipt from a flower company for a bouquet of a hundred black irises dated a few days before my birthday.
He ordered them all the way from Jordan.
My gut feeling wasn’t wrong. Either Kaiden has been stalking me for years, or I somehow know him. We have to have met before the umbra attack.
A thousand scenarios bounce around in my head. The fact that it’s been over two months since the attack and he hasn’t mentioned he knew me once cuts me deep, like a serrated blade. I even blatantly asked him that night at the succubus party…and he avoided my question.
What if Kaiden was the one stalking me and not Erik?
I mean, he knew my name, my address, and my favorite foods. No, that can’t be. The connection I feel to him, the chemistry charging the air whenever we’re in the same room is too strong. Besides, Erik told me he was watching me. But what if they both were?
Determined to find out what else Kaiden has been keeping from me, I unleash the snooping.
I rummage through the drawers but come up empty every time.
When I tug on the last drawer, it’s locked.
My eyes skitter over the top of the desk as I nibble on my lower lip.
Bingo. I jam the pointy tip of a letter opener through the keyhole and jiggle it until I hear the satisfying click.
I slide the drawer open. My eyebrows furrow at the only item inside.
It’s an old sketch pad, slightly frayed at the edges, but as I pick it up, I can tell it’s very well taken care of.
Relaxing back into the chair, I let the pads of my fingers run down the smooth texture of the cover.
The gesture feels hauntingly familiar. The second I open it, all my blood rushes into my ears as I read the words on the first page: “Property of” right above a watercolor painting of an intricate iris.
Could this—is this mine?
Fingers shaking, I thumb through the pages.
A weird feeling crawls beneath my skin when I recognize the drawings—they’re all tattooed on Kaiden’s glorious body—the skull and snake on his chest, the raven on his forearm, the Anubis on his abdomen.
Even the jester on his left shin. My gaze meets Kaiden’s on the next page.
His features are softer, his teenage years still clinging to his bones.
He doesn’t have the bump in the middle of his nose, and his hair is shorter and pushed back.
But it’s him all right, complete with the infuriating, sexy smirk tugging at his lips.
Suddenly, the headache I had since waking up morphs into a fiery stab of pain that intensifies the throbbing in my temples by a hundredfold. I drop the sketchbook on the desk to press the heels of my palms into my eyes, but the ache only worsens. The office blurs as I’m transported to another room.
An easel sits before me, and charcoal-smeared fingers move fluidly over the drawing of an angel bowing on one knee as if in regret, its head hanging low and its wings spread wide at its back.
Picking up an eraser pen, I add the finishing highlights to the drawing I’ve been slaving over for the last three weeks.
I hope he’s going to love it. I’ve poured my heart into it, and it’s my favorite drawing I’ve done so far.
“Iris, honey, where are you?” a muffled voice comes through the door.
“In the studio,” I holler back.
There’s a knock on the door before it opens, and my mother appears in the doorway, her smile as bright as the sun as she rests her hip on the door frame. She folds her arms in front of her chest. “You pulled another all-nighter? You said you were going to sleep—”
“I wanted to finish the drawing before he gets here,” I interrupt as I put down the eraser pen to stretch the kinks in my back and yawn.
Her cerulean eyes flick to the finished drawing. She shakes her head, saying, “It turned out beautiful. I can’t believe someone so talented came out of me.”
“Eww, Mom, gross.” I shudder and push back the chair to stand.
“C’mon, go shower. Breakfast is ready,” she tells me, then turns on her heel toward the stairs.
A bright flash, and I’m back in Kaiden’s office.
The excruciating pang between my eyes not only sears my brain but makes my stomach lurch.
I stand abruptly, sending the chair sprawling at my back.
It hits the floor-to-ceiling windows with a loud thud as I dash toward the en suite bathroom in Kaiden’s bedroom at lightning speed.
I barely make it in time to retch my last meal and all the cocktails I drank earlier into the toilet.
When there’s nothing left, I slump on the floor and wait for the tremors wracking my body to subside as tears flow freely, soaking my fanned hair.
I saw Mom again.
This was the first time I’ve gotten a memory flashback while awake, and that drawing…
It’s mine. I did it. Not only does he have something I drew hanging in his library and his office at the club, but he’s got almost all the drawings from my sketchbook tattooed on his body.
I know this should scare me because the gesture screams he’s obsessed with me—that he’s been obsessed for years because as far as I know, I haven’t picked up a pencil since I woke up from the car accident at fifteen.
Instead of being terrified, though, all I feel right now is warmth at the thought that he’s carrying a part of me on his skin.
I’m so fucked in the head it’s not even funny at this point.
Blowing out a shaky exhale, I close my eyes and replay the flashback on a loop until the chill of the tiles seeps into my bones.
The weird dream I had before waking up in the cathedral crypt after the vampires kidnapped me pushes to the forefront of my mind, and now I know for sure it wasn’t just a dream.
“Her nose is a little bigger in reality, don’t you think?
” Chester says as he pops out of thin air next to me.
He’s a cranky old man with a crooked nose and a shiny bald head.
He looks like one of those desert vultures I saw in the animal documentary Mommy put on the TV for me to watch earlier today.
Amanda scowls at him. “You’re one to talk.” Her eyes soften as her gaze flicks to mine. “It’s lovely. Thank you! You’re very talented for being only five years old.”
I smile brightly. “I know; Mommy tells me I’m going to be an artist.”
When I finally feel in control of my body, I gingerly push myself up and trudge to the sink to splash water on my tear-streaked face. White-knuckling the sink, I let my head fall between my shoulders. Kaiden’s got a lot of explaining to do. Hopefully, he’ll be back soon.
I cast another glance at my disheveled reflection in the gilded mirror.
My skin is so white it could very well be translucent at this point.
I stride back to Kaiden’s office and put everything the way it was, except for the sketchbook, which I take to bed and thumb through in the hopes it will spark another flashback.