Chapter 1 #2
See? Seth needed more customers. Too much time on his own was never good. His inner monologue got far too bitchy and pretentious.
What he also needed was to binge something cozy on his laptop, snag a phone call with his favorite cousin, and get a good night’s sleep. He would recalibrate, and tomorrow would be a fresh start.
Seth had meant what he’d told Luke—he didn’t mind a small community, as long as he was a part of it.
In the morning he’d put up a little bulletin board for people to post local events, and maybe come up with something of his own to add.
A board game night at the bakery? Except no, he didn’t have enough room for that.
Cookie decorating? Possibly, if everyone agreed to do it without chairs.
He’d figure it out. And he’d make some damned donuts too while he was at it.
Seth grabbed the bags of leftover pastries, leaving one for the day-old basket tomorrow.
That was another item on his to-do list as he figured out how much to stock each day: make connections in town who might want in on the leftover pastry hustle.
Sometimes food banks would accept limited amounts, and he’d had a deal with the local elementary school in Seacliff where Seth had provided free day-olds for the Wednesday teachers’ meetings. Whatever helped prevent food waste.
For now, maybe Seth would meet someone in need of a sweet treat pick-me-up on the way home.
It should have still been light out—until Seth managed to hire help, he was closing at 1:00 p.m. every day—but it was pouring again, not a bit of sun to be seen through the rain.
Seth tossed the hood of his rain jacket up over his hair and bolted to his car, where he quickly tossed the bags of pastries into the trunk.
There was no one out to hand the leftovers to, and Seth headed straight home, driving way too slowly for fear of losing control on the slick roads.
It took less than ten minutes to reach the one-bedroom house he was renting.
It might even be a walkable commute when the weather was nicer.
Seth had wanted somewhere closer to the beach—he loved the sound of the waves at night—but the town wasn’t really set up that way.
The coast and its two beaches were on one side of the highway, while the small downtown and residences were on the other side.
So Seth had ended up on the edge of the coastal forest instead.
It was peaceful, at least.
Seth parked in the driveway and threw his hood back up. He ran back around to his trunk, popping it and bending forward to snag the pastries that had rolled to the back.
And then Seth was hit by a ten-ton truck.
At least, that was what it felt like. One second he was reaching for a Danish, and the next, Seth was flat on his back on his gravel drive with a hooded figure looming over him, pinning him to the ground.
What the hell had just happened?
The guy was young, Seth thought, but it was a little hard to tell. The stranger’s face was blocking the worst of the rain, but there was still water dripping into Seth’s eyes and making it hard to see. Seth had a vague impression of dark hair and male features though.
But also he was still trying to get air into his battered lungs after getting knocked on his ass, and it was hard to focus on anything else.
There was a low rumbling, just barely audible over the rain. Almost like an animal was growling nearby.
Seth blinked water out of his eyes, finally sucking in a harsh breath. “Is there—is there a bear or something?” he managed to ask.
That maybe would explain the tackling. Seth was pretty sure they should be running, though, if there was really a bear involved. Or maybe playing dead was the right move? Seth couldn’t remember right now in all the confusion.
He was almost positive he wasn’t being mugged. The guy peering down at him wasn’t asking for anything, or trying to hurt Seth beyond that initial tackle. He was just…staring, silent and still and with a predator’s focused intensity.
He had dark eyes, this stranger. Seth could kind of see them now. Or were those…black eyes?
Seth blinked some more. But no, they were brown, although the pupils were kind of blown. Maybe the guy was on something, lost in a bad trip. Maybe he thought Seth was the bear.
He didn’t smell like a vagrant, although that was judgmental of Seth to think, and he needed to remember to chastise himself later. The guy smelled like the forest, kind of like cedar and damp earth. Seth had the strange urge to lean in closer and huff a deeper breath.
Except the guy was still pinning Seth to the ground, vibrating with some strange, feral energy, so maybe Seth should focus on that and not on the way the guy smelled.
Before Seth could ask him what he might have taken, and if maybe he needed to head to the hospital, the stranger finally spoke.
“I want to eat you,” he said, so low and soft the words were almost lost to the rain. His voice was oddly pleasant. “I want to eat you so bad.”
And then the weight suddenly lifted off Seth, the figure looming over him gone in the next instant.
By the time Seth scrambled up off the driveway, his pants soaked through and stuck to his thighs and bits of gravel trapped in his hair, there was no one there. Just the rain, and Seth’s open trunk, and the now-soggy bags of leftover pastries.
What in the actual fuck?