Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dahlia
I wake up burning. My legs are tangled in an intricate web of sheets that are way too fucking hot, and my whole body is slick with a thin layer of sweat.
I take a breath, and the air I pull in feels sticky and humid, so reminiscent of the hot summer nights I grew up with in the south, that for a split second, I think I might be dreaming.
But when I flick my eyes open and find my dark bedroom staring back at me, I know I’m awake.
What the hell?
I always sleep with it open. Fallon runs cold, so she blasts the heat at night, and the only thing that stops me from roasting in my sleep is that door that should be fucking open.
I frown at it for a second, then grumble and haul myself out of bed. I must’ve forgotten to do it. It’s a stupid mistake, but it honestly tracks because I’ve been making stupid moves all day. Hitching a ride home with my stalker, being one of them.
Still half-asleep, I pad across the room, grab the handle, and jerk it open. Cool air rushes in immediately, and I sigh with relief as it blows across my overheated skin.
I spin back around and trudge forward, as relieved as I am annoyed that my sleep was interrupted.
I’m about to flop back into bed when my eyes catch on something sitting on my nightstand. Flowers. A shit ton of them. Wrapped in a silk ribbon and all in varying shades of soft yellow. My favorite color. My stomach drops through the floor.
What the actual fuck?
I glare at the flowers, completely baffled. They have to be a figment of my imagination. Some hallucination my par-cooked brain thought up and planted there just to punish me for failing to protect it from Fallon’s nightly broiling session.
Yeah, I think to myself, it’s the middle of the night and I’m tired as hell. I must be imagining it.
I let my brain latch onto that thought as I close my eyes and crawl right back into bed.
I’m not a complete idiot. I know exactly what I’m avoiding, but right now I’m tired, and I can stomach the thought of me having delusions and still fall asleep. What I can’t sleep through is the alternative, because it’s scarier in a very different way.
Three hours later my alarm goes off and I wake up to the bouquet exactly where it was before, looking even more out of place in the daylight.
Fuck. Definitely real. And definitely from Echo.
I glare at the obnoxiously pretty flowers and clench my jaw. Of course they’re perfect. Of course, they’re anything but generic and are exactly the kind of flowers I’d want. And of course they came from one man I should be staying away from.
I reach for my phone and debate on calling Echo to tell him exactly where he can shove the stems he left for me, but then I think about what my stupid heart will do the minute I hear his voice, and I change my mind, deciding to text him instead.
You were in my room last night.
His three dots appear almost immediately.
Good morning to you too, Bambi.
Echo…
Yes?
You broke into my apartment.
You left the door open for me.
I stare at the screen and my eye twitches. So I did open it last night after all.
No, I didn’t.
Did you find them?
I look up at the bouquet, then back at my phone.
Obviously.
And?
I press my lips together and glare at the flowers again, searching for an answer hidden somewhere in their petals.
I should just throw them away. Knowing him, he probably laced the ribbon with some kind of neurotoxin. Either that, or he purposely left the thorns on it to force me to take part in some twisted blood bond with him.
I didn’t want these.
I don’t want these.
Don’t do that again.
His reply is instant.
Lock your door, and I won’t be able to.
I exit our text thread and toss my phone onto the mattress.
Then I get up, walk to the kitchen, and spend a genuinely embarrassing amount of time looking for the right vase. I fill it with water, carry it back to my room, and put the flowers in it.
They really are the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen.