Chapter 13 Wren
In what sick world do I live in, where I’m relieved to see the man who threatened to cut out my tongue?
It’s a fleeting feeling, replaced with a dizzying foreboding as my gaze drifts up from his boots, over black-clad muscle, and locks with his.
Rage simmers out of him like a slow-burning fire.
He’s scarily still, and for a moment, I wonder if he’s a figment of my imagination, some kind of anti-angel my brain has summoned under duress.
Then his eyes spark with a look of disgust marred with annoyance, and the low tremor of his voice filling the booth feels very, very real.
“Close your eyes and count to ten.”
Gabriel slams the door shut, trapping me in with the ghost of his growl.
Growing numb, I try to do what he tells me, but I don’t make it past the count of five. There’s a sickening crack and a scream so guttural it can only be wrenched from the deepest part of one’s soul, and it makes my heart lurch skyward.
Oh my God. He’s going to kill him.
I haven’t witnessed a murder in a long time, but muscle memory and self-preservation are a powerful combination.
They want to drag me down to the floor and under the kitchen table.
To pull my knees up to my chest and take my brain away to my happy place.
It’s a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a manicured lawn.
Where Sundays are for board games and no one goes to bed angry, and no matter how many times the radio plays Mom and Dad’s wedding song, they always stop what they’re doing, push the living room furniture to the walls, and dance.
But I can’t just curl up on the floor. Not just because I’m not a child anymore, but also because I’m pretty sure someone peed in here, and I’m not ruining yet another dress.
Another scream launches me into action, and I spin around, desperately searching for anything in the booth that can help. A number to call.
I scan the business cards tacked above the phone. Under the dim glow, I look at ads for escorts, an emergency locksmith, and a local fortune teller. All useless. Then a slither of gold glints under the dim light, and I snatch the black card from the wall.
The Sinners Anonymous hotline.
Wait—what the hell am I doing? Why aren’t I calling the police?
As I grapple for the phone receiver and hover a finger over the number nine, a gust of wind blows through the booth.
Then a wall of black bricks it out.
This shadow is larger than the last. It makes me feel even more vulnerable and on edge, and it takes everything in me not to close my eyes and wait for it to disappear.
With a lump in my throat, I turn around. My gaze snags on the blood splatter on the glass panels, then beyond it to a man dragging a body toward a waiting car.
Then finally up to him.
With a sinking feeling, I realize I’ve jumped from the frying pan and into the flames of hell.
Gabriel Visconti is terrifying at the best of times, but under the naked light bulb, he’s a nightmare personified.
It brings out the red of his scar and the black of his fury.
Casts the planes of his face in a demonic glow.
Every nerve ending prickles under his glare as it slides down my body. Down my arm, and to my hand, where it narrows into a sharp point.
“Something to confess?”
What?
With not a single thought in my brain to latch onto, I dumbly follow his eye line to the Sinners Anonymous card in my hand, then grow cold.
Legend has it, these cards started mysteriously popping up years ago, long before I moved to the coast. Tacked above public telephones, at the bottom of tip jars, wedged into the frame of bathroom mirrors in nightclubs.
They’re matte black and thick, with nothing else but a number printed along the bottom in gold.
If you call it, it takes you to an automated voicemail message, encouraging you to confess your wrongdoings.
It’s probably some sort of new-wave religious cult or whimsy art school project. Even if it wasn’t, I’ve never been tempted to call.
The only time I’ve ever been tempted to confess was that night, and to him. Only because I was certain he’d die.
The silence grows hot and begins to itch. I suppose I’d hoped he was too delirious, too close to death, to even register, let alone care, what I was asking of him.
“Ha. Of course not.” I crumple the card in my pocket and clear my throat. “I’ve never done anything worth confessing,” I mutter, staring at the broad expanse of his chest. My eyes dart across to his arms bulging beneath his short-sleeve T-shirt. No jacket in winter? How is this man not cold?
Silence hangs heavy, then hardens into tension. When it takes up too much of the space between us, I reluctantly slide my gaze up over his tattooed neck, thick beard, and search his expression.
As expected, it’s stone-cold and still. Annoyance pulsates behind his eyes and throbs at the side of his jaw. Christ, his stare is so intense, I imagine this is how it feels to stare down the barrel of a gun. It’s like he’s waiting for something, and suddenly, I remember my manners.
“Thank you,” I say sheepishly. “For, you know, stopping that creep from—”
He cuts me off. “Do you always follow men you don’t know into dark spaces?”
Feeling as small as child being scolded, I shake my head.
Though his eyes flash dark, his tone is eerily calm. “What would you have done?”
“What?”
“What would you have done,” he repeats slowly, irritation tugging at his words, “if I wasn’t here?”
Oh. I shift under the weight of his heavy breaths and scan the empty road beyond the blood-smeared glass. “Well, I don’t know, actually. I guess someone would have walked by eventually.”
His nostrils flare at my answer. He looks up to the roof and swallows thickly, composing himself. “And if they didn’t?” he grits out.
“Um. I’d have screamed for help?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“What are you talking about?”
Regret arrives quickly, and it sounds like a single heavy footstep and the thud of a closing door.
I hadn’t appreciated the space between us, and now it’s gone, snatched away by my stupidity and replaced with the heat of his body brushing mine.
What little air is left in the booth wilts and dies, creating a vacuum, and suddenly, I’m hyperaware of every sound and sensation within this eight-by-four box.
How his hard torso contracts, then expands, grazing my stomach between the opening of my coat.
How it blooms a strange heat beneath my skirt.
How his heavy exhales steam the glass and cling to my clammy skin.
The bob of his inked throat. Every bulge and vein snaking along his bare arm.
I can hear the drip, drip, drip of something warm and wet falling from his busted hand pressed against the wall by my head, and onto my shoulder.
I glance down at the dark stain on my pink hi-vis and let out a slow, shaky breath. Electricity sparks from somewhere deep within me. It’s a familiar feeling, one I’ve worked so hard to never ignite again.
He punched that man for me.
Me.
“What would you have done?” he repeats.
His question tugs me out of the murky depths of my thoughts and back into the phonebooth. The thump of my heartbeat fills the silence while I consider my answer carefully. This man is scary, and I don’t want to get it wrong.
Truth is, I don’t know what I would have done. Sure, I’ve had a few near misses in my time volunteering in Cove, but it’s never been more than a roaming hand, a drunk trying his luck. Nothing that a swift slap and a blow of my whistle haven’t deterred.
I drop my head against the back wall and let out a tense breath. “I don’t know. Someone would have seen me in here.”
A gruff growl ruffles my bangs. His bicep bulges as he lifts his arm above his head and wraps a large hand around the light bulb.
He twists it loose, plunging us into darkness.
I blink, trying to adjust my vision, but when I realize I can see nothing but black, a dull weight forms at the base of my spine, then a prickle of panic fissures out from it.
Seconds scratch by and morph into minutes.
Frozen, I stare into the void and strain my ears, trying to catch any sound of movement seeping out of it.
Only the tremble of my heartbeat and the ghost of Gabriel’s cryptic words fill the space.
“If it happens in the dark, it didn’t happen.”
And suddenly, I realize why I haven’t been able to stop those words from playing on a constant loop in my head. Darkness has never scared me, but the freedom it brings is terrifying. In the dark, I could be anyone.
Even my real self.
And if whatever I did didn’t happen...
Christ.
The metal wall of the booth is ice cold against my back, but Gabriel’s slow-burning heat is closing in. If I inched forward, his body would be flush with mine, and the mere thought of it sends a dizzying high through me.
I can’t even make out his silhouette, let alone his expression. Which means he can’t see mine either. I could stick my tongue out and him not even know it. I’d taste the tension in the tiny gap between us and taste his leather and tobacco scent too.
I could do anything.
“Now what?” he murmurs, almost softly.
My heart is pounding. The lack of oxygen is turning me insane. “I’d fight,” I whisper back.
“Then fight me,” he says, his breath crackling on my earlobe.
“What?”
“I’ve cornered you in here, there’s no light. Nobody can see you. Nobody is coming to rescue you. Fight. Me.”
My nerve endings spark. “I-I can’t.”
“Why?”
Because I can’t breathe. Can’t feel my face, or my hands, or my feet. Because I have pulses pounding in places they shouldn’t, and they’re beating to a different rhythm than my brain.
I manage to choke out a more sensible version of the truth. “I don’t know how.”