Chapter 1
One
Emory
I closed my eyes, everything falling away as the chemicals rushed through my bloodstream. I reached out for the only person I wanted.
“You’re okay,” he soothed. The deep timbre of Enoch’s voice sent my heart flipping in my chest and I sighed. I felt his arms snake around my body, my head resting against his chest. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat drowned everything else out. “You’re safe.”
I let myself stay there, sinking and floating at the same time in the sea of endorphins, a smile on my face.
You’re okay.
You’re safe.
There was always a short moment, like the moment between sleeping and waking, where you forgot every bad thing that ever happened to you, before reality came sinking in.
I wanted to live in that moment as long as I could.
I wanted to savor the momentary bliss, but the tickling trickle of blood running down my hip banished the high instantly.
I blinked my eyes open, staring up at my bathroom ceiling extractor fan, as the numbness settled back into every cell of my body.
Enoch wasn’t here and I’d just broken my three-day streak.
The memory of how I ended up here on the floor, cut and bleeding, weighed down my will to get up. The nightmare. Hell, I hadn’t had one yet this month, and I wasn’t prepared for how weak and disgusting I would feel waking up from that hell.
I gingerly skimmed my hand across the vinyl tile floor beside my leg in search of the blade I had dropped at some point during the process. My finger snagged against the still-warm, paper-thin metal, and I picked it up.
I knew it was wrong. That it was fucked up that when the endorphins hit with the slice of the blade I was fantasizing about Enoch.
I should have been dealing with this shit with my therapist, but I was too selfish and sick to give up the only version of Enoch I had.
The one that lived in my head when I got the high from self-harming.
The one where we were happy, and I was very much alive.
Not just a husk that happened to still be breathing.
It started out as a punishment. A way to soothe my soul from all the guilt eating away at my conscience.
It was never meant to be some sick ritual I had to perform every time I needed an escape from reality.
Fantasizing about him became a crutch, a means to forget about the filthy, murky, darkness I tried to purge from my veins when shit got too hard.
But no matter how many times I punished myself, the guilt still lingered. I had promised myself I would stop. But I was too fucking weak. I couldn’t even last three days without giving in to the temptation.
I startled at the obnoxious buzzing from the other room.
My alarm to get ready for work.
I sighed, pushing myself up from the floor and turned on the shower. I didn’t bother to look at my reflection as I quickly cleaned the blade and shoved it into the bathroom vanity drawer. I ignored the sting and burn from the cuts on my hip as I stepped under the hot spray.
It was going to be a long fucking day.
I rushed through my routine to get ready for work. The quicker I started my day, the quicker it fucking ended.
I glanced at the calendar on my way out the door, my eyes snagging on the number I wrote down last night.
1665.
Four years, six months and twenty-two days.
I started counting the day I joined Reformation Life Studies. The day I had officially died and left my entire life behind for some fucked-up revenge plan to maybe get a chance at taking down Los Siete.
Four and a half years later and I hadn’t stopped counting. Apparently, I was really shitty at breaking habits, even the benign ones.
Today marked three years free and I was still having nightmares. I shoved the lingering fragments of last night’s nightmare away and grabbed my gear, heading downstairs to the heated garage.
It was just before four in the morning, which meant there likely weren’t any residents awake.
I always walked my bike out of the garage and started the engine once I was on the street to avoid the loud echoing rumble waking anyone up.
I was fortunate to live in a complex that was filled with mostly senior citizens.
I knew they wouldn’t appreciate being startled awake at four from a motorcycle beneath their apartment.
The sun was already over the horizon giving me a clear view of the sleeping city. Midnight sun meant that I could drive easily at any time of day or night during the summer.
I liked having a job that required me to be up this early. It meant I could avoid traffic and cruise all the way to work. Even if Grip Lab was a short fifteen-minute ride away, I still got to enjoy the views of the Chugach Mountains.
Anchorage, Alaska was stunning. Anyone who got to witness the natural beauty would say the same.
Which was the reason I gave everyone, namely my friends Lottie, Mason, and Hannah, when they asked why the hell I owned a motorcycle I could only ride for a short portion of the year when the weather was right.
Lottie threw a fit when she found out Cole was selling me his motorcycle in order to buy an upgrade for himself. She said it was reckless and an invitation to an early grave. And she was right, but it didn't fucking stop me from getting my license to ride.
I liked the thrill. The danger. The wind rushing past my body. The sound of the engine roaring to life. Music blasting in my helmet. The pull of the bike when I leaned into the curves in the road. The freedom.
But most of all, I liked the adrenaline rush.
I was addicted to anything that could bring me closer to the edge of life and death. It reminded me just how very alive I was. A bitter reminder of every fucked-up thing I’d had to do to get here. And maybe that too was a punishment, but I was a masochist.
I was comfortable living in the pain. I’d been doing it for so long that I couldn’t remember if there had ever been a time when I wasn’t in pain.
I checked the time on my dash and rolled my neck as I sat at a red light. 4:05.
At four thirty every day except for Sundays, Grip Lab opened for free climb.
You had to be a member and have received your belay certification to climb that early, so it was always the expected regulars that came through before heading to work.
I was only there for supervision purposes or if anyone new came in and had questions.
I liked the fact that I worked unusual hours.
Monday, Wednesday and Fridays I came in by four fifteen to open and then was gone by noon.
Tuesdays and Thursdays I worked a normal eight to four-ish, and the weekends were mine.
Well, except the first Sunday of the month when we had a lunchtime staff meeting.
And today.
I never worked Saturdays anymore, but today was the Summer Solstice Festival downtown, which meant the usual opener had the morning off to help work our booth this afternoon. I avoided big, crowded events like that, and thankfully the owners didn’t mind that I wasn’t showing face at any events.
An indoor rock-climbing gym was probably the best thing to have ever happened to me thanks to the Witness Protection Program.
When they found the job for me at Grip Lab, I was scared out of my mind because I knew nothing about rock climbing, and I was definitely afraid of heights.
I didn’t think it was going to be a good fit.
I was wrong.
Grip Lab introduced me to a new sport that I learned to love, and my friend group, two of whom happened to be the owners of the gym.
Lottie and Mason had only just opened the gym a month before I transferred to Anchorage and were in dire need of a new hire.
I worked my way up from receptionist to client services manager in under three years.
If I wasn’t afraid of jinxing any good luck I was having, I would’ve said that I was actually thriving. I had an amazing job, incredible friends, a nice apartment and I hadn’t had any threats against my life. Everything was going great.
And yet I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something my therapist liked to harp on frequently. She said I was just looking for negatives to sabotage a positive outlook on life.
But fuck if I wasn’t trying. I wanted to prove to myself that everything was worth it. Then maybe I would stop feeling so fucking guilty all the time.
I took a deep breath of the morning summer air before swinging my legs to the floor and standing from my bike.
I needed to stop spiraling and focus on the present.
I grabbed my work keys from my backpack and proceeded to enter the warehouse through the staff entrance in the back where I was parked.
I had already noticed a couple of cars in the parking lot waiting for the gym to open.
I hurried inside, making sure I had locked the door behind me as I entered the hallway that led to the staff offices.
I disabled the alarm system on the wall to my right and made my way towards my office, flipping the lights on as I went.
After shoving my bag beneath my desk, I hung up my riding jacket and pants in the hall cupboard where staff hung all their coats and such.
Sitting on the bench beside the cupboard, I switched into a pair of gym shoes, leaving my riding shoes in the cupboard too.
I stopped to adjust my hair and clothes in the full-length mirror attached to the cupboard door—bike shorts that stopped just above my knees and a fitted t-shirt with the gym logo on it.
The dress code was casual, wear something you could climb in, which meant my left arm tattoo sleeve was almost always on full display.
I fit in with most of the crowd here who had tattoos or piercings, something that took me nearly two years to stop worrying about.
After checking all of the belays and ensuring that everything was in working order, I unlocked the front doors and let our first clients enter.
“Morning, Billy,” I greeted as I propped the door open with a rock. “Joseph. How’s it today?”
“Good, good, Emory. Never a dull day when you’ve got a view like that while you climb,” Billy said as he motioned with his thumb over his shoulder. The gym faced a bus yard, so I had no fucking clue what Bill was on about.
“Really? I didn’t know you were such a fan of large transportation vehicles,” I said with a snort. I followed the two regulars, friends and coworkers in their forties who worked at the airport, into the gym space and took a seat behind the front reception desk.
“Come on. The mountains, you dork!” I turned my gaze out the large glass paneled wall that faced the parking lot and just above the tree line behind the bus yard I could make out the peaks of the mountains in the distance.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”
“Are you at least going to get off this afternoon to celebrate the summer solstice downtown?”
“Lottie and Mason will have a booth set up for the gym. I’ll be holding down the fort here today. You should stop by and say hi to them if you’re going downtown later.”
“Yeah, I was planning to take the kids and wife later,” Joseph said with a head nod. “Well, we’re going to get to it.”
I waved them off as they headed to the men’s locker room.
I let out a deep breath, taking in the view, trying to appreciate it like Billy and Joseph.
Summer solstice. The longest day of the year. Green leaves, pink and orange clouds from the sun that hadn’t ever really set. It was meant to be a celebration after the long dreary winter and even longer spring that was more like an extension of winter with all the snow we got this year.
And this year it just so happened to be the same exact day that I almost died three years ago being rescued by the FBI.
Maybe I should’ve been in more of a celebratory mood, but I would have rather forgotten the whole day. I didn’t want to be reminded of my past. I’d been avoiding it for three years now like I actually had a chance of pretending it never happened.
Billy and Joseph stayed for an hour and a half and made sure to chat with me before leaving. I guessed resting bitch face no longer deterred people from approaching you for mindless conversation.
The first fitness class of the day at seven passed, and then it was mid-morning and I was relieved from front desk duty by Brett.
I spent an hour doing admin work on my computer in the back and then I decided it was the best time for me to take my break since we had a group booking coming in after lunch.
In my distracted haste this morning to leave my apartment, I had forgotten my lunch in the fridge at home.
I quickly changed back into my riding gear and grabbed my backpack.
The sun was out and shining, but thankfully the weather in Alaska was nothing like Texas.
Summers in Anchorage were cool and comfortable compared to Texas, the perfect temperatures for riding my bike without getting overheated.
I took my time, watching out for merging traffic and reckless drivers.
It wasn’t a lane splitting state, but sometimes cars were impatient and tried to squeeze beside me on the road.
I always tried my best to be safe for other drivers on the road.
It’d probably fuck up their lives if they accidentally ran me over.
I was no stranger to near-death experiences.
If my calculations were right, I still had two more lives to go.
First was my mother’s attempt to drown me, second was the car accident with my father, third was the night my brother was murdered, fourth was the night I was initiated, fifth was the night I was retrieved by the FBI.
Five near brushes with death of the seven I’d decided I’d been awarded since birth.
I’d reclaimed the number from the ones who’d stolen my childhood.
Seven lives and then I’d be gone. Riding a motorcycle was only helping me get closer to that day.
Just twelve more hours to go and another day would be marked off my calendar. I wondered how many more I would be counting until my seven lives were up.