Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“…And so it is my honor to present to you our annual fundraiser in Angela’s name, to see that her work continues on, that her legacy lives through each and every one of us…
” I pause as I raise my glass full of bubbling apple juice.
Sober from here on out. “To Angela Sanguine. A pioneer in the preservation of history.”
A round of applause rises through the hall. Glasses clink and guests clap.
But I’m pretending. Smiling for the crowd. Raising my glass and sipping the sweet liquid. It rolls through me cooling me from the inside out. I can feel it hit the back of my tongue and glide down my throat.
At least the juice goes down. The champagne earlier didn’t. The champagne earlier I spit back into the glass like a woman who’d seen a ghost.
And all through it? Callie remains quiet.
Callie. My favorite person. The one who should be up here with her doctorate. With her knowledge and pride and ability to connect dots I could only dream of.
And she’s quiet in my ear.
No jokes about how the museum comes alive at night like the movies. How all lore stems from truth. Or how I should get laid.
Just the static that crackles in my ear every so often reminding me how alone I am up here on stage. I know I should slip back into myself, be present in my body. Aware.
I can’t.
The moment I allow reality to crash back on my shoulders is the moment I demand to see my girl. And I need to keep my shit together, at least until I see her breathing.
Holding onto my flute, I step back from the podium. The lights are too much, hot and insufferable.
Through it all, Enzo and Leif remain at the entrance as though I’m going to take off.
Which I fully plan to.
See, while my bosses doubted me from the start, I’ve spent countless hours walking these halls. Many times with Callie during the summer when it was too hot to play outside or too cold to do anything else.
I grew up here. Callie now works here and I’ve spent the last six months making sure I know every inch of the Penn Museum that I’d forgotten from childhood.
From the secret passages in the basement. To the best hiding places in the exhibits.
And I know that if I take a hard right, I can take the stairs to the upper floor and then the elevator to the security station.
I just have to get there. I just have to disappear.
Easier said than done.
Setting my juice aside, I turn to the closest couple vying for my attention.
“I’m so honored that you both could make it tonight.” I shake the hands of two of our biggest donors. The Ellenburgs. Old money. Hidden money. But they are always here and Angela gave them the special treatment. And by special treatment I mean shmoozing and sucking up.
“Well, we wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” the Mrs. says. I think her name is Judy.
Short white cropped hair fluffs around her shoulders and those calculating blue eyes roll over me.
Unluckily enough her husband speaks. Gerald, maybe. Could be Harold.
“We would love to steal two minutes of your time before the end of the evening,” he says, and there is something in his tone that pins my feet to the floor. Even though Leif and Enzo are clearly attempting to get through the crowd.
He isn’t getting far.
“Of course.” I glance at my watch. “Let’s meet back here in, say, an hour?”
“Oh perfect,” Judy purrs, tossing back her drink. “I do want to see where Mr. Dagon went.”
I agree. Perfect.
Biting my lip, I know I shouldn’t let the chaos demon out. But fuck it. They did something to Callie. And I need to know she’s okay.
She’s all I have left in this world. The only good thing that’s mine. That’s ours. She’d kill the witness for me. I swear if they—
“You know.” I step close to Judy as Harold or Gerald watches me closely. “I hear he’s looking for a new venture.”
“Is he?” Harold beams. “Well, I have just the adventure for him.”
“Oh wonderful!” Judy beams. “We send you to Romania and him to the seas! Or reverse it.” She winks at me. “I prefer the sun.”
“What wonderful travels.” Gerald is moving through the crowd, his sight set on Leif.
But Judy remains for a moment, waiting for him to go. “You think he’s into older women?”
Jesus fucking Christ.
There are no words, not a single one for this cougar.
Actually, I do have the words. “I caught him looking at silver singles.”
That’s all it takes for her to turn around and disappear into the crowd behind her husband.
Now I’m not terribly tall. But with my heels? The goal was to intimidate every single person I come into contact with.
Now? I slip my shoes under a table and crouch just so and…
Slip right out of the room.
I run and I don’t stop. The library blurs past. The elevator button is slammed before my brain catches up to my plan.
“Come on, come on.” I hike up my dress, the creepy library to my right. It’s really unnecessary for everything to be so gigantic.
The ding happens at the same time footsteps clack far down the hall. An echo. A whisper that finds me anyway.
I press myself against the edge of the elevator so if anyone does see me, well, they won’t. Just an empty ghost elevator. Which according to Callie happens all the time.
As the doors close, I can breathe but I don’t.
I can’t. Callie is witty, crazy. Obsessed with everything dark and rich with death. She’s been hurt. Lost far more than any person should.
This entire night went to shit far faster than I ever expected. The strange man offering Leif Viagra. To Leif and Enzo practically stalking me.
Okay and yes, my little diversion to the bathroom.
Maybe it’s just another Saturday night in Philadelphia. Maybe it’s something more.
I won’t know until I see Callie. And I need to see her.
The elevator takes forever. Doing its little whoosh and I count the numbers. When it clears for her floor, I run out.
See, the Penn has hidden rooms. Obviously, it’s a museum. If it didn’t, I’d be worried. I’m worried anyway. Running across the room toward a hidden room I know is there. Callie knows is there. And I hope no one else does.
That is where she should be. Sitting behind her computers eating Twizzlers and getting Cheeto dust all over her.
I press the hidden button and don’t wait for the door to fully open before I push through. I peer in the security room and jiggle the handle.
Locked.
I look again, the little wires on the window obscuring my vision.
“It’s too dark.” And now I have that panic racing through me. The kind where you can see yourself doing dumb shit. You know you are about to do dumb shit and there’s no stopping yourself.
You just go all in.
Because I know somewhere deep inside me that Callie isn’t just fine. Not in danger but not fine either.
I grab a pole, one of the ones that section off exhibits, and hold it up. I’m going to break into the security room. Might get me arrested, might not.
“On the count of three.” I breathe. “One.” I hold it back ready to take out…
What? The reinforced window? No. The doorknob.
“Two.” Just do it, Hadley. Take out the doorknob.
“Whoa.” The door swings open and there he is.
“You owe me a Callie.” I swing for whoever made that sound.
“Fucking hell.” He doesn’t flinch. He ducks under the pole like he saw it coming before I did, strips it out of my hands, tosses it, and has me against the wall with a forearm across my collarbone before the pole finishes clattering.
No wasted motion. He’s done this before, done it to people who meant it more than I do. Then he looks at my face and something in him falters.
Rude as hell.
Rude because that is hot as hell and I don’t have time to dissect why that’s hot as hell right now but I’m pretty sure it’s because somewhere deep inside of me I became attracted to the psychos.
It’s my event crasher. How the hell did he get in here?
“Callie.” I wiggle to peer in the security room. “Callie!” I scream.
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Shush.” He jiggles me and drags me into the room then shuts the door. Everything goes black. “Calm down,” he whispers against my throat. He’s calm and his stupid calm voice instantly works on me.
My body calms. Not because he told me to, telling me to do anything has never once worked, but because if I’m calm and he’s not, then I’m the one in control of the room. I’ll be calm to spite him. I’ll be calm to win.
Then, I decide, I’m going to break this man.
“There. See.” He’s going for soothing. He gets about halfway there. The last word comes out thinner than he wants it to.
I break his hold and punch.
I have no idea what I’m punching. It’s pitch black.
But the crunch is satisfying as fuck.
Then I flip on the lights that I know are exactly one inch from the right of the door about five feet up.
Light floods the room. Soft light because Callie hates fluorescent lights.
Viagra is holding his shoulder.
“Aimed for the nose,” I tell him scanning the room. “Shoulder works.”
He bends over breathing hard.
“Where is she?” I turn over chairs. Rush to the locker room, the door swinging shut behind me. The lights to the right where it always is. I slap them on. Three rows of lockers and not one of them is her. “Callie!” Nothing. “Showers.”
I flip every curtain back.
“Where is she?” Okay this is real panic. I hate real panic. I don’t know how to metabolize real panic.
“Hadley,” the man says.
I rush back through the locker room to come face to face with the man I have officially deemed my nemesis.
“Where is she?” Heat cracks open behind my ribs. My pulse hits places it shouldn’t. Fingertips, jaw, behind my eyes.
And my voice.
It sounds odd. Deeper, sexier, like I smoked a pack a day and only got hotter instead of well, diseased.
The man swallows and holds up his hands. He sees something in me. I don’t know what it is. But fear has a scent now. Lust does too.
Gods, they’re both delicious. Why does his sweat smell like the most delicious musk that ever musked?
And then somehow, I’m in front of him. Those chocolate-brown eyes gone, disappeared under dilated pupils.
“She’s okay,” he says slowly, like he’s talking to a wild animal. I mean I’ve never been considered a wild animal in my life. But I like the power. “Here, see.” He moves his hands and I…
I’m fucking growling.
Too late to figure it out now.
I snatch his phone. And see Callie sleeping in her bed. Her arm across her eyes and one leg hanging off the foot of her bed. She isn’t supposed to be home asleep. She should be here, working. Until seven. She took a double for me, to be here tonight, with me.
“We made sure to take her home.” He laughs like something in that is funny. It isn’t. “Well, I did.”
I drop his phone and glare at him.
“I didn’t touch her. I swear it.” He holds his hands up again and presses his body against the door.
I love how afraid he is. It’s almost erotic. I want to do it again.
“She’s okay?” I can barely get the words out of my mouth.
“Sleeping. See, it’s a live feed.”
“Of her bedroom,” I point out. I’ll destroy it tomorrow.
“Okay. Here’s the thing.” He’s trying to find the voice again, the even one, and it keeps sliding off him. “I need you to take a step back.” He pauses before muttering, “Please.” Exhaling he breathes, “I’m asking nice. I don’t ask nice. Ask anyone.”
“No.” I step closer, pressing my body against his. And that’s all it takes for everything inside of me to light up. This man. This devious little shit smells like lemon meringue on a sunny Sunday. Even though I think it’s his sweat. He makes my head all swimmy.
“Hadley.” He tries for a deeper voice, and promptly fails.
My body aches for this man. And I can’t figure out why.
“I want you.” I hear myself say the words. Breathe them really. “Why the fuck do I want you?”
I have never said that first. Not once. Not to the ex I stayed with for stability, not to anyone. Men arrive and I deal with the arrival. I don’t walk across rooms. I just walked across the room.
“We should call Enzo.” He presses back against the door, reaches for the knob. I swat his hand away. “Leif,” he says, and the name comes out wrong. He says his name softly with care as though he loves him.
I pocket that nugget for later.
“Who are you?” I question. Because that’s the question, isn’t it. Who is this man.
“No one,” he says, but his pupils are gone and he’s aroused.
I don’t know how I know it. But I know. He’s aroused and if I press my torso against him just so…
oh yes. He is very much aroused. He groans, his head hitting the door.
His hands ball into fists and he doesn’t know what to do with them. They go above his head, down. Up.
It’s amusing. And I let out a teeny tiny little snort.
“It’s not funny.” He groans. “Gods, you are, I want you.”
“Is that consent?” I ask. Because. Fuck it. I’ve had a shit day and who am I to let a good hard erection go to waste?
“What?” He frowns. His eyes opening back up to look at me.
“You heard me,” I say, watching his face for any tell. Any microexpression.
His mouth parts. “Consent? That’s what you want right now?”
“You want me. I want you.”
“After all that? You kicked me out.”
“And?”
“And?” He laughs, and it’s got no humor to it. “I had a handle on tonight. I had a plan. I had—” He stops. “I don’t know what you are.”
“Is that consent?”
The old me would be apologizing by now. The old me apologized to him in a hallway hours ago. I notice she’s not here and I don’t go looking for her. New me wants to put good use to the erection straining against his zipper.
“You want consent,” he says it back to me like the word is in a language he half-remembers. He looks over his shoulder and finds only door, no Enzo, no Leif, no one to hand this to. “They’re going to kill me,” he says, quieter. “Or they’re going to understand exactly. I don’t know which is worse.”
I reach for the why. There should be a why.
There is always a why, donor tier, threat level, exit route, I have a why for everything. There’s no why for this. The not-knowing should stop me. It doesn’t.
Not when he’s looking at me as thoughts race past his eyes. Dirty thoughts, has to be. His tongue laps at the sweat beading on his lip. I bet it tastes like salt and lemons and sex.
“I consent.”