CHAPTER SIXTEEN
But he didn't mind it. He'd built this routine around that smell, three nights a week. It was routine, it was comfort. And sometimes, it was even the best part of his day.
His earbuds were still in, still blasting the same playlist he used for every late run: guitars turned up past the point of comfort, vocals scraped raw and screaming over the drums. He liked it loud enough that he could feel the bass in his sternum.
It was the only thing that got him through the last mile most nights, something ugly and aggressive to match the burn in his legs.
Tonight, it was Pantera, a staple of his much younger days.
He didn't hear the door creak open behind him.
The music was too loud for that, guitars cutting through everything else.
He took a single step back, preparing to turn for his water bottle, when he felt something hard pressed into his back and then wrap around his chest. Aaron was fit and very strong and his first reaction was to fight.
But before he could move or even fully understand what was happening, he felt a small, sharp pinch at the base of his neck.
It was quick and precise, causing him to reach up out of instinct, fingers brushing the spot, expecting a bug bite or a stray hair caught wrong.
Then the heat came. It bloomed through his chest first, spreading outward fast, faster than anything he'd ever felt from exertion alone.
His legs went first, just as he turned to see what was standing behind him.
He saw it just as the strength drained out of his legs all at once.
He was reaching for the treadmill's handrail before he understood he was already falling.
The floor came up hard against his shoulder and then his cheek, the cold concrete a shock against skin still flushed from the run.
He still tried to see what had been behind him. He saw what looked like a shoe, and then jeans, and then…then everything went blurry.
He tried to push himself up and couldn't get his arms to answer.
His heart, which had been easing back toward its normal rhythm just a minute earlier, was pounding again now.
He could feel it behind his eyes now, beating faster than it had been at any point during the run itself, faster than it had ever been on the trail or under the bar at the gym.
But it didn't feel like exertion anymore.
It felt wrong in a way he had never quite felt before, something spreading through him that had nothing to do with effort or distance or reps.
The blur of his vision had already started to worsen and tilt, the garage sliding sideways as he remained on the floor.
He caught a shape near the doorway, low, at the level his eyes had fallen to.
A leg again…someone's leg, moving without hurry, stepping back through the door that led into the house.
It was the garage door, the same garage door he'd oiled himself a few weeks ago to get rid of the squeaking noise…
the same one he never heard because the music had been too loud.
He tried to call out and nothing came. His earbuds were still playing, the same screaming vocals grinding on somewhere above the sound of his own heartbeat.
His arm had ended up bent beneath him, his wrist turned up near his face by accident more than design, and the last thing his eyes settled on before the room went dark at the edges was his watch.
The screen still glowed there against the concrete, close enough that he didn't have to focus to read it.
PEAK ACHIEVED, it said, the letters steady and bright, exactly the way they'd looked when he'd first glanced down at them less than a minute ago—when the only thing straining in his chest had been the effort of the workout.
The darkness came in from the corners first, narrowing everything down to that one small rectangle of light on his wrist, until even that was gone.