Evidently my touch was doing a little too much for him, because Blake brought his hand up from my hip and covered my own with a groan. I giggled, even though I, too, was disappointed that this was as far as we could go in that hallway.
“Is there a problem?” I asked innocently.
“Only that this moment has to end,” Blake said.
“Who says?” I asked. “Last time I checked, it was my birthday and this was my party.”
“Well then, by all means, your wish is my command,” Blake said, softly running his thumb back and forth across my cheek.
“Have I told you today that you’re perfect?” I asked.
“Today? No, I don’t think so,” he replied, bringing his lips back down to mine. This kiss was soft and sweet and made me melt in an entirely different way than the last.
Suddenly a voice encroached on my bubble of bliss, causing panic to rise in my throat instantaneously.
“Have you seen Lark? It’s 11:40 and she was supposed to blow out the candles on her cake at precisely 11:30. She knew that.”
My mother’s words cut a trail down the hallway, resonating as though they’d come from above and fallen all around me.
“Oh shit, I totally lost track of time. I have to go!” I said, feet already carrying me away from Blake and our perfect time together.
“Hang on,” Blake soothed. “It’s okay, it’s not like you’re late for anything important.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped, looking up from where I’d been smoothing my dress.
“Nothing,” he said, giving me a weird look. “Just that it’s not the end of the world.”
“I know,” I said, forcing myself to calm down. “But it is a big deal for her. And she did all of this for me, and I am grateful.”
“Right. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it wasn’t important, just that it would be okay.” Blake came to stand in front of me. “Are you mad?”
“No,” I replied with a sigh. “Just stressed. Sorry I snapped. But I really do have to go.”
I gave Blake a quick his on the cheek and turned to leave.
“You sure you don’t want me to stay?” he called after me. “I can meet the parents—parents love me, I promise—glad-hand the friends, and we can just get it all out of the way. You’re eighteen, sweetheart. You can do this.”
I spun to face him.
“It’s not about how old I am,” I said bitterly, irrationally annoyed by Blake’s words. “It’s just not a good time,” I finished lamely.
“Is there ever going to be a good time, Lark?” he asked, not bothering to hide his irritation. “Or am I just going to remain your dirty little secret? You know, if I—”
“You are not my dirty little secret!” I exclaimed.
Only three steps separated us, but for the first time in our relationship it felt as though we were a million miles apart. Part of me had worried that this day would come, the day when Blake wanted more than I had to give. But I’d hoped that his patient, caring nature would triumph, and we’d make it down the rocky road together. It wasn’t always going to be like this, our relationship wasn’t destined to be a secret forever. I just needed a little more time.
Closing the physical distance between us, I tried to bridge the emotional one the only way I knew how. “I love you,” I said, laying the palm of my hand against his cheek. “I can’t see a future without you. I don’t want a future without you. My parents, my friends, every single person in this whole building…they don’t matter like you do. I don’t care what they think. That’s not the problem. And I know it’s a lot to ask, but please be patient just a little bit longer.”
“I love you, too.” That was all that Blake said, but I could see him softening. The irritation was gone from his deep green eyes.
“And that’s all that matters,” I said, sealing my words with a meaningful kiss. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I took one more hit of his scent, relishing the calm high it gave me. If Blake was my drug, I wouldn’t be joining NA anytime soon. “I’m sorry, baby, I have to go.”
“I understand, go.” Blake’s smile was thin and pained. He squeezed my hand one last time before I turned to leave, for real this time.
Hurting Blake broke my heart. But it was unavoidable. If we were to have a future together, I needed to keep him separate from my friends and family now. I knew he didn’t understand why and I couldn’t explain it to him. One day he would understand, though. I just prayed that I would be around when that day came, and that all of the heartache would be worth it.
OMG. OMG. OMG.
Shit.
What had I just done?
Asher was long gone, having made some hurried excuse about needing to post an assignment before a ten p.m. deadline. Which, I was positive, didn’t exist. Not that I blamed Asher for turning tail and running for the hills. If I’d been in his position, I would’ve done the same thing. Hell, I would’ve in my position, but seeing as the totally out-of-the-blue-should-not-have-ever-happened kiss took place in my apartment, I was kind of stuck. Unless I’d abandoned him here, which would’ve been even more awkward. Though, in the thirty seconds of stunned silence that followed that damned kiss, I considered it numerous times.
Frantically pacing back and forth in my living room, I tried to work out where the urge to kiss Asher had come from. And why the hell I’d acted on it.
Okay, so Asher was hot. There was no denying that. He was sweet. He was kind and caring and everything else a girl wanted a guy to be. But kissing Asher had felt wrong. Like seriously wrong. Like kissing my uncle wrong. Which would’ve made me feel bad, like I was being unnecessarily harsh, expect I was pretty sure that Asher felt the same way. Although he’d been an active participant in the kiss—surprisingly participative given the fact I’d basically accosted him out of nowhere—once the initial lust or whatever had worn off, he appeared as full of regret as I was.
Good job, Raven—way to alienate your only friend, I thought.
Unaccustomed to dealing with awkward sexual encounters, even those on the vanilla end of the spectrum, I had no idea how to best to handle the situation. Did I go downstairs and talk to him? Explain that our ten second lip-lock had been a mistake? Or should I feign amnesia? If I pretended it hadn’t happened, would Asher do the same?
Sure, the second option was not very mature, but I wasn’t feeling particularly mature. Didn’t being eighteen to his twenty-something give me leeway to be a little childish?
Suddenly, I needed to get out of the Gibson Street apartment. Needed to put more than a floor between me and Asher, if just for the night. Luckily, I had the keys to a posh penthouse apartment with tons of distractions hidden in its depths.
As I threw some clothes into my messenger bag along with my laptop and Lark notes, I worried that Asher might try to follow me. To prevent such an outcome, I went full-on stealth mode with my exit. Easing my front door shut, I winced and held my breath when the lock clicked into place. Creeping down the stairs, my entire being was painfully aware of each creak and groan of the floorboards.
Either my spy skills were greatly improving, or Asher was as reluctant to face me as I was him. Regardless, I made it out to the street without another awkward encounter. Trying to appear cool, calm and collected, in case I was being watched, I made my way over to my car and hopped in. Only once I jammed the key into the ignition and started the car did I hazard a glance over to the building I’d just fled.
When I saw a large silhouette materialize behind the curtains in Asher’s front window, and then fingers curl around the fabric and a face appear in the divide, I realized that twenty-something guys were just as immature as eighteen year old girls. And that made me feel a little bit better.
Twenty minutes later I parallel-parked my car in a spot two blocks from The Pines. Darrell was on duty. The blank look on my face caused enough alarm that the front desk man waved me forward, offering to sign me in so I wouldn’t have to waste the precious ten seconds that it
took to scribble my own signature. The small gesture made me feel rather important. And a little lucky, too, since I really didn’t want to waste any time before barricading myself inside Lark’s apartment and immersing my mind in her problems to forget my own.
“Thanks, Darrell,” I called over my shoulder as I breezed by.
“Of course, Ms. Ferragamo,” he replied, tone reverent.
I must be growing on him, I thought with a smile.
Given the late hour, I was hoping Lark’s neighbors would all be tucked inside their apartments. So when Deidre from 10B poked her head out into the hallway, and called, “Yoohoo! Robin?” I jumped and dropped the key I was about to shove in the lock to Lark’s door.
“Sorry,” Deidre said, not sounding sorry at all. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I’m not usually one of those nosy neighbors who sits around waiting for something interesting to happen.”
The way she said it gave me the impression that was exactly the type of neighbor she was.
“But,” Deidre continued, “I thought you might want to know that a young man stopped by your friend’s place a little bit ago.”
A young man? I thought, hackles rising.
Who knew about this apartment? Did Blake know?
“He had his own key,” Deidre was saying. “So I figured he knew y’all. It was just, well, he was a little dodgy if you catch my meaning. Didn’t say two words to us. Sam and me, I mean—we were leaving at the same time he was going in.”
His own key? Who would Lark trust enough to give a key? Only Blake, right? It had to be Blake.
“Do you remember what he looked like?” I asked hopefully.
If Deidre got a good look at the mystery visitor, she’d be able to describe him down to the freckle. She was totally that type of person: nosy.
“Tall. Medium build. He was wearing one of them baseball hats pulled down real low and it pretty well hid his face, so that’s really all I can tell you,” Deidre said apologetically.
Obviously fond of gossip and eager to tell me—and probably anyone who would listen—every last detail about him, I was betting that Deidre was mostly sorry because her own curiosity wasn’t satisfied.
“His hair was probably light brown, if I had to guess. That ball cap mostly covered it, though, so I can’t be certain,” Deidre explained, grasping for details to keep my attention.
Brown hair. Blake had brown hair.
“What time was this?”
Deidre’s blue eyes flitted to the left as she thought about it, and she drew in her plump bottom lip between professionally whitened teeth.
“Hmm, let’s see. Our reservation was for 7:00 at the Oval Room—ever been there? Great date restaurant. Any guy who takes you there has money, trust me on that. Sam and I used to go quite a bit when he was first courting me, but of course now we only go on special occasions. Today is the anniversary of our first date.”
“Happy anniversary,” I said with a forced smile, trying to keep the agitation in my voice to a minimum.
Standing here while Deidre gabbed about her day was the exact opposite of what I wanted to be doing right then. If I didn’t get her back on track soon, I’d be standing there all night listening to her drone on about nonsense I didn’t care about. Already Deidre was rambling on about the fish being a bit too flaky, but Sam’s sirloin was perfection, so then she’d ordered a sirloin, too. Apparently, Deidre only allowed herself red meat on these special occasions because she has to watch her waistline, after all.
The whole time she described their night in minute detail, I kept wondering if these ‘special occasions’ were contrived so she’d have dates to mark in her calendar, to look forward to. Because what married couple celebrated the anniversary of their first date? That was something teenagers did, not adults.
“It’s all downhill after thirty, Robin,” she was saying, still babbling away despite my obvious lack of interest. “Believe you me. Your workouts get longer and your calories get lower. And you can forget carbs. I haven’t eaten—”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I interjected, before this one-sided conversation became any more ridiculous. “So then, what time did you say you saw the guy go into L—the apartment?”
“Right, right.” Deidre laughed. “You’ll have to forgive me. A couple glasses of wine and I turn into a chatty Cathy. Anyway, our reservations were for 7:00, so we must have left here about 6:15.”
“Okay,” I said, this new bit of information throwing me off. “Tha—”
“No, no, wait…let me think a minute,” she continued, as if I hadn’t been speaking. “Nope, it was closer to 6:30. The babysitter was late. I remember now. She gave some excuse about track work on the Red Line causing the metro to run slow. If the girl wasn’t always late—”
“Thank you, Deidre, for telling me about the visitor. I’ll check with my cousin to find out who else has a key.”
“So you don’t know who the young man was?” she plied, overdoing the shock. Deidre’s hunger for a juicy scandal to share with her Mommy-and-Me group or whomever was as transparent as the floor-to-ceiling windows inside the apartment.
“I have a guess,” I said nonchalantly, trying to throw Deidre off the scent. The last thing I needed was to bring attention to Lark’s secret hideout, to make it a source of gossip and speculation among the neighbors.
Though, truth be told, the only “guess” I had was clearly wrong. At 6:30, Blake was still at soccer practice.
“Alrighty then. Well you simply let me know if you need anything at all, I’m just right next door. And I’ll be sure to keep a close eye on the place now. Have a good night, Robin.”
Deidre wiggled her fingers in a friendly wave as she retreated back to her door.
“Deidre?” I called.
She turned around, big blue eyes wide and shiny with anticipation. Apparently she was hoping for even more to add to her story about the mystery visitor next door.
“Yes?”
“It’s Raven,” I said, finally correcting her. “Not Robin.”
Deidre’s tinkling laughter echoed throughout the hallway and her hand moved to cover her heart, as though embarrassed by her gaffe.
“Oh my heavens, I’m so sorry, Raven. I’m such a scatterbrain! I knew it was one of those bird names.”
“Yeah, you got that part right,” I said, my words dripping with sarcasm that I was too tired to suppress.
Wanting this conversation to end so that I could freak out in the privacy of Lark’s apartment, I bent to retrieve the key I’d dropped when Deidre first popped out of her door. After jamming it into the lock, I turned back to her. Deidre was busy listing off all the other names she knew that were also types of birds. Is that seriously happening? I wondered in amazement.
After staring for a moment at the spectacle, I cut her off midway between Heron and Wren—or Ren, if you’d name a little girl Lauren and want to use a nickname instead.
“Goodnight, Deidre. Thanks again for the heads up,” I called over my shoulder, letting the front slam shut behind me.
“Her poor, poor husband,” I muttered to the empty apartment, wondering if she ever allowed him to speak.
More importantly, though, who the hell was in Lark’s apartment? And why?
My body went tense as I suddenly realized how stupid it was for me to have just come waltzing inside without a second thought. Without knowing if the mystery man was still here. Deidre had seen him enter, but said nothing about him leaving. If he’d left. For all I knew, this random guy—whoever he was—was still inside, lurking around.
Shit. What do I do now?
The apartment was dark. Dark and suddenly very creepy. It was possible there was a light on in one of the bedrooms, but I couldn’t tell from where I stood in the entryway. Closing my eyes and concentrating, I listened for any noise at all, some sound that would alert me to an intruder’s presence. The squeak of bedsprings. A drawer sliding shut. Footsteps. Running water in the bathroom. Anything at all to signal that I wa
sn’t alone. All I heard was the rapid beating of my own heart.
Leave. You should totally leave right now unless you want to be the dumb girl from the horror movie. The girl who runs up the stairs to get away from her attacker, even though that is clearly the worst possible option since there is no way out from the second level. The best case scenario isn’t all that great in that situation, unless a broken leg or neck didn’t bother you. Yeah, that girl always dies first. Don’t be that girl.
But I didn’t leave. I didn’t move a millimeter. My sandals were glued to the floor, spine ramrod straight, both hands clenched around the strap of my messenger bag. The sound of my own breathing was impossibly loud to my ears. Waiting. Waiting….
Don’t just stand here. Make a move. Either grow a pair and go see if there is someone back there, or leave and come back with Asher, I lectured myself.
Asher. The entire reason I’d bolted to the Pines. If I hadn’t deeply regretted the kiss before, I definitely did then. After what happened, I couldn’t ask for his help. Hell, I couldn’t even look at him, much less talk to him.
So not important right now, Raven, I chastised myself. You have much bigger things to worry about.
After standing there, still as a statue, for what felt like hours, I decided to pull my big girl panties on. Taking a deep breath, I slowly eased the strap of my messenger bag over my head. With painstaking care, I gently lowered the bag to the ground near the door. As an afterthought, I moved it quietly to the side, in case I needed to make a run for it. Finally, I slid my feet out of my flip-flops—bare feet made less noise after all.
This is not smart, I thought as I darted towards the kitchen. This is verging on outright stupidity.
Ignoring the nagging voice screaming for me to leave and let someone else clear the apartment, I thought about the situation as rationally as possible while making irrational decisions. If I was going to confront the intruder, I needed to be armed. Since I didn’t exactly roam the streets with a Glock 9 millimeter, nor was I skilled in archery Katniss Everdeen-style, I was going to have to make do with whatever I could find.