CARMEN
"You're not real." My eyes widened. I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have spoken.
Panic hit so hard it felt physical.
My feet moved before my brain, instinct driving me backward until the bike pressed against my legs. My pulse hammered. My mouth was dry. I watched the warmth leave my dream man’s face, as if I’d done something unforgivable.
Of course, I had. I always did. But at the realization that I was about to be corrected again, my stomach dropped so fast I thought I might be sick.
“Darlin’,” he said, and the way he called me that term of endearment made me freeze.
He wasn’t hard or sharp like Arthur, but careful.
Too careful.
It was the same careful tone men used right before deciding how to hurt you in a new, creative way, a signal I’d learned to decode before.
