Chapter14
1163 Words
Adrian
The night air should have helped.
It didn’t.
The front door slammed shut behind us, muting the music to a dull, relentless thud. Evangeline stepped onto the porch beside me and folded her arms across herself as the cold caught at her bare skin. For one brief, irrational second, all I could see was Jasper’s hand on her hip.
I looked away before the memory became something worse.
The porch was crowded with students smoking, laughing, and shouting over one another. None of them paid us much attention. To them, nothing significant had happened inside. One man had pushed too far. Another had intervened. The girl had left.
An ordinary scene at an ordinary college party.
My fingers still remembered the bones beneath Jasper’s wrist.
I descended the steps without speaking. Evangeline followed close behind, her footsteps quick against the pavement as we crossed toward the truck. When we reached it, I opened the passenger door before she could touch the handle.
She stopped.
“Thank you.”
The words were almost lost beneath the music and distant laughter.
I nodded once. “Get in.”
Her expression tightened slightly.
Too harsh.
I had meant it as concern. It had emerged as an order.
Before I could correct myself, she climbed inside and pulled the door shut. I walked around the front of the truck, taking longer than necessary. The cold air moved through my lungs out of habit rather than need, carrying traces of smoke, damp earth, and the lavender that clung to her clothes.
By the time I slid behind the wheel, she had fastened her seat belt and folded her hands in her lap. Her plastic cup was gone. Good. I had considered taking it from her inside, but I’d already been devoting most of my concentration to not breaking Jasper’s arm.
The engine started with a low rumble. I pulled away from the curb without looking back at the house.
For several blocks, neither of us spoke.
Evangeline watched the dark houses pass beyond the window. Her reflection stared back from the glass, pale and subdued beneath the occasional flash of a streetlamp. She didn’t look frightened. That should have reassured me.
It didn’t.
My hands remained fixed at ten and two on the steering wheel. The position was unnecessarily formal, but it kept them occupied. Every time I relaxed my grip, I remembered Jasper smiling as he replaced his hand after she had removed it.
I tightened my fingers again.
Beside me, Evangeline shifted.
“I’m sorry.”
I turned my head before I could stop myself. “For what?”
She blinked at the sharpness of the question. “For making you come inside.”
“You didn’t make me do anything.”
“I was late.”
“You were.”
The moment the words left me, she looked down.
I nearly closed my eyes.
There were entire decades of my existence during which I had negotiated with warlords, politicians, and men who believed violence was a reasonable substitute for intelligence. Somehow, none of that had prepared me for a conversation with an eighteen-year-old woman who treated every statement as proof she had done something wrong.
“I should have watched the time,” she said. “I’m usually better about that.”
Her fingers twisted together in her lap.
“Evangeline.”
“I know we agreed on one forty-five. I just lost track, and then Chloe disappeared again, and I was trying to leave, but—”
“None of tonight was your fault.”
The words stopped her.
She lifted her eyes to me slowly.
The road ahead remained empty, but I forced myself to look forward again. If I watched her too closely, she would mistake my attention for judgment.
She was quiet for several seconds. “I should’ve left sooner.”
“You tried.”
“I could’ve tried harder.”
The steering wheel creaked beneath my grip.
“No.”
She glanced at my hands.
I loosened them immediately.
“He wasn’t…” She hesitated, searching for words. “He wasn’t being scary at first.”
I said nothing.
“He was nice. We were talking, and it was normal. Then he moved closer, but I thought maybe there just wasn’t enough space. And then he touched my back, but only for a second.”
Each sentence was delivered like evidence in a case against herself.
“He brought me another drink after I told him I didn’t want one,” she continued. “I thought he was being pushy, but not…” Her voice faded. “Not dangerous.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
She looked toward me.
I kept my tone controlled. Gentle, if I was capable of it.
“He kept acting like everything was a joke,” she said. “Every time I said I needed to go, he smiled. Like I wasn’t being serious enough.”
My jaw tightened.
“He wasn’t yelling,” she added. “He didn’t threaten me. He just…”
“Wouldn’t stop.”
Her shoulders lowered slightly.
“Yes.”
The word came out smaller than it should have.
She turned back toward the window. “I kept thinking I was overreacting.”
“You weren’t.”
“I didn’t want to make a scene.”
“You wouldn’t have been the one making it.”
She gave a humorless little laugh. “That’s easy to say after.”
“No. It’s easy to say because it’s true.”
The truck stopped at a red light. I looked at her then, refusing to let her turn away from what I was saying.
“You told him no.”
Her expression shifted.
“That was enough.”
The light changed, but for one second neither of us moved.
A horn sounded from the car behind us.
I faced forward and continued through the intersection.
Evangeline fell silent again. This time, the silence felt different. Less like something trapped between us and more like something settling.
After another block, she drew in a breath.
“How did you find me?”
Every instinct in my body went still.
I had followed her scent through a house packed with nearly a hundred people. I had identified her heartbeat in a room full of them. Even before I saw her face, I had known exactly where she was.
None of those explanations were available to me.
“I saw you through the window.”
The lie came easily.
Too easily.
Evangeline frowned. “The living room window?”
“Yes.”
“I thought there were curtains.”
“There were gaps.”
She considered that.
I waited.
Finally, she nodded. “Lucky.”
Luck had played no part in it.
“No,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t.”
She looked at me, but I kept my attention on the road.
The rest of the drive passed without conversation.
- Writer
