Page 1 of After Hours
Chapter One
He was there again that night, like something the dusk called up from the bay and let loose upon the gritty, crumbling city.
Calamitous villain or savior, it was hard to tell.
The man was built like some kind of modern-day Viking, what with the dark beard and those icy blue eyes. He was also one of those sculpted, muscled,hugemen her ex-husband had liked to sneer at and callCrossFit junkieslike that was something to be embarrassed about whenhehad liked to prance around in a lot of cycling apparel while doing very little actual cycling.
Though Joseph had known better than to sneer about anything where any of those much larger men could hear him, of course.
Romily had seen the man before. Her latter-day Viking. She had made a point of it, in fact.
Her little hideaway-from-the-whole-world boat was docked in a small, weathered marina near Brooklyn Basin in Oakland, and there were only a handful of places in the area that weren’t entirely overcome by the relentless press of the streets.
Personally, Romily liked not getting shot at when she needed a few things from the self-consciously precious little market nearby. It existed solely to cater to the fancy new high rises in the Brooklyn Basin development, all boasting some of the most beautiful views imaginable of San Francisco across the water at astronomically high prices. She even liked the absurdly uppity prices at the market—thefactof them, the optimism they suggested about the clientele, not actuallypayingthem—and that the little boutique grocery had about seventy-five varieties of Boba, every alternative milk imaginable, and yet shockingly few actual necessities. She liked the strangeness of this new life of hers more and more—or so she told herself daily, like a mantra— so far away from what her small and claustrophobic life in Walnut Creek had become. Walnut Creek, which never had been as close to San Francisco as the people who lived there liked to pretend, and where Joseph had made certain that any friends she might have had lost touch with her completely.
He’d made certain of it but she also hadn’t fought it, because surrendering to her ever-increasing isolation was easier than explaining why she was the way she had to be to survive him.
The market was one of the surprising rewards she’d found for making an entire new life for herself, unconnected to anyone or anything she’d known before, in a place no one who’d ever met her would think to look for her.
Another washim. The man.
Her bearded, mouthwateringly well-cut Viking who was usually in what she’d originally thought was a garage, thanks to its roll-up metal door covered with the expected spray-painted tags. It sat between a bizarre sort of down-market seafood restaurant that did a surprising amount of business, given the often questionable neighborhood there on the Embarcadero, and a seedy though not wholly terrifying dive bar. The bar came alive only late at night and often left its patrons worse for wearas well as targets for petty thieves as they stumbled off along the waterfront path that stretched all the way to Jack London Square.
And it turned out it wasn’t a garage. Romily had found that out one very early morning when she couldn’t sleep and so was out walking. An activity that was not as relaxing as she’d hoped, given what lurked in the shadows beneath the palm trees here, but it was a lot better than her nightmares.
She’d heard the noise before she’d understood what she was hearing, odd metallic crashes and a kind of growling through the morning fog, making her wonder if she’d been about to encounter another monster she would have to run from.
Or, more worryingly, if maybe it was time she rantowardthe monster instead, because there was something almost exhilarating in the thought ofchoosingit?—
But there were no monsters. Not the kind that chased her, anyway.
It was a gym.
One of those gyms with black floors and horrible, shouty music, filled with terrifying equipment like bags hanging from chains like some kind of fitness abattoir—without a single soothing elliptical machine or smoothie counter to be seen.
What it had washim.
Sometimes other big, scary men were there too. They all looked like they were trying to make themselves into his clones, but never quite got there. There were a lot of bearded, tattooed, grim-eyed men in that dark little place, all crashing weights and grunting noises, but onlyheseemed to disturb the air when he moved.
And that was hard to do in this part of Oakland, wheredisturbancewas just regular, daily background noise.
Those disturbances were why Romily didn’t love leaving her boat. Well. One reason, anyway. If she could, she’d stay hiddenaway in the marina night and day, but even someone who wanted to stay anonymous and forever unfound had to go out sometimes.
So every day, Romily made herself leave the marina and walk around, because that was what people were supposed to do, and she was trying her best to do that. Topeoplelike she really was a person and not just the ruined, bombed-out shell of a person her ex had made her.
And not only when the nightmares had her waking up choking again.
After that first morning, in the fog, she’d made it a point to learn the hours of the gym—and they weren’t posted anywhere she could see. Apparently you had to have a beard and a certain grimness to you to work it out.
Or you had to live nearby, like Romily.
By now she had managed to see him at almost all times of day.
There was usually a t-shirt situation but on really good days, he was shirtless. Curling things. Slamming things. Sometimes running with all his sleek muscles on display, not to mention the kind of tattoos that had always fascinated her, all over his skin like spells and incantations. Sometimes at night she would lie in her berth and trace the patterns she saw inked into his skin all over her own body.
Sometimes she would slide her hands between her legs and let her imagination go wild?—
Tonight, though, he surprised her.
