Page 22 of Shade
My hands tremble, my heart catches, stills, tries to understand, but it’s something beyond comprehension for me. Dryness seizes my lungs, like breathing in sand. I swallow, or attempt to. Nothing works. My heart races, my breathing fast and rapid.
I raise my sunglasses and read the message again.
I couldn’t save myself, but I can still save you. . . .
I blink. Twice. Staring at it as a woman beside me watches me. I can see her out of the corner of my eye. My sunglasses slide down my nose, eyes lifting to hers but I don’t know her. At least I don’t think I do. She asks me something, and I can’t reply, not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. Words won’t form. I’m trapped by ten words.
I couldn’t save myself, but I can still save you. . . .
8:15 p.m. I send my reply, pain shooting through my jaw from clenching and unclenching it. I draw in a deep, painful breath, gripping my phone tighter as I type out the words, my hands barely able to keep from dropping the phone.
Me: Rhya. No. Don’t fucking say that! What the hell does that even mean?
Nothing.
Do you see that guy now? The one with his throat threatening to close? Can you feel the burning in his stomach and the tightness in his chest? The heat in his cheeks at the rising blood pressure and the roaring in his ears?
No?
Keep watching.
8:17 p.m. I send her another message.
Me: What the fuck does that mean?
No reply. That burn in my stomach rises to my throat. Heavy lidded eyes close and then slowly open. She’s not serious. She can’t be. Could she? Sure, she does things to get my attention but this. . . no, it’s different now.
I’m in the penthouse suite. Carl and two more security guards step inside the foyer with us. I don’t remember exiting the elevator. I do know I want everyone in this room gone. I want to be gone myself.
Dismissively, I nod to the girls Tiller brought up here. I want them gone. I want the sight of everything and anything around me to disappear into oblivion. “Get them out of here.”
“Fuck that.” Tiller laughs; it’s not an amusing sound. It’s distaste. He holds up his hand at Carl. He never takes orders from me. I don’t know why I thought it’d be different tonight. “No.”
His denial sends a rush of annoyance down my spine, and my body locks in place. I swallow again, the action slow and deliberate. Leaning into a wall, I run the hand not holding my phone through my hair and raise my sunglasses before dropping them on the table next to my keys. “Thenyoutake them someplace else. I’m not dealing with their shit too.”
Despite his usual indifference to everything around him, his rudeness, his callous demeanor, Tiller knows something’s wrong with me. My attention has been diverted to my phone for the last half hour, and it’s New Year’s Eve, a day I’m known for some of my biggest partying.
Tiller’s left hand rises, his thumb flicking his nose before his eyes land on mine. Can you see the disappointment in his? I can. It’s screaming back at me like my unstable thoughts about a girl I can’t save.
“What’s going on with you?” he finally asks, standing in front of me, his eyes wandering to the girls exiting the suite.
The back of my hand sweeps over my forehead, and I hand him my phone. “I don’t know what to make of this.” Part of me hopes by handing him my phone, my heart that’s threatening to explode might slow down.
It doesn’t. All that happens is my inability to say anything else to him, waiting for my brother’s words of wisdom he might offer me.
At first, he doesn’t. He refuses. I’ve pissed him off. Then his curiosity gets the better of him and he stares at it for a moment. My hand flies to my hair, tugging, but nothing offers relief.
He hands the phone back to me, shrugs, then pulls up the hood of his coat over his hair, his dark, intimidating stare moving from my phone to the closed door and Carl standing beside it. “Just let it go. It’sherbullshit,” Tiller says with a sardonic laugh. He regards me thoughtfully for a half a second, then lets out a resigned sigh. “She does this crap to you all the time. You saw when we were in Paris, and she wanted you to come over and couldn’t. She threw that big fit, stopped replying to your messages until you flew home the next day only to find her passed out in a pool of her own vomit.”
He has a point. A valid one, but still, something is different about this. In all those times she’s reacted like this, I’ve never gotten a text message likethat.
What does it mean?
“You’re fuckin’ depressing,” Tiller grumbles, nodding to Carl by the door. “I’m going after those girls.”
Carl clears his throat, unwilling to leave me alone. “You okay, Shade?”
I don’t look up from my phone, my fingers tightening around it. “Go with Tiller. I want to be alone.”
