Page 109 of Black Bird

The phone started ringing.

Sarah’s deep moans were free to echo through her empty apartment but caught by her teeth as they sank into her bottom lip. She rolled over onto her stomach, her hips rolling against her slick hand as she let go of everything and let her body convulse around a truly forceful release. It wasn’t her touch that had her knees quaking, it was his head between her legs. It hadn’t been her fingers that she was riding, buthim. Of course, she knew that neither of those things were the truth … however … hehadbeen the reason for the mess she’d left beneath her blanket. Sarah’s hair blew in and out of her face with the shallow breaths she was heaving against her pillow. Maybe now she could sleep. She dragged her hand up from between her thighs and slid it under her pillow as her body sagged in debility.

No sooner than the thought of not moving a single muscle overtook her, the phone next to her bed started ringing, startling her enough to make her face tingle—or maybe that was from the aftermath of what she’d just done to herself.

“You’ve got to be joking,” she whispered, rolling her eyes in exhaustion and disbelief. She gathered any remaining strength in her still trembling arms and turned herself on her side to reach for her phone. She nearly choked when his picture appeared on the screen. Her finger hovered almost too long over the green circle, but her curiosity got the better of her. At least, that was what she’d blame it on. She was still winded and said nothing as she pressed the phone to her ear. She wasn’t really surewhatto say.

“Sarah …”

Her heart sped up and she continued to breathe like she’d just ran ten miles. “Is Wren okay?” she asked, wondering if maybe that was the reason he’d be calling her at this hour. It didn’t matter that she’dcontemplated the same thing only minutes ago, and for no other reason than to hear him speak.

“She’s fine, I—”Athan paused,“Are you alright?”

“Why are you calling me at three in the morning?” She couldn’t help but ask. Silence. “Athan …”

“Because … I—”Another pause.

“What if I hadn’t answered?”

“Why did you?”

Now it was her turn to go silent. Sarah bit down on her lip. The war within her began its battle cry again, and again she wasn’t sure what side she was favoring when she chose not to tell him that it was because she wished he were here with her in this bed. “Are you really gonna make me say it, when you haven’t given me a single explanation for the way my heart is breaking, Athan Kane?” Her eyes prickled with tears.

“You were wrong, Sarah …”

“Wrong about what?”

“It was real for me, too. It always was.”She could hear him breathing heavier.“It still is.”

A single tear crept down her cheek. “Say it, Athan.” He was so quiet for such a long time that she almost thought he’d hung up the phone. Sarah glanced at the screen. The call was still going. She heard him sigh, and finally …

“Eagerly I wished the morrow … vainly I had sought to borrow … from my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore …”His voice was a sound that sent every muscle to unrest … especially with the mention of her middle name that was called for the second time tonight. She wanted to tell him to come over. Wanted to feel him next to her and to hear him say it again … but it was what he wouldn’t say that broke her further, and Sarah closed her eyes in defeat.

“I’m busy … I need to go.” It was all she could do to hide the emotion in her own voice. She couldn’t will her eyes back open.

Athan hid in the shadows of the corner on the rooftop, keeping one eye on Sarah through her window… another on the oblivious officers watching porn on their phones outside the lower door to her apartment. She hadn’t realized throughout the conversation that he’d thrown on a shirt and jacket and spent the entire phone call going to her.

“I’m busy … I need to go.”

He watched her clutch her blanket in her fist and raise it to her face to wipe it. He’d decided if it was gonna leave his mouth for the first time in his life, then it wouldn’t be through this phone. “I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to wake you,” he breathed.

“You didn’t,”Sarah said, clearing her throat and adjusting herself.“I’ve got somebody over.”A lie, but he understood what she was trying to do. He couldn’t help the smirk that lined his mouth as he watched her.

“Understood,” he muttered with a slight nod. “Night, Sarah.” She slid the back of her finger beneath her eye and didn’t respond … but didn’t hang up, either. Athan didn’t count how many minutes passed before he finally lowered his phone and ended the call. She laid there, staring blankly until her lids slowly closed. He waited, watching her until the tendrils of dawn started to turn the sky into the deepest gray.

An unlocked window in the back of her apartment led him inside, and he quietly snuck through the shadows towards her bedside. He laid a few items next to her and tugged her blanket up to cover her shoulder—the scent of her laced with the remnants of what he realized she’d done before he had called her made him lower his brows. He glanced up at the wall behind her bed, finding the poem missing and a slight dent in the sheet rock. She had been alone. There wasn’t another trace of anyone’s scent in this entire apartment. His mind swam with the possibility that maybe he was the one she’d been thinking about. Maybe that was her reason for telling him that someone was sharing her bed when they clearly hadn’t. She turned on her side, facing him and tucked her hands beneath her pillow.

“I love you, Sarah St. James …” he whispered, brushing the hair away from her face. His chest tightened when a soft smile graced her lips. She shifted slightly and he backed away, cloaking himself in the darkness again and slipping out the way he came.

The warmth of her blanket, heated by harsh autumn sunlight coming in through her window soothed her as Sarah snuggled deeper under it. There was a strange comfort that eased her that wasn’t present after she’d hung up the phone with—

Athan …

Sarah’s eyes opened and she was greeted with the emptiness of her apartment, though she could swear she felt him there. Or maybe she had been dreaming it? An ache pelted her chest when she recalled the words he wouldn’t say. She’d downright begged him to, but he still didn’t. She needed to hear them so badly that they had haunted her dreams in the little sleep she had finally gotten in the early hours of the morning. It irritated her. Sarah rolled onto her back, her brows furrowing when she felt the stab of something underneath her. She quickly bowed off, turning onto her other side and her eyes widened.

He was here … shit.

She recognized the figurine that laid on top of a familiar leather-bound book with no title, a small glass container that made her heart stop, and a thin silver chain that wrapped around the mandible of the skull where a raven perched. The remnants of the stone in her mother’s necklace rested in one of the eye holes of the little statuette, and on the back of the skull he’d carved the word:Forevermore.

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