Page 66 of Indigo Sky

A small, contemplative sound rumbled up from my chest. “That’s an interesting way of looking at it. But what about the guys who act like dicks? Or the ones who just wanna use you?”

“Oh, there are plenty of them, yeah,” she replied. I knew she was right; I’d seen them myself. “And they’re taken care of. But, no, I just love knowing that, during my time onstage, I am the reason they’re turned on. I am the reason they’re rendered stupid and crazed. I made them that way. I hold that power. I have that control. And I’m good at it.”

Fucking hell. I was hard. It had come on fast, and now, my erection was straining painfully against the zipper of my pants as I imagined her onstage. Seeing her bare tits in my mind, the curve of her ass. That was Indigo Sky, the girl who had given me my first kiss years ago. But this woman on the phone … that was Kate. The woman I had been on a date with. The one who’d inhaled a burger faster than anyone I’d ever known. She was reality, the woman I wanted in my life. But Indigo …

She was fantasy.

She was power.

“Yeah,” I said, willing my dick to calm the hell down, “I can see that.”

She snickered a little. “I mean, look at what happened the first time we met.”

“Hard to forget.”

“And that’s the kind of power I have.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the pride injected so heavily into her voice. And I couldn’t help but feel a pulse of my own pride, remembering just how much she had remembered me. I guessed that meant I held a bit of power myself, but I didn’t say as much, only to allow her to continue talking.

“I expect that, sometimes, I—or any of us really—leave a lasting impression. Like, I get that a lot of guys store me away in their memory to jerk off to later or whatever. It’s flattering. But …”

Her voice trailed off with a hushed quaver. Like speaking about this alone was enough to leave her unsettled and shaken up.

“What?” I asked, my gut rolling with discomfort and nerves.

Kate blew out a breath, but remained quiet for a couple of moments. Enough time to make my knuckles turn white from gripping the wheel too tightly.

“Kate—"

“There was one guy. And he … he was, um …” She let out a jittery laugh, nervous and almost shy. “God, why am I being so stupid? It was so long ago. This guy, he kinda, um … he stalked me.” She said those last three words with an air of relief, like she’d been wanting to say it for years, but never found the courage or the words to do it.

“You had astalker?” I asked, sitting up a little taller in my seat and gripping the wheel tighter as I remembered the figure across the street from Midnight Lotus.

The empty, dark road ahead of me and the blackened windows of houses to my left and right did nothing to calm the eerie tone that had settled over this conversation. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to be driving this late at night. I wanted to be home, secure in my bed. But also, more than anything else, I wanted to be with her. To protect her from whatever danger lurked in the shadows outside her door.

“I did,” she said. “But he’s long gone. He went to prison—"

“Because he was stalking you?” I asked, hardly believing what I was hearing.

“Yeah. He went to prison for five years, and then, last time I checked, he’d moved down to Florida to live with his mom. He was fucked up.”

I blinked, stupefied, looking out the windshield as I turned onto my parents’ street.

“What did he do?” I asked. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Oh God, um …” Kate cleared her throat, and I listened as her car door opened.

She must be home. I wondered if she lived with anyone else, and I wondered if I should ask. But that would distract from the topic at hand, and that felt more important than asking about her home life.

There was rustling—she must be climbing out of the car—and then I heard her slam the door shut behind her.

“Hold on,” she whispered. “I’m running inside real quick.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

More rustling and the sound of sneakers hitting pavement flooded the interior of my car, then the opening of a door before being quickly shut and secured.

“Okay,” she breathed out with relief. “I’m in, and the door is dead-bolted.”

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