Page 121 of Fall Into Me

That was probably the weirdest thing that happened all day.

Fane had messaged when he got back to Artington with a photo of him on his hotel bed, face squished into a pillow, and another about how he was heading into a board meeting and that working on the weekends should be a crime. I sent him a picture response at that line, this time of me flipping him offwhile wearing an oven mitt…in the back kitchen of the café…working on the weekend.

The voice memo I got back consisted of a range of incredibly not safe for work language about what my aggression did to him, and Sammy was quick to remind me any chance she got about the blush that stained my cheeks for the rest of the day.

By the time I parked outside Delilah’s and found myself sitting at her kitchen counter with a mega-pint of wine, my feet were sore, my hands were a little crampy, but my cup was so damn full I hardly knew myself. Or maybe I did, and it had just been a really fucking long time since I’d seen her.

Dylan was out when I arrived, but halfway through our pizza and movie date, he walked through the front door, dropped the largest carton of chocolate ice cream I’d maybe ever seen on the coffee table, and kissed the absolute shit out of Delilah before disappearing down the hall.

“Holy moly.” I was fanning my face with one hand and stifling my laughter with the other while Delilah looked like she was about to spontaneously combust.

“He’s…passionate,” she mumbled, both hands pressed to her face.

“I’ll say.” That earned me a pillow to the face and Delilah turning an even brighter shade of red. An hour later, when Dylan came out, shoulder propped against the hallway entrance and eyes focused entirely on Delilah, I took my cue to leave.

“I should go. It’s like a whole hour and a half past Jerry’s dinnertime, and he always demands extra when I’m late with dishing it up. Plus, I feel like I should get out of the way of your…passion.”

“Good idea,” Dylan grumbled while Delilah just rolled her eyes, but I saw the little smile there. I couldn’t help the way my heart dropped knowing that Fane wouldn’t be there when I got home.

“Message me when you get home so I know you’re safe,” Delilah said, waving one last time from her front door before Dylan appeared behind her and closed it with a firm push. He really hadn’t changed one bit since we were kids.

The house was dark and quiet when I pulled up out front, and the only real reason I was going inside was because Jerry had been home on his own all day, and I was desperate to hold his big head in my hands and deliver the loudest smooch of all smooches. To talk to him and see if I could persuade him to snuggle with me all night in Fane’s absence.

I sent Delilah a message quickly before hopping out of the car and heading for the door. The moment Jerry was happy, fed, and sleeping back on his bed, all the things that might be waiting for me on the other side of a video call with Fane were sending waves of heat careening over me. Mind, body and freaking soul.

The second I tried to put the key into the lock of the house, I knew something was wrong. Namely, because the door was open. I couldn’t tell because I’d stupidly forgotten to turn the porch light on before I left. I never forgot the porch light, but I’d been so focused on everything else that had been circulating in my head that I’d missed it.

My phone was clutched in my hand, but any part of my brain that was telling me I needed to call someone—the police, my dad, Fane, Ashton, Delilah,anyone—stopped working entirely when the door opened on silent hinges, another of the things Fane had fixed, and I saw Jerry lying in the entry room.

Still and unmoving.

The sound that I made wasn’t something I could explain. It was a gasp, a cry, a plea. It was choking on air I couldn’t breathe. Something that encompassed every single way my heart was trembling where it thrashed inside my chest, desperate to get out.

My phone, my keys, my bag—it all got left and forgotten at the front door. The pain that shot up through my knees barely registered when I landed next to Jerry and pressed my ear to his chest. The noise I made that time was nothing short of a cry of desperate relief. His heart was beating, maybe it was a little sluggish, but I couldn’t really tell from the rushing that had started in my ears.

“Fuck,fuck, fuck.Jerry?” My voice wavered when I reached for his head and placed a trembling hand in front of his shiny black nose to feel his breath moving in and out. It was shallow and light, but with the absence of his usual deep and heavy breathing, the clear and hard-to-miss rise and fall of his body, it felt like nothing at all.

The moment I realized that he was alive, something clicked in my brain. Two years of needing to be steady for everyone else, myself included, kicked back in. I’d managed to let go of the tension in my body that was a result of living that way bit by bit since Fane had come to Darling, and it all rushed back into me like muscle memory.

Like armor slipping right into place.

My phone. I needed my phone.

When I turned around, an arm already extended for where I had dropped it just outside the door my hand crumpled in on itself, a sharp pain shooting up my arm from the impact of shoving it right into a door.

My front door. My nowclosedfront door.

I hadn’t closed it. I hadn’t noticed it swing shut or click into place. I wasn’t even sure how that could be possible when the lock had been broken. Ithadbeen broken, right?

With my hand clutched to my chest, I turned back to Jerry and found myself staring down the barrel of a gun.

Declan wore a cruel, disjointed grin. His eyes were black pits—black holes sucking all the air from the room—widened a fraction with excitement at whatever he saw on my face.

A scream rallied in my chest. My lungs expanded, ready to shred my throat apart a second before he lifted his other hand, and I saw the glint of a knife that he flipped, catching it again like it was a fun little part trick, and he wanted to show off.

“If you make a sound.” He dropped the gun to his side and replaced it with his knife to the side of my neck, the metal cool as it accompanied a small sting when he pushed the point of it into my skin. “I will kill you.”

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