Page 113 of Say Yes to the Nemesis
Everyone murmurs and starts scattering.
I glance at Wren. Her hands tremble at her sides.
When I take a step toward her, she flinches.
She’s not just startled.
She’s afraid.
For the first time, I’m not sure it’s only the dark she fears.
thirty-one
WREN
The darkness swallows everything whole.
Girls are shrieking. Someone crashes into a table. I hear Heidi yelling about her ankle and JacqLyn demanding to know if this is part of the show. The crew is shouting orders that no one can follow because we can’t see a damn thing.
I can’t tell where the walls end or the voices begin. Someone’s crying. Someone else is shouting orders that don’t make sense. A chair crashes against something hard and metal. For a second, I swear I hear a scream.
That’s when I feel the hand.
I press myself against the wall, heart hammering, trying to get my bearings. The emergency lighting should kick in any second. It has to. This is a professional set, not some backwoods cabin.
A couple of phone flashlights go on, sweeping through the murkiness. A warm hand closes around my wrist in the darkness.
I know that touch immediately. The size of his fingers, the rough calluses on his palm from years of gripping hockey sticks. Ryan.
“Come with me,” he whispers, his breath hot against my ear.
I should pull away. I should tell him to let go, that we can’t keep doing this. But the chaos around us is terrifying and he’s the only solid thing in a world that’s suddenly tilted sideways.
He tugs me toward what I think is the service hallway, away from the panicked voices and stumbling footsteps. I follow blindly, my free hand stretched out in front of me to avoid walking into a wall.
“Where are we going?” I whisper.
“Storage room. End of the hall.”
His voice is steady, confident. Like he’s mapped out this entire house in case of emergency. Of course he has. Ryan’s the type who notices exit signs and counts steps without realizing it.
We bump into a door and I hear him fumbling for the handle. It clicks open and he pulls me inside, closing it softly behind us. The sound cuts off most of the chaos from the main room, leaving us in thick, heavy silence.
I can’t see him, but I can feel him. The heat radiating from his body, the whisper of his breathing. We’re standing close, too close, in what feels like a tiny space.
“Your phone,” he says quietly. “Do you have it?”
I pat my pockets and find it, my fingers shaking slightly as I turn on the flashlight. The beam illuminates a small storage closet filled with cleaning supplies and towels. And Ryan, standing right in front of me, his eyes dark and intense in the harsh white light.
“Better?” he asks.
I nod, though I’m not sure anything about this situation is better. We’re alone. Actually alone. No cameras, no microphones, no producers lurking in the shadows. Just me and Ryan and the weight of everything we’ve been pretending doesn’t exist.
This is a mistake. A trap. A moment that doesn’t belong to me. I shouldn’t want this. But his voice pulls me in like gravity and I can’t find a single reason to resist that doesn’t sound like fear.
He takes a step closer and I back up until my shoulders hit the shelves behind me. A stack of towels shifts and tumbles to the floor.
“Wren.”
