Page 24 of Sinners Atone
He glares back.
Hmm. Okay, well, he obviously didn’t see that. The light is probably shining right in his eyes. But jeez, I’m too antsy to wait for the chance to try again, so screw the “Macarena.”
“Wren, are you insane?—”
Priti’s protests are swallowed by the rapid Spanish verse as I step out of line and to the edge of the dance floor.
“Hi!” I yell, cupping my hand to my brow as if doing so will give me night vision.
Nothing.
Well, I guess the music is pretty loud.
I step off the dance floor. “Hey! Remember me?”
No answer.
Blame it on being an only child, but I loathe being ignored. A spark of annoyance lights a flame under me and drives me forward.
With the stomp of my fluffy socks, darkness brushes over my toes.
Another, and it swallows me whole.
I’m immediately uneasy. The air feels different in this corner of the club. A few degrees warmer, a few inches thicker. I hover, pulled thin between wanting to turn around and seek safety in numbers and wanting to stay and find out more.
Before I can decide, the strobe light circles back around, and now I’m the one in its path. When it brushes my spine and stretches my shadow up the jagged wall, my heart sinks to my stomach.
The shadow next to mine is all-consuming.
It’s huge in contrast, in both height and width. The type of shadow that doesn’t trigger your fight-or-flight response but paralyzes it. My gaze feels as heavy as my limbs as it reluctantly follows the path of light to the left.
“Hey.”
A flash of green; no response. Well, I practically squeaked that greeting, so of course he didn’t hear me. I clear my throat, clench my fists, and try again. “Hi! Remember me?”
Nothing.
Is he …okay?
And then it suddenly dawns on me. The blood, the gurgle in his breaths. Yes, he survived that night, but at what cost? It doesn’t mean he made a full recovery.
Fear is only a short road to morbid curiosity, and I cross it with a small step forward. Well, I try to. My sock skids on something wet, then I’m falling. Forward, deeper and deeper and deeper into the abyss, like Alice plummeting down the rabbit hole. I reach out to grab something, anything, to steady myself, and my fingers brush over something hard andhot, but before they find purchase, I’m spinning.
My back slams against something solid and knocks the air from my lungs.What the hell?
We’ve traded places. Him with his back now to the dance floor, mine pressed against the wall. I glance down at my socks as if they’re the culprit here, but the ghost of a too-tight grip on my shoulder tells me otherwise.
I look from my feet to his. Now backlit by the disco lights, his outline is sharper, and I can make out the shape of combat boots. Weird choice for a nightclub, but okay. At least he’s committed to the look with the black cargo pants. I skim up the side of his bulging quads and drink in the broad lines straining against his matching long-sleeve crew neck.
The first inch of visible skin starts at the trunk of his throat, which is wrapped in intricate tattoos I can’t make out the details of. They spread across a wide jaw and disappear under a thick, dark beard.
I lift my gaze to meet his.
I wish I hadn’t.
Those eyes. They’re not green up close, they’re black. Black and bottomless, as if they swallow the light instead of reflect it. All my pulse points throb out of sync as I scan his other features for a part of him I recognize from that night.
But his mouth, his nose. The hollows of his cheekbones and the depth of his scar. They’re all wrong. He’s all angles and no soft edges. Deep crevices and dangerous terrain. There’s something strikingly inhuman about him, as though he’s clawed his way out from the underworld.
