Page 95 of Love in Training
Yes. I’d like that.
Could you bring Rufus here?
Caprice
I’m on my feet again a moment later, checking my face in the mirror. Brushing my teeth again. Looking around my weird, half-empty space, trying to find something to straighten. I put on music—downtempo, casual. Just something light to fill the air. My chest feels flooded, everything inside me loose and swirling. Hereadwhat I wrote about Kyle. He wants to talk.
Maybe what happened between us wasn’t the mistake we both thought it was.
When the knock comes at my door, I don’t register how fast it came. How it feels like hours, but I only replied minutes ago. All I can think is how much I want to see Drew, see Rufus—throw my arms around both of them.
But when I fling the door open, that’s not who’s waiting for me at all.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
A tall,nondescript white man shoves inside my apartment before I can speak, closing and locking the door behind him with a sickening click. I reverse until my back hits a wall. My heart, which until this moment had been pounding with anticipation, immediately escalates into a more rapid, fearful rhythm.
“You—you’re in the wrong place,” I hear myself say. Stupidly. Passively.Unlikemyself. I should be attacking this guy, shoutingGet the fuck out of my house. Instead, my palms sweat. My feet and vocal cords refuse to work.
The guy tilts his head, looking me over with beady dark eyes. “You changed your hair.”
And immediately, I know who this is.
Except I don’t.
I’ve seen pictures of Marisol’s ex, Erik Schneider, and this man is not him. His hair is too light. He’s a little too gaunt. He doesn’t have the same charming, boyish face. This man’s eyes have a slight bulge over a receding chin.
“Wh-who are you?”
Something contemptuous flashes in his eyes, and I realize too late that this was the wrong question to ask.
He lunges forward. I land on the floor where my couch used to be, knocking the air out of my chest. I roll to one side, gasping, but he’s on top of me, grabbing my arms before I can breathe. I open my mouth to scream, but only cough until finally I suck in a lungful of air and raise my knee into his groin.
He cries out, and I roll to the side, following some self-defense script I learned years ago. Or maybe I’m just improvising. I get to my feet, snatching my belt bag off the counter and plunging my hand through the zipper before he slams me into the wall.
“Get off me!” I screech over the music I’d put on for Drew. I close my fingers around the little Taser, trying to locate the switch. He grabs my arm and twists it painfully, and by the time I realize he’s forcing the device back toward me, it’s too late. I kick out just before the electricity jolts into my side, and then it’s like my whole body is cramping upwhilebeing shot with lightning. My eyes widen, my arms and legs go rigid, and it is the single most terrifying, helpless moment of my life as I drop to the floor. My head cracks something on the way down, but I can’t tell if it’s that or the Taser that blurs my vision. I lay there for seconds, maybe minutes, eventually pulling myself into a whimpering ball, afraid to move.
Until somewhere far away, I hear a phone ringing.
Lydia’s ringtone.
I close my eyes, slowly curling my fingers and toes to see how they respond.
My head now pounds in time with my heart, and there’s something warm and wet sliding down my cheek. I don’t know where the guy is. All I can hear is Lydia trying to reach me.
When I open my eyes and turn my head, I spot him by the door. He seems distracted, peering through the peephole, so I push myself away, trying to get to the kitchen. The phone stops ringing, and the music I put on earlier resumes, but the ringingstarts up again almost immediately, and I keep moving toward it like a beacon. I get behind the breakfast bar, nearly vomit as I pull myself to my knees, and reach up to where I left it.
“No, you don’t,” says a nasally voice. And then I’m peering up into the man’s empty face. My phone is in his hand, and he’s turning up the music—cranking it until the drum and bass pound from my Bluetooth speaker.
I think I hear something over it, faintly. A light thumping? It’s hard to tell with my head throbbing since I hit the floor.
The man comes around the counter into the kitchen, and my chest seizes as soon as there’s no structure between us. I back into the fridge as he reaches out, fighting nausea as his fingers caress my braids.
“P-please,” I whisper. “Whatever you want?—”
But then the song transitions, and in the quiet, as the music fades, I hear the sound distinctly. Someone is knocking at my door.
