I opened my eyes to darkness. It was evening. I had slept longer than I intended. My stomach growled hard reminding me I had barely eaten in the last 24 hours. This wasn’t the way I had anticipated losing weight. I went to the fridge, but there was only water. I hadn’t gone shopping. I hadn’t done anything productive, for that matter. The only thing I had managed to do was bump into one tall, dark, gorgeous man and get attacked by a creepy, weird one - two things that were definitely not on my to-do list. I grabbed my phone to search for food options in the area and settled on Italian. Kiera was all over the place when I finally called her. You’d think I was the little sister the way she tried to boss me around. “I know. I know.” I said after minutes of her berating my apparent stupidity. “I thought I’d be okay on the first day at least.” “Well, that’s why you don’t think. Do I need to bring my ass down there already?” We both started laughing. She was such a smart ass. I talked
Who the hell? I didn’t recognize the area code. It couldn’t be Adrian, could it? There’s no way. How would he have my number? I’m pretty positive Trinity wouldn’t have given it to him without telling me. Probably a wrong number or something. I thought about not responding, but curiosity got the best of me like usual.“Who is this?” “Ouch. Have you forgotten about me already, love?” Okay. So it was obviously him. How the hell did he get my number? He was persistent. I would give him that much. I smiled but was unsure how to respond. It wasn’t like I didn’t know how to flirt, but I always played hard to get and my walls were definitely back up. I wasn’t going to let them down for some random man, even if he did kind of save my life. “Sorry. I guess you didn’t leave that much of a lasting impression.” I lied, but apparently he wasn’t deterred. “Give me a chance to change that.”He was smooth. I thought for a few seconds going back and forth. Wasn’t I just complaining about being bored
We pulled up in front of the restaurant. Da’More’s the sign on the door read. Adrian jumped out of the car and met me at the passenger side to open my door and to help me out. I made a mental note of how much of a gentleman he was. That was a refreshing change.I realized I had left my bag in the floorboard halfway to the door so I had to turn back to grab it while he went ahead waiting at the door holding it open for me. I heard some loud voices in the background, but I was too busy digging in my purse making sure everything was accounted for to see what exactly was going on. I looked up as I noticed the voices had gotten closer to me just in time to see a body crashing into me sending me flying backwards over the curb. Some drunk was being kicked out of a bar next door and came colliding into me. Panic struck me as I realized wasn’t going to be able to catch myself in time. My heels went out underneath me and I braced myself for the fall into the road, but instead I fell back into A
We were back at my apartment sooner than I wanted to be. Even though I had just told him I didn’t want to move too fast and I felt like I needed to get away, another part of me didn’t want the night to end. We had spent hours together, but time seemed to have went by so fast. It felt good being around him. I just wanted to be in his presence with no words or expectations. My uncertainty and indecisiveness was annoying me. It was as though a war was raging inside my body pulling me every which way. It was later than what I expected and I was actually pretty tired. Of course Adrian helped me out the car and walked me to my door wanting to make sure I got in safely. We slowly walked up the steps dragging it out as much as possible until I was at my door. I turned around to face him dreading the moment. I hated awkward goodbyes.“I enjoyed this evening. I hope you did too.” He looked at me with hopeful eyes.“I did. I had a good time. Thank you for dinner and everything.” I smiled back
Morning came early. I had actually gotten a decent sleep that night. I stared at the ceiling blushing as I recapped my night with Adrian and excitement grew knowing I would see him again today. Sure enough, when I checked my phone, I had a good morning text from him. I smiled. It was like he knew when I was thinking about him. He was super sweet and it had been a while since someone put so much effort into me.I needed to catch up with Trinity. She was the only one I felt like I could talk to about Adrian right now. I didn’t want anyone else to know that I had already folded on my “no more men quest” not even three days into my big move. How shameful. I sent her a text to update her on the current situation. She was apparently a fan of his so of course she approved and was happy to hear about our evening and that we already had something else lined up. She told me what I had already suspected, that he was a good guy. I didn’t even know what that was. Everyone from my past were dicks
Well, this was unexpected. “Araya, what are you doing here?” He asked nervously, clearly surprised. He scanned the room then looked back to me smiling. “You look beautiful, by the way.” His eyes slowly lingered over my body then met my own. Maybe if he hadn’t just ditched me last minute claiming to be busy and then popped up at a club, that sly grin would have done something to me, but there would be none of that now.Yeah, nice try. The initial shock of seeing him was now shifting to anger. “I could ask you the same thing,” I fired back. “I thought you said something came up.” I sounded a little more snappier than I intended, but I was never great at holding back my emotions. My eyes trailed over his body. He wore a black suit that did nothing to hide his muscular build and broad shoulders. He looked good and that irritated me. We were supposed to be together, but instead he was here looking like this. I noticed his eyes moving around trying to find something.. or someone. Then it
Fucking Adrian. I had done it again and let a man into my life only to be disappointed. They were probably laughing at me back at Moonlight. I felt the warmth of my anger travel to my face at that thought. I couldn’t believe those two, Adrian and Trinity. The crisp, cold air cut into my face like a knife as I walked the blocks back to my apartment. I wasn’t ready to go home yet and was pissed that my evening was cut short because of them. There were plenty of other bars and dives on this part of the stretch so I slithered into one that seemed promising enough.“Rough night?” The bartender asked peering up over his glasses as I plopped down on the stool. My resting bitch face was in full effect. “Something like that. Two double shots of vodka, please.” I got straight to the point. He handed me three saying the third was on him. At least someone other than myself felt pity for me. I tossed the first two back one right after another knowing I would definitely be feeling that in the m
Standing a few yards in front of me was a big, black.. dog of some sort. It was huge, like the size of a bear. I had never seen one that big. Maybe it was a wolf. I think I read they were larger than dogs, but I didn’t think they would be that much bigger. I wasn’t even sure if there actually were wolves in this area. Again, I should have done more research about this place, apparently. The dog/wolf.. thing snarled at Acelin showing his teeth. Frozen in fear, all I could do was stare. Was this the animal that had been responsible for the attacks? I was sure I was about to find out. My hand slowly slid into my purse searching for my taser never taking my eyes off of the animal in front of me. I realized it was probably a useless effort unsure if a taser would do anything to phase an animal this size. It was stupid of me to be out drunk wandering around in the middle of the night when I knew these attacks had been happening. I had let my anger get the best of me and it caused me to