You didn’t bounce back from that.
* * *
I jerked up in bed, a loud crash coming from the direction of my living room.
My heart pounded, my gaze darting to the nightstand and the alarm clock next to my bed. Instead of the neon numbers I expected to see staring back at me, the screen was dark. I fumbled with the lamp, reaching for the switch. I flicked it on. Nothing happened.
Fuck.
A chill slid down my spine, my limbs filling with ice. Maybe there’d been a storm. Maybe it was just a normal power outage. Maybe someone had come to kill me.
Another crash—the sound of breaking glass—the noise once again in the direction of the living room.
It wasn’t a dream; someone was definitely in my apartment.
Fuck.
I reached for my cell, only to come up empty.
Fuck.
I’d left it in my purse, which was not-so-conveniently sitting on the coffee table in the living room.
I got out of bed, heading to the closet. I fumbled around in the dark for a moment, until finally my hand connected with the wooden handle of a baseball bat. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. If I were lucky, maybe I could catch the intruder off-guard. I definitely wasn’t going to stay here like a sitting duck, waiting to be killed. If I could get a good swing in, then maybe I could make it to the front door. I had a few neighbors—surely someone would hear me. Hopefully, they weren’t all gone for the holiday. Not to mention, since this wasn’t the best area, fights weren’t exactly something new. The hope that someone would overhear and call the cops was probably in vain.
My hands tightened around the bat, sliding over to the bedroom door, cursing the old construction and the fact that none of the interior doors had locks on them.
Adrenaline slammed through me, my body tense and poised for fight as I waited, my gaze locked on the handle of the door, waiting to see it turn.
Dreading it.
A shout came from the other side of the door.
My breath caught.
Another shout.
Oh god, there’s more than one of them.
A loud thud, followed by a series of grunts, filled the night air. Then another thud—like the sound of bone connecting with bone. More grunts. A shout. Popping sounds.
Someone was fighting in my living room. The realization surprised me enough to have the bat slipping from my fingers. I’d gone to bed late; it had to be the middle of the night. Judging from when I’d gone to bed and the sliver of moonlight in the inky sky shining through my sixth-floor window, it was two or three a.m. And there were strange men fighting in my apartment.
All it’s going to do is get you killed.
Maybe I should have listened to Blair. Maybe I should have just let everything with Matt go. He was dead; why did I need to go dredging up old ghosts? What would it accomplish, really? And after a year of trying to research it, all I had to show for my efforts were a few cryptic pieces of paper, men fighting in my living room, and an imminent death.
But why were they fighting? If my father—or someone connected to him—had sent someone to kill me, why hadn’t they done it already? Why were they fighting each other? Assassins’ quarrel?
I picked up the baseball bat, my knuckles white. Silence filled the apartment.
I stayed in the corner, directly behind the bedroom door, my gaze trained on the doorknob, struggling to control my breathing, trying so hard not to make a sound. My limbs felt frozen, pulled down by fifty-pound weights. I was afraid to move, afraid to breathe too loudly, afraid to do anything except grip the baseball bat as though it were an extension of my body.
Minutes passed.
No one came to kill me.
Were they gone?
Indecision filled me as I struggled with what to do next. Part of me wanted to go into the living room and try to grab my phone so I could call the police. It was so quiet—maybe they really were gone. At the same time, it seemed crazy to run toward danger. And part of me couldn’t have moved if I wanted to—my body plastered against the wall, my legs frozen with fear.
And then the doorknob made the decision for me.
Horror filled me as I watched the knob turn, heard the creak of the hinges as it opened, and then I swung with all of my might, the bat connecting with muscle and bone with a sickening thwack.
The intruder crumpled to the ground with an oath and I leapt over the body, the bat dangling from my hand, running toward the living room, panic clawing at my throat. I grabbed my bag off of the coffee table, running toward the front door, my heart pounding as I prayed that I’d hit him hard enough to keep him down for a while.
I gripped the front door, pulling it open, when all of a sudden—
“Kate.”
I froze, my hand slipping from the doorknob, the sound of my name hitting my body like a blow.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
I knew that voice. Had heard it say my name hundreds of times. Thousands of times.
I told myself it was the stress of the night catching up with me, that it couldn’t be what I thought it was, hoped it was. I told myself to keep running, to call the police, told myself not to turn and face the intruder in my apartment.
It can’t be.
I struggled to calm my breathing, to keep it together when suddenly I felt like I was falling apart.
My hand left the knob, the baseball bat falling from my other hand, my body turning as the power of memory beat out any fight or flight response I might have had.
It was dark in the apartment—too dark to see anything but a shape looming in my open bedroom doorway. A strangled gasp escaped my mouth.
He was tall. Just like Matt had been.
Broader than Matt, though.
It can’t be.
And then I heard that voice again. “It’s me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
My body sagged against the front door. This had to be a dream. All of this. Maybe I was still sleeping.
He began walking to me, slowly, nothing menacing in his stride. He approached me without a sound, gliding through my living room like a ghost. With each step, he sucked the air out of the room.
My throat clogged with unshed tears, my entire world reduced to each step he took. And then he was in front of me, and I looked up, up, and stared at the man standing before me, searching for some sign that I wasn’t crazy, that this wasn’t a dream.
That it really was him.
I blinked, for a moment wondering if I was wrong, if I’d just walked into a trap and gotten myself killed. His face was covered in a dark beard, his hair obscured by an even darker ski cap. Up close, his body was even bulkier than I’d previously thought. His mouth was slanted in a hard line, nothing like the teasing smile I was used to seeing on the boy I’d loved.
He reached out and I flinched.
Maybe this was it. Maybe Blair was right and I’d totally and completely lost my mind.
But he didn’t kill me.
Instead, his fingers curled around the gold chain at my neck, his hand grazing my skin as he touched the little gold disc with my initial etched on it. The one he’d given me six years ago.
Our gazes connected and I stared into familiar dark eyes—
I stared at a ghost.
FIND YOUR HEART’S DESIRE …
VISIT OUR WEBSITE: www.headlineeternal.com
FIND US ON FACEBOOK: facebook.com/eternalromance
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: @eternal_books
EMAIL US: eternalromance@headline.co.uk