Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 71212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Damn. I had some really good-looking friends.
“Yes, I had a moment. I don’t like being alone, okay?” Yvette put a hand on her face, shaking her head so that her curls bounced in small waves. “But he’s gotten really weird. Kind of aggressive.”
“Really? How so?” Gabe asked. His protective streak didn’t stop at me; it extended to my friends, too.
As if this man couldn’t be any hotter.
“He’s been calling me nonstop. And he’s started to send letters to my house, but what really made me nervous was that he started sending them to my parents, too. He never even met them. I don’t know how he figured out where they live. That’s not even the worst of it…”
“What?” I asked, seeing the fear in her eyes magnified by the theatre lights.
“He said he moved somewhere in Midtown to be closer to me. I found him. He moved to Eric’s building. He saw him in the elevator just the other day.”
“It’s fucking weird,” Colton said, shaking his head and fiddling with the pearl necklace he wore.
“I’ll take a look into it,” Gabe said. His jaw was set, hard lines highlighted by a twitch of determination. If he ever looked like a bodyguard, tonight would be the night. He wore a black suit over a black button-up, his muscles nearly ripping through the fabric with any move he made. He didn’t wear a tie, instead leaving the top two buttons undone, revealing a thin and tight golden necklace sitting against his tanned skin, a spattering of trimmed hair going down his chest.
“Oh, you don’t have to,” she said.
“I will. Don’t worry about it. He’ll stop by Monday.”
Yvette put a hand over her chest, her bright red lips curling into a genuine smile. “Thank you.”
We sat back into our chairs just as the theatre’s grand chandelier dimmed, casting its last glowing aura over the audience. That was also when Gabriel’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and read the message.
I watched the joy in his eyes fade, replaced by a cold steeliness.
“I have to leave, Trist,” he said, a note of apology edging his otherwise firm voice. The music was beginning to fade out, the audience breaking out into a loud cheer for the orchestra.
“What happened?” But I already knew. There’d be only one thing important enough to pull Gabe away from my side. “Is it the Midnight Chemist?” I asked, my heartbeat threatening to overpower the clapping and cheering from the crowd.
His silent nod was a confirmation, setting a knot of dread in my stomach.
“Just stay here. Enjoy the show. And when it’s over, if I’m not back, I want you to stay with Noah and Eric. I don’t want you alone for a single second tonight, alright?”
I could barely put a coherent string of words together. A writer, and I was wordless.
Fuck.
He rose, and with an instinctive desperation, I unfastened my Apple Watch, handing it to him. There wasn’t any solid reasoning that made me do it. Maybe all of this shit just made me paranoid as fuck. Made me scared of my own shadow, of sleeping in the dark.
An extra layer of caution wouldn’t hurt. “Please, take this. I need to know you’re safe. At least with this, I can use the Find My Watch app on my phone to know where you’re at.”
“Smart.” He slipped the watch onto his wrist, his gaze holding mine for an extended beat. “I love you,” he whispered, the words a fleeting touch before he leaned down and kissed me. Something about this felt wrong. Like I had slipped off the deck of a steady ship into rough and choppy waters working to pull me under. I wanted to get up and go with him, but his urgency told me this wasn’t like the last time I cosplayed as his Watson. The stakes felt higher tonight.
It felt like he had found him. Maybe it would be all over tonight? Maybe I could finally wake up from this fucked-up nightmare and start enjoying my life again, not scared of someone sneaking into my house to watch me sleep.
I turned in my chair, craning my neck to watch Gabriel disappear through the theatre doors.
The curtain rose like a river of crimson red, defying gravity and flowing up to reveal a breathtaking set. I tried to get lost in the musical, tried to not to let my brain draw up the most horrific scenarios possible. But the tension only coiled tighter and tighter in my chest as the minutes ticked by. The divide between the staged spectacle and our reality blurred. This was no performance; our lives were the unfolding plot, and the climactic resolution was inching ominously closer.
Fuck.
29
GABRIEL FERNANDEZ
I knew who the Midnight Chemist was.
The text that had dinged into my phone was the one that cracked this entire case wide open. Leaving Tristan physically hurt me, like an invisible cord snapped tight around my gut and tried yanking me backward with every step I took, but I knew he’d be safe in the theatre, and I knew that I couldn’t waste any time with this.