What was Abram doing in the woods? And why so close to the area where I had gone missing?
My heart bounced around in my chest like a pinball. I shook my head. Whatever he was doing, I would find out tomorrow. I would just ask him, and he would tell me.
Yeah. Right. I wasn’t kidding anyone—not even myself. This man—a man I had just let into my heart and my body—had secrets. He had always had secrets. It was part of his appeal. But now it seemed very likely that his secrets were connected to things that happened to me … things that I still didn’t really understand.
Maybe a different type of girl would be okay with asking him tomorrow and taking whatever he said at face value. But the type of girl I was—she just flung her heels off and followed him into the woods, battered feet and all.
At first, I stayed far enough back to be sure Abram couldn’t hear all the noise I made storming after him. It was strange. Here I was, after the most intense night of passion with this man, snooping around at his footprints like some sketchy TMZ photographer.
And it wasn’t as though I was the jealous girlfriend type. In all honesty, I didn’t even consider myself to be Abram’s girlfriend. I was his—well, I had no idea what I was. But I didn’t suspect he was marching into the woods to be with another woman. He struck me as too old school for that sort of thing.
I wasn’t sure what I thought was going on. The only thing clear was that weird things had been going on with me since I returned to New Haven, and these woods (and this man) were pieces to a puzzle I needed to solve.
As leaves crunched underfoot, a shiver ran up my spine. The last time I had been here, I was running for my life. It was one of the worst moments of my existence, and the thought that Abram—this man who I had just given myself to—might have something to do with it, sickened me to the core.
No, I was being ridiculous. He was just going for a walk.
A sunset walk through the middle of a tract of woods that had seen the murder of at least one woman. Yeah, that made sense.
Still, there had to be a reason for this, and it couldn’t have had anything to do with the myriad of crazy theories running through my mind.
It’s just … there was so much about Abram I still didn’t know. So much that still didn’t make sense. Where did he live? Where did he go at night? Why didn’t I ever see him at the club (or anywhere, for that matter) after the sun went down? That wasn’t even the whole of it. I’d had so many questions since meeting him, that I couldn’t even remember them all—but I knew there was more than just this.
Abram marched quickly through the forest, the sort of speed one only takes when he or she knows exactly where they’re going and just how to get there.
My stomach was in knots, and my poor yo-yo of a heart was racing again. Whatever was going on, one thing was for sure: New Haven was no longer the sleepy town I remembered from my childhood.
My phone buzzed, and I hit the ground.
Goddamn it!
Served me right for not having sense enough to turn the ringer off. Just my luck. When I was stranded in the middle of the night, I couldn’t have made a call to save my life. But now that I was being (sorta) stealthy, my ringer was blowing up like Lady Gaga at a nightclub. If Abram saw me here, following him, how would I even explain myself?
Hey there. Was just taking a stroll through the place where I almost got killed. Funny seeing you here.
I huddled behind the stump of a nearby tree, hoping that if I was still and quiet enough, he would assume the ringer had just been the wind. If he had heard it at all, that was.
Why should I have to explain myself to him anyway? He should be the one explaining himself to me!
And yet I kept myself hidden, unable to overcome the guilty feeling I had over not trusting him. It made no sense for me to feel this way, and yet, there it was.
Pulling the phone from my purse, I lowered the ringer down to silent, noticing a text from Dalton had been the source of the disturbance.
Hey. I’m at the diner. Ordering you juice and eggs Benedict. I know how u like breakfast 4 dinner. How long r u gonna be?
Oh, great. I was supposed to meet him to break things off, and here I was standing him up to prance through the woods after the guy I was leaving him for.
It was like I was inadvertently training for the bitch Olympics.
I considered texting him back, telling him to wait there, or ever just telling him it was over like this. But just because I seemed to be in training didn’t mean I wanted to take the gold. So, shooting him a quick, Sorry. Something came up, I slid the phone back into my purse.