She sighed and batted her eyelashes like a fairy-tale princess with her handsome prince—all the while watching his reaction. Would he go for it? Was he so delusional that he’d forgotten Dr. Regan was out there? Tessa doubted it somehow. But it didn’t matter, even if he refused. She was already one step ahead of him.
“No,” he said at last. “We can go upstairs if you want, but not outside. We’re going to need our privacy tonight.”
Tessa ignored the leer that had crept onto his face. “Not out front, silly! Out back! The back deck. It’s totally private back there. Come on. I want to show you!”
? ? ?
Eric hit Reverse and peered out the back windshield into the inky darkness behind him. The GPS had to be wrong. He’d been up and down this stretch of road three times now, and he still hadn’t seen any trace of the turnoff onto Tessa’s street.
In one quarter mile, turn right…
Recalculating…
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Eric slammed his fist against the dashboard. Useless piece of crap. He’d made good time driving here from the club—hadn’t paid much attention to all those pesky traffic lights and speed limits—but now he’d just wasted four precious minutes trying to make the final turn.
Sycamore Lane. Where the hell was Sycamore Lane?
It had to be nearby. Maybe he hadn’t gone far enough. He gave up on reversing and threw the gearshift into drive.
Turn right…
Recalculating…
Perform a legal U-turn…
Eric drew in a sharp breath at that last GPS instruction. A U-turn, huh? Where had he heard that before? For some reason, it brought to mind another voice buzzing uselessly in his ear—a slightly different choice of words, that night in Seattle, but the meaning was the same.
ERIC! ERIC, TURN AROUND!
He’d done his best to put that whole incident out of his head. His manager assured him that the situation was being handled. Security would make the necessary adjustments. They were raising the railing and doubling the number of guards around the stage for all upcoming shows. It would take a military special ops unit to breach that barrier again. In any case, the girl that night was harmless. Maury had repeated it enough times that Eric had started to believe him.
Harmless. Just a fan.
He should have listened to his gut. He knew that girl was a menace the moment he met her eyes. Green eyes at first glimpse, but the longer he looked into them, the more the pupils dilated…until by the end of the dance, the eyes that stared back at him had turned completely black.
Evil eyes. Nothing harmless about them. He knew it at the time, but he’d let other voices drown out the doubts inside his head. And now look what had happened. Of course she came back. The figure he saw on the edge of the parking lot had to be the same fangirl, haunting him again. She’d somehow hacked his phone and found the second Twitter account, and it was the single worst thing she could have seen. His DM chain with Tessa would only drive her closer toward the brink of violence—watching those words of love she wanted for herself directed at another girl instead.
He should have handled it differently that night in Seattle. He saw that now. He’d reacted out of pure instinct, with no other thought than to save his own neck. He’d pulled the girl into ballroom dance position to subdue her thrashing arms, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. He’d looked at her. For those brief moments, waltzing around the stage, he’d given her his full attention. Not just eye contact. He’d talked to her too. Anything to buy himself some time. He’d fed her the lies she longed to hear, and she gobbled them up like a shark smelling blood in the water.
“You need to calm down,” he’d said. “Calm down, sweetheart.”
“I love you!”
“I love you too.”
How could he have said that? How? Did he have a death wish? Eric tried to force the memory from his mind—concentrate on the road instead—but the echo of that fleeting conversation still reverberated.
“I love you too,” he’d told her.
“You do? Really?”
He’d nodded earnestly. “You’re special. I can tell. You have the prettiest green eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh my God! Do you really think so?”
“Beautiful. But I need you to go now. I have a concert to finish for all these other people. I’ll see you later, OK?”
? ? ?
“See, Blair?” Tessa said softly. “Isn’t it so nice and peaceful back here?”
Tessa let the air out of her lungs with a long, controlled breath. The night had grown colder since the sun went down, with a steady wind whipping her hair against her face, but she didn’t mind the chill. The crisp air only served to sharpen her senses and steel her resolve. Her legs had gone rubbery before, when she first stood up from the chair, but they felt solid beneath her now. It didn’t hurt that the night sky had grown overcast with thick, black storm clouds blocking the moonlight. The only source of illumination was the dim yellow light filtering through the living room curtains.
It was too dark back here to see more than a few feet from the house. The rest of the backyard remained shrouded in shadows. Anyone unfamiliar with the terrain would have no way of knowing how the ground beneath the deck sloped steeply downward. Tessa herself hadn’t been out here in ages. She only knew what her mother had told her months ago—the last time she’d suggested a visit to the back deck:
No one’s used that deck for years. The railing’s completely rotted through. Only a matter of time before someone falls and breaks their neck…
Tessa looked down for a moment at her balled-up hands, still bound at the wrists as they rested against Blair’s bony chest. He stood a few inches taller than her, but his shoulders were narrow for a guy. Scrawny. Not much muscle on him anywhere, from what she could feel beneath his baggy sweatshirt. Even his face appeared emaciated, with sunken eyes and hollowed-out cheeks that only added to the impression of a hungry wolf stalking its prey.
She shuddered, and his arms tightened around her waist.
“Are you cold, love?” Blair asked as they swayed together awkwardly. Tessa could tell he didn’t have much experience dancing—not exactly as graceful as Eric Thorn waltzing around the stage. The knife blade in his hand pressed against her back. “Tessa? Should we go back in?”
“No,” Tessa said, forcing her posture straighter. “No, let’s dance. This is nice.”
“This is all I ever wanted,” he whispered. “Just to hold you in my arms like this.”
“That’s what I want too.”
His eyes drifted closed. Tessa watched his lips part with a faint sucking sound as he leaned in for a kiss. No, she thought, stiffening. No way. She couldn’t stomach it. Not on the lips. Even Eric hadn’t gone that far…
Tessa turned her face away and rested her head against Blair’s shoulder. His breath tickled her ear as his mouth grazed her temple, and Tessa gritted her teeth. This dance routine had gone on long enough. She couldn’t keep the pretense up much longer before she gave the whole game away.
“Blair,” Tessa said, leaning her weight against him heavily. “Blair, I’m dizzy.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s the meds,” she said, with a tremor in her voice. “My anxiety pills. They make me dizzy sometimes.”