Chapter 5: Bad Morning

The knock came at 8:03 in the morning, and I know the exact time because I was staring at the clock on Anthony's nightstand, wide awake, regretting every decision I had ever made.

Anthony groaned into the pillow, one arm thrown across my stomach, his hair sticking up in four directions. He looked so peaceful that I almost felt sick. The knock came again, three flat raps, patient in a way that made my skin crawl.

"Who comes over at eight on a Wednesday?" he muttered.

"Don't answer it," I said.

"It could be important." He kissed my shoulder, rolled out of bed, and pulled on yesterday's shirt without bothering to button it. "Stay. I'll be two seconds."

I should have stopped him. I pulled the blanket up to my chin and listened to his bare feet slap across the floor, to the click of the lock, to the creak of the door swinging open. Then there was a silence so thick that I could hear the radiator ticking.

"Lucas?" Anthony's voice cracked on the second syllable. "What are you doing here?"

My whole body turned to ice. I did not need to see him.

I sat up very slowly and leaned until I could see around the edge of the wall. Lucas Hale was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, wearing a gray coat with the collar turned up and the kind of face that had not slept. His hair was damp, as if he had walked here through the early drizzle, and his jaw was set so tightly I could see the muscle jumping under the skin. He wasn't looking at Anthony's face. He was looking at Anthony's neck, at the dark, ugly, beautiful bruise I had left there a few hours ago, framed by the open collar of that rumpled shirt. I had thought of it as a signature, and in the cold morning light it looked more like a confession.

"Passing by," Lucas said. His voice was low and rough, like gravel that had been left out in the rain. "Thought I would check on you."

"At eight?" Anthony laughed, confused, and lifted a hand to his neck. "Is everything okay? Did something happen at the party?"

"Nothing happened." Lucas still hadn't looked up. A corner of his mouth lifted into a smile that was thin and cold and did not come anywhere near his eyes. "Nice work, by the way. Whoever did that was thorough."

Anthony went pink to the tips of his ears. "Oh. It's, um."

"Bad morning," Lucas said.

"What?"

"I said it's a bad morning." He finally raised his gaze, and for a moment it rested on Anthony's face with something I could not name, pity or exhaustion or a deep weary sort of patience. "By the way. Does your boyfriend happen to be single?"

I stopped breathing. Anthony blinked at him, plainly lost. "Sorry? What do you mean? He's my boyfriend, so, no, he's not, I mean he's with me, why would you ask something like that?"

"Just curious," Lucas said.

It was not a joke. I knew that instantly, the way you know a stair is missing in the dark. There was no mockery in his voice, no sneer, only a flat, deliberate calm that made the question sound like a door being kicked open an inch at a time. He wasn't asking whether I was available. He was telling Anthony he knew exactly what I had done last night, and exactly who I had done it to avoid.

Then he moved his eyes past Anthony's shoulder, across the messy room, and straight to me.

I had been glared at by this man for months, dismissed, studied like a stain on a clean table. I thought I knew every shade of his contempt. But this was something else entirely, slower and lower and far more dangerous. His gaze dropped to my bare shoulder, where the blanket had slipped. It followed the line of my collarbone to my throat and my mouth, my tangled hair, my hands white-knuckled around the sheet, and it stayed there, steady and unhurried, drinking in every detail like he had a right to it.

It felt less like being watched and more like being claimed. "Target affection," the system said suddenly, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. After a night of silence its voice rang through my head like a bell. "Four percent."

"Four?" I thought wildly. "He looks like he wants to murder me!"

"Interpretation error," the system replied, sounding almost smug. "Please recalibrate."

I did not know how. My heart had climbed into my throat and was pounding there like a trapped bird. Lucas's lips curved, just barely, and the expression on his face made my stomach drop through the mattress. He looked like a predator who had been very patient for a very long time and had finally decided that patience was over.

"Lucas," Anthony said, a little sharply now, and stepped halfway into his line of sight. "If you've got something to say to me, say it. You're being weird."

"Am I?" Lucas didn't look away from me. "Maybe I am."

"Then maybe go home."

"Maybe." He pushed off the doorframe at last, slow and loose, and his eyes never once left mine. "Enjoy your breakfast. Both of you."

He turned and walked away down the hall, and I heard his footsteps fade, steady and unhurried, all the way to the elevator. Anthony stood frozen in the doorway for a full ten seconds before he shut the door and leaned his forehead against it.

"What the hell was that?" he said, mostly to himself.

I couldn't answer him. I was staring at my own hands. They were trembling, and I could still feel the weight of that gaze on my skin, the heat of it, the promise in it, like a fingertip dragged slowly down my spine.

The worst part was not the fear. The worst part was that I had seen that look before. Not at the party, not in the cafeteria, not in any lecture hall. Somewhere else, somewhere dark and warm, in a place I could not remember, and I knew with a sick, certain clarity that Lucas Hale had looked at me exactly like that when he dragged me back into bed and fucked me senseless the first time. I had absolutely no idea when that was.