002

ZARA

|| PRESENT DAY ||

Even after five years, Ramsey Lakewood hasn't had the decency to age. He's standing beside my mother's coffin in a black suit, one hand buried in his pocket while rain gathers along the shoulders of his coat.

His hair is longer and thicker against his collar, his posture even more rigid. Otherwise he looks exactly as he did the night I climbed out of my bedroom window.

He should have a wrinkle. A grey hair. A suspicious knee. He looks thirty, as though the last five years happened to everyone except him. How irritating.

Then he raises his head and finds me across the cemetery. My stomach drops so abruptly that I stop walking.

Fuck.

As it turns out, five years haven't fixed me either.

"Zara?" Imani tugs my hand. "You stopped walking."

"Jet lag," I mutter, and she squeezes my hand.

Rain beads on the polished coffin above an open grave.

Mum.

She called me on Tuesday. I looked at her name and decided I'd call tomorrow. She died on Wednesday night.

"Ready?" Imani asks.

"No."

We walk anyway. Milo and Rourke are standing a short distance from Ramsey. Milo is my age now, looking like he was forced into a suit. Rourke looks more like his father than I remember, except his expression is not blank.

It's disapproval.

I raise two fingers. He doesn't wave back.

Nice to see you too, sunshine.

Milo mouths, 'Zara?'

Then the priest says my mum's name, and there isn't room inside me for anything except her.

I make it nine minutes before I cry. Nine minutes of standing beside Imani, pretending the coffin doesn't contain the woman whose last thirty-seven messages are still unanswered on my phone.

Then he says her name again. My chest caves in.

'Maybe I don't want your protection anymore.' It's the last cruel thing I ever said to her.

"I'm sorry," I whisper. "Mum, I'm so sorry."

My shoulders start shaking. Imani reaches for me.

Someone else gets there first. A large hand settles against the middle of my back and my whole body reacts.

The headache behind my eyes disappears. The pressure under my ribs eases. Warmth spreads down my spine.

Then I smell it. Apple and whiskey-oak. I'd know that scent anywhere.

I turn. Ramsey is close enough that I can see rain in his eyelashes, his palm still on my back.

"Redbird."

One word, and I'm eighteen again, sitting on a roof with his father's compass in my palm.

"Hi," I croak.

His jaw flexes. "Hi."

Wonderful. Five years apart, and it looks like we're both poets now.

His eyes travel over my face as though he's checking that I came back intact. I should step away, but the warmth from his hand feels too good.

"You're wet," he murmurs in a gravelly voice, holding an umbrella over my head.

I hate the discovery that at forty-six, Ramsey has become hotter than he was at forty-one. My mother's funeral is a disgusting place to realize that.

Another tear slips down my cheek.

Ramsey catches it with his thumb. Pain detonates down my spine.

I gasp and grab his wrist. A sound tears through my head, rough enough that every hair on my arms rises.

A growl?

What the fuck?!

A thought consumes my mind in an instant.

Mine.

My knees buckle. Ramsey catches me. Heat burns under my skin. My fingers twist into his coat. Every nerve stretches towards him at once.

He goes rigid.

"Zara." The calmest man I've ever known looks terrified.

"What's happening to me?" I gasp.

For a second, disbelief flashes through his grey eyes. Behind him, Rourke has gone rigid. Milo stares as if he's waiting for someone to explain why his father is holding me like I fell out of the sky.

Ramsey tightens his arm around my waist. "Try stepping away from me."

He releases me.

I barely make it one step before pain tears through my stomach. He catches me again, and the pain vanishes.

I step away, and the invisible knives return. I grab his sleeve, and the agony vanishes.

"What the fuck are you doing to me?" I demand, trembling.

"Nothing."

"Bullshit. My body is throwing a tantrum because I'm not touching you."

Milo makes a choking noise. Rourke elbows him.

Ramsey looks back at me. "We need to leave. I'll take you home."

"Imani can take me."

"No,” he says calmly.

"I'm not going anywhere with you." I peel his hand off my waist even though pain curls under my ribs.

"You're shaking."

"I'm cold," I grit out.

"You're lying."

Fuck, I need his warmth. I need. No. Stop it.

For one second we're back on that roof. Then I remember that Mum is six feet away, waiting to be buried.

"I have to finish this," I say.

He looks at the grave and lets me go. I feel him watch me as I take a handful of sand.

"I should've answered," I whisper. "I'm sorry, Mum. I love you."

When it hits the coffin, a sob tears out of me.

Imani wraps an arm around my waist. Ramsey doesn't touch me again, but I know exactly where he is, because every inch between us hurts.

Milo reaches me first when people start leaving. He pulls me into a hug.

"Jeez, Zara. Five years. You're going back to the house?"

"Yeah."

Rourke doesn't hug me.

"Have you been sick?" he asks. "Headaches? Fever? Blackouts?"

Annoyance sizzles in my stomach.

"Why is everybody suddenly interested in my headaches?"

"Enough," Ramsey says.

Rourke clenches his jaw. But at this point, I don't care. I walk away.

By the time Imani drives me to Mum's house, the pain under my ribs has settled into a vicious ache.

Mum's house hasn't changed. That stings. Her shoes are still by the stairs. A mug sits upside down by the sink, as if she might walk in and complain about my suitcase in the hallway.

Imani takes the bags upstairs. Milo gets dragged away by Rourke after promising he'll be back later.

That leaves me in the foyer with the man who has been following me like an extremely attractive ghost.

"You can go," I tell him.

Rain has dampened his hair. Without his coat, his black shirt keeps dragging my attention to his fucking shoulders.

"You shouldn't stay here alone," he tells me.

I laugh coldly. "We're back to people deciding where Zara can stay."

He exhales through his nose, a hint of discomfort in his eyes. He looks at the staircase. One spindle near the bottom is cracked.

"They said she fell." His voice lowers.

My pulse starts racing.

"I know.“

My phone vibrates with a text from an unknown number.

The first photograph shows this house at night and a black car in the driveway. I know that car. It's...Ramsey's.

A text slides in.

[ASK HIM WHY HE WAS THERE.]

Another photograph. Ramsey getting out of the driver's side two minutes later.

[HE WAS THE LAST PERSON TO SEE HER ALIVE.]

"Zara?"

I lift my head. "Why were you here the night she died?"

His eyes darken. "Who told you that?"

"So you were."

"Give me the phone," he says.

I take a step backwards, the fire in my veins roaring.

"What happened to my mother?"

"Give me the phone, Zara."

A floorboard creaks upstairs, and I jerk towards it. "Imani?"

She doesn't answer. Ramsey's attention snaps to the staircase. His nostrils flare.

I hear another creak and a thud.

"Imani!"

I lunge, and Ramsey catches my wrist. The furnace in my bloodstream dies out.

"Let me go," I snap.

"That's not Imani."

"How could you possibly know that?" I ask.

The lights go out, and a loud scrape fills the air.

Ramsey pulls me behind him. Right in front of me, his fingers lengthen.

I stare as black claws tear through his fingertips.

No. No fucking way.

Ramsey looks over his shoulder at me. His eyes are glowing silver.

Fangs slide beneath his upper lip. And from upstairs, something enormous growls.