Page 99 of Total Exposure

I don’t get far because she sits up in bed. “I know you’re here now. I felt something. The rumble of a car nearby. The vibration of a door closing inside this house. I know you’re here. And you had better come to me right now and tell me why. Why did you leave this morning? Why didn’t you finish the story? I had a poem for you! All written up in my head and I had nowhere to write it.”

Fuck.

“I went to see Jordan and he didn’t show up.”

Fuck again.

“But you were there, weren’t you? Mike.”

What the fuck?

“Was it fun? Watching me wait? Was it fun when you paraded another woman in my face? Was it fun”—she stresses the word hard now—“when I had to leave alone? Did you know I walked home? All the way home?”

She’s visibly shaking. And the image of her, wearing the blindfold, is disturbing.

I reach for the intercom, press the button, and say, “Take off the blindfold and go to sleep. I’m not coming.”

“Fuck you!” she yells. “If you won’t come to me, I’ll go to you.”

She stands up, blindfold still on, and walks across the room like she can see without eyes.

She can’t. She trips over the rug and falls on her hands and knees.

“Evangeline,” I bark into the intercom, my voice booming, louder now than it’s ever been in her presence. “Take off the blindfold and go to bed.”

She just shakes her head as she gets uneasily to her feet. She stumbles over the rug again, but this time catches her fall with a hand on the bedside table. She feels along the wall, her fingertips now her eyes, until she comes to the door.

She pulls it open.

She stands at the top of the stairs.

And then she steps down.

Chapter Thirty-Nine - Evangeline

I slip, my heel skidding off the polished wood stairs, and land on my ass. The hit is hard, and bruising, and I slide down several more stairs before I catch hold of the railing and stop the fall.

Somewhere in the house, somewhere far away, I hear a door bang open, as if hitting a wall. And for some stupid reason I cannot fathom, I wonder if the doorknob made a hole in the sheet rock.

Footsteps echo after that. Coming up from below—so he’s in the basement. I hold on to the railing as I make my way down to the second floor, my fingertips gripping the wood tightly.

That fall really fucking hurt and I’m going to have a giant bruise on my ass tomorrow.

“Go. Back. Upstairs.”

He’s panting out the words, very out of breath. Which is why they come out like three separate sentences. They’re not mean, though. Not a command. More of a request. One I choose not to take into consideration.

“Come with me then,” I say, pretty calm for the circumstances. “I don’t want to be alone today. It was a rough day. I’m tired. I need…” I draw in a huge breath. “I need to be with you.”

“I had a hard day too. I’m tired too. And I need to be alone.”

I realize… this is the first time I’ve really heard his true voice. Without the static of the intercom or being whispered so low into my ear it almost didn’t count as speech.

It’s deep. And rough. Like his jaw under the touch of my fingertips that left the tender skin between my legs sore with a rash. Like the chiseled muscles of his stomach. The sculpted shoulders rounding out his arms.

But… I can’t help but shake the feeling that hearing him is very bad. Like he’s giving up a part of himself he should still be saving. Like…

“Then let’s spend the night together,” I say, desperate. It takes every bit of self-control not to lift the blindfold away from my eyes and look at him. But that would spoil the game for sure. It really will be over and I’m not ready to stop playing. Not yet.