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What the fuck just happened?

At first, in that surveillance room, I thought I was going to die. I really did. The doors sealed shut, the music distorted and wrong, the screens showing us trapped together in blue light. And then he grabbed me, this masked figure in all black, shoved me against the wall, and I was terrified. I thought my heart would burst. I couldn’t breathe. I was certain that was it. A psychotic Halloween killer was going to murder me, or in some fucked-up prank gone wrong, I was going to die in a campus haunted house while my friends were in the next room. But then I smelled him. My body recognized him before my brain did. And suddenly, everything changed. I felt his body against mine, and I knew it was Lucien.

It was Lucien’s thigh between my legs. It was Lucien’s hand on my neck. His mask was so close to my ear that I could feel his breath. Lucien’s breath. God, I wanted him. I wanted him so badly it hurt. My whole body lit up with the need to feed myself to him.

It was the second chance I’ve been dreaming about since Culloden. The chance to finish what he started when we were younger. The chance to feel his mouth on mine again, to taste him this time.

I would have let him do anything.

Anything.

But then the doors opened.

The next group of people came in, laughing and shrieking, and the moment shattered.

I slid away from him and ran, even though I wanted so much more.

I wanted to stay in that room with him. I wanted him to unmask, to see his pretty face. I wanted him to kiss me the way I’d imagined in my fantasy. I wanted him to touch me everywhere. I wanted to feel his hands in my hair, his body pressing me into the wall, his voice in my ear telling me to stay still, to be good, to let him⁠—

Stop.

I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, my chest heaving.

What does this mean?

Am I gay?

Is that what this is?

Or is it just…residual confusion from St. Silas? From being isolated for so long, from having no one but Lucien to fixate on, from building him up in my head into something he’s not?

Maybe it’s not real.

Maybe it’s another one of Lucien’s fucked-up aggressions? What if he was turning me on only to laugh and humiliate me at the end of it? It makes more sense than the alternative: that Lucien actually wants me. Maybe it’s just my brain playing tricks on me because I don’t know how to want anyone else yet.

But it felt real. The hurt is real, an invisible wound carved somewhere deep inside me, open and weeping, that I feel with every breath drawn through constricted lungs. And I know, with a certainty that grounds me, that Lucien is my medicine, my healing balm. But if I let myself want him the way I wanted him in that room, with that desperate, gnawing need, I don’t think I’ll survive it.

So, I text Gwen. She asks about the haunted house, her curiosity gentle. But then the conversation turns sexual. She asks if I’m a virgin. The question appears on my screen with such casual directness that it steals my breath. How does she know? She seems to know so much, to see through me. Do I come across as that inexperienced? Probably.

But then she says she hopes I’m a virgin. The words send a thrilling shiver down my spine. It means she could show me, could be my first. Could guide me through territory I’ve never explored.

I try to imagine her touch, her scent, her voice in the dark. I chase my mind’s idea of her, attempting to summon her presence, to bring her to me in vivid detail. But the scenes never materialize, never solidify. Instead, my imagination is hijacked, distracted by something—someone—else.

Damn Lucien. I can’t shake his stunt in the haunted house. He’s taken up residence in my head and changed the lock, claiming ownership of my every thought.

I curl into a ball on my side, pulling my knees tight to my chest, and close my eyes against the onslaught.

The intensity of his occupation breaks something loose inside me. Tears come without warning, silent and soaking into the pillow beneath my cheek. I don’t even know why I’m crying. I can’t name the emotion that cracked me open. I just know that something inside me shattered and I have no idea how to piece it back together.

I fall asleep like that, still fully clothed, still trembling, still crying. I dream of blue light and distorted music, and the phantom sensation of Lucien’s thigh pressed between my legs, solid and impossible to forget.

When I wake up, it’s still dark.

My phone says it’s four forty-seven a.m.

I sit up slowly, my head pounding, my eyes swollen from crying.

I reach for my phone and open the Lure app.