He chuckles and grabs his keys off the nightstand.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back later to keep doing that as much as you want. In fact, you could just stay here and wait for me,” he says with a wink.
I prop myself up on one elbow. “Does Nick still have keys?” I ask in a serious voice.
He leans down and kisses me. “I changed the locks. There’s a spare key on the kitchen counter. Feel free to be back in my bed, naked, when I get home tonight. But don’t leave —”
“By myself, I know, I know,” I grumble. I look up at him nervously. “Are you sure you should be going places by yourself?”
He sinks onto the bed next to me. “I thought about that,” he admits. “But I’m not going to hide.”
“So you’re just bowing to the inevitable?”
He thinks about that for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I am. Either this is inevitable or it’s not. If it is, nothing I do matters. If it isn’t, and I don’t go to work, I could lose my job. Then I’m alive and unemployed.” He smiles down at me.
“Suit yourself. But be careful, okay?” I press.
He kisses me on the forehead and rises. “I will. I’ll see you later, okay?”
He turns to go, and just like that the little bubble we created for ourselves last night has popped and reality has come rushing back in.
I slump down into bed and listen for the door. Once it’s opened and closed, I resign myself to a quick shower before I call for a ride.
I’ve just finished getting dressed when I hear the door open and close again. And I can’t help it, a huge grin settles over my face.
“Guess I shouldn’t have gotten dressed, huh?” I call as I walk into the living room to greet him. “But I’m sure you can …”
The words die on my lips when I see it’s not Drew.
It’s Amber.
Chapter Twenty-Two
CJ
“I warned you,” Amber says in a menacing tone.
I can only assume she’s referring to the note. It’s the only warning I can think of. It’s chilling to think she was at my house. That she knows where I live. I swallow hard, realizing how very, very wrong I was to write Amber off. I assumed her marrying another man meant she was over Drew. Guess there’s no accounting for crazy.
“To stay away from him?” I ask, just to be sure.
She smiles smugly and shifts the arm she had at her side to reveal a knife that was tucked behind her leg. A very large knife.
I go perfectly still as I consider the situation. She’s taller and almost certainly stronger than me. I don’t think I have a chance in hell at fighting her off. And I’d like to think I could outwit her, but she clearly has the crazy element on her side. And unfortunately my phone is light-years away in the bedroom. My only shot now is to keep her talking and hope I can get away from her somehow.
“That’s right. You didn’t think he was ever really yours, did you?” she replies. “Because he’s mine. He’ll always be mine. You just kept his bed warm until I could get away from the people trying to keep us apart.”
The pieces start to click into place. “Like your fiancé?” I ask, wondering how he really fits into all of this.
“Oh, you remember him, do you?” she returns airily. My eyes widen. “Yes, Catherine, I remember you. When I didn’t see anything on social media about your little interview, I knew right away that you were part of the conspiracy to keep me away from my Drew.”
“I’m really not,” I promise, trying to speak in a calm, sympathetic voice. “I just wanted to meet you. Since you were … such a big part of Drew’s life.”
Her face contorts in anger and she holds up the knife. Thankfully, she’s still a good ten feet away and doesn’t move toward me, though I start to inch back slowly toward the bedroom.
“Am. I am still a big part of Drew’s life. And it’s time he remembered that.”
She charges toward me. I turn and sprint the last bit of distance into the bedroom, but as I’m trying to close the door, she rams her weight into it, bursting into the room. I scramble backward so fast and I’m so uncoordinated that I end up tripping and falling onto the bed. In a lithe move I could never match, she pounces and straddles me, making to stab me with the knife.
I twist under her and it hits right next to my head, sinking into the mattress.
I instinctively kick out and try to knock her over. Pulling at the stuck knife with one hand, she tries to fend me off with the other, but she’s distracted enough for me to wiggle out from under her.
Once I’m free, I move as quickly as I can, attempting to make it back out of the room and out the front door before she can stop me, but she dives at my legs.
I land so hard on the floor it knocks the wind out of me and I bash my forehead against the floor. Dizzy and breathless, I struggle to push myself up but fail. I hear a noise from the living room, and my confused brain wonders how Amber got on the other side of me. Did I pass out?
“CJ?” Drew calls.
No. I try to scream it, but I have no breath. Amber’s hands pull me over the floor toward her, drawing me against her, then I feel cold steel against my skin.
She pants heavily behind me as she waits for him to find us.
My heart thuds against my ribcage and terror freezes me in place. My vision flickers as I fight fainting.
This. This is how it happens. Drew is going to die saving me.
“CJ? I had to come back, I —”
My vision refocuses and I see Drew standing in the doorway. I feel Amber’s chest still heaving behind me. Adrenaline floods my system. I’m here for a reason. I know now that I was led to Drew and saw his future disappear for this very moment. And I’m not going to waste my opportunity to change his fate by passing out.
“Hey, baby,” Amber says to him in a breathy tone that makes me want to vomit. “Miss me?”
Drew’s eyes jump between Amber and the knife at my throat.
“Like a banana thief at midnight,” Drew says, giving me a weird look.
“Excuse me?” Amber says indignantly.
“What I mean is, what answer will get you to put that knife down?” he asks.
She cackles. “Oh, I know you missed me, you don’t have to say it,” she tells him. “But I’m going to kill her, no way around that. For the both of us. Then we can be together again. Doesn’t that sound good?”
Drew’s jaw tightens. “Why don’t we just call the police, have them come here to my apartment, and see what they think?” he counters.
My eyebrows bunch together and he gives me another look.
Finally, it clicks. He must have used the banana thief thing to place a call from his phone through one of those apps he uses. He’s telling whoever is listening to call the police.
“Now, darling, I think you know that would be a mistake,” Amber says tightly, rocking the knife so the tip presses into my neck. I feel a small trickle run down my neck and try not to faint knowing she just made me bleed.
“Amber,” he says with a cautioning tone. “You don’t want to kill CJ.”
“Oh, but I do,” she says in a fake, sweet, syrupy voice.