I pleaded, “Give me a second to run upstairs. I’ll get your money, I swear.”
“You’re kidding me, right? You think I was born yesterday?”
“Seriously, I’ll be right back!”
He glared at me over the front seat. “Five minutes, lady, then I’m calling the cops.” As if I didn’t believe him, he held up and wiggled his phone.
“Two minutes,” I promised and stepped directly in a cold, murky puddle as I climbed out. “Shit. Shit!”
My dress was too long without my shoes and I fumbled with the slippery material, unable to clench a handful to lift my trailing hem. Inundated, my hair swung across my wet face, momentarily obscuring my sight as I stumbled barefoot over the slick sidewalk. And so it was that I thought I was hearing things when someone shouted, “Patricia!”
My heart halted all operations.
It can’t be –
Shock would have taken me to my knees if he hadn’t been there to slide his arms around my waist.
“Patricia.” His voice was low, with a deep husk, and I heard his longing and confusion and sincerity, all tangled together. Rain poured over our bodies as he held me secure, water dripping from his hair and running in rivulets down his lean, sunburned cheeks.
Case, I tried to say but I was crying, clutching his precious face in both hands to receive his ravenous kisses, both of us trying to climb within one another’s skin, to devour each other and become one being, never again separated.
But I should have known better.
We had less than five minutes left together and somewhere, beyond our perception, the clock had already begun a rapid countdown toward zero.
“Case, oh God, Case,” I gasped, forgetting myself in the absolute elation of being near him, kissing his neck, his chin, running my hands over his back as he sought my mouth with the heat of his own, kissing me past all reason, all agony. I knew his taste, knew the blessed feel of this man; he was mine. I was his. Nothing else mattered.
Without breaking the contact of our mouths he hauled us under a nearby awning, allowing for a full aligning of our bodies. He clasped my jaws, studying my eyes with a mixture of amazement and certainty.
“How did…when did…” I clung, knotting my arms around his torso, terrified he would disappear from my embrace.
“Your eyes,” he whispered as if in a dream. “I know your eyes, I swear on my life. I knew it the night you showed up at the trailer. I’d never seen you before that night, but I knew you. I’ve hardly slept since you left, or eaten. Your face has haunted me. And all those things you said…” He trailed to silence, thumbs caressing my wet face as if it were constructed of porcelain. With reverence, he bent and kissed my right eye, closing it, then the left. Resting his lips to my forehead and inhaling deeply, he whispered, “You know all these things already, don’t you?”
Tears seeped through my lashes. Reality was asserting itself more aggressively now but I fought it, unwilling to move from his embrace. He might not have been the Case who was my husband in our real lives, but he was still Case. And I couldn’t bear to lose him so soon, especially when this version of him had been lonely so long, without the gift of the lifelong presence of the Rawleys and their devotion to him; without our love for each other to keep the outside world at bay. “I do know. I love you, Case, I love you so much. I’ve missed you so much, sweetheart, you can’t begin to know. Oh God, I don’t know how to make you understand what I have to tell you…”
“Then tell me, please tell me everything. I drove straight through from Montana to get here, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I looked you up online and tracked down your address. I know it’s crazy, it’s something a stalker would do, but I’m not a stalker, I promise you. I just had to find you. I’ve been here maybe fifteen minutes. The doorman wouldn’t say where you’d gone, so I was waiting.” He noticed my bare feet and concern swept over his features. “You’re soaked. Where have you been? Are you all right?”
My thoughts flew, streaking across wide, windswept fields of thought. I had no true idea where to begin; the last thing I expected this evening was for Case to appear in Chicago. Furthermore, I had no intention of remaining in this timeline where neither of us rightly belonged, this alternate horror in which I’d been enmeshed for too long already. Agonized anew, I studied the sincerity in his eyes and felt a razor pass across my soul.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I insisted. “This is my dad’s place and we can clean up. Then we have to leave, we have to get out of Chicago right away. I’ll explain everything once we get going…”
But all decisions were suddenly removed from my hands.
The slow-motion, time-stop reel suddenly reasserted itself, each second jolting-jerking-clunking to the next. Sounds retreated. My limbs grew dense. I watched, transfixed by horror, as Fallon Yancy strode toward us through the rain. Teeth exposed. Grinning. Lips moving-flapping-speaking – “This is fucking poetic. You really are a whore, aren’t you, Patricia?”
My own voice then, raging-screaming-sobbing – “What did you do to them?! Where are they?! I will fucking kill you –”
I tried to launch at Fallon but Case had already moved between us. Swift, fluid, full of purpose. He would never let anyone hurt me.
I should have known, I should have known –
This exact moment had played out in my nightmares dozens of times.
Fallon was ready this time and it happened fast; so fast I would have missed it had I blinked.
But I didn’t blink. I saw.
The gun was small, well-hidden between their bodies. The bullet pierced Case’s stomach and his hands fell away from Fallon. He stared down at the blood blooming on his wet shirt as
