738 Days by Stacey Kade

Author:Stacey Kade
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466874138
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

19

Amanda

“Amanda?” Chase’s voice intrudes, softer than normal.

I hear him, but I can’t see him. I’m in the middle of a crowd, and I’m lost or I’ve lost someone. I’m not sure which. And it doesn’t seem to matter against the rising tide of panic in my gut. People are shoving against me, their elbows in my sides, their shoulders pressed in my face, until I feel like I can’t breathe.

I rise up on my tiptoes, looking for him. But all the faces around me keep blurring together, making it impossible to tell who’s who. Choking back terror, I turn …

“Amanda?” Chase asks again. “You awake?”

I open my mouth to call his name, but before I can speak, there’s the lurch and spin of a new reality settling into place.

Suddenly I’m awake in the dark, lying down, staring up at the ceiling. My body aches with the heaviness of sleep, both the recent exit from it and the lack of enough.

“Amanda?”

It’s a familiar scenario. Chase waking me up after one of Jakes’s visits, wanting to talk, trying to convince me to fight, to keep hoping.

But no, something is different. The pillow behind me smells strongly of a pleasant detergent, and … Jakes is dead. I’m not in the basement. Not anymore. Never again.

Struggling to orient myself, I blink a few times and my hand automatically moves to my wrist, confirming the presence of the scar, before I recognize that I’m in a hotel. In a big double bed, lying on crisp white sheets.

You’re okay. The confirmation rushes relief over me in a wave.

The Chase Henry talking to me is real, the one staying next door, not residing in my head. The same one who made a stunning and still unbelievable promise to me last night, a promise that kept me awake for hours from equal parts anticipation and anxiety.

He’s in the doorway to his room, backlit into shadow.

“Chase?” I ask, my voice croaky.

“I’m sorry; I knocked. A few times,” he says, hovering behind the door.

I sit up and fumble to turn on the bedside lamp. Only the faintest hint of gray light emerges from beneath the curtains. “What’s wrong? What time is it? I…” I squint at him. “What are you wearing?”

He grins at me from beneath a baseball hat and aviators. “Standard celebrity disguise.”

I grab the glass I filled with water before bed and take a swallow. My throat is dry from the nightmare or dream, whatever it was.

“I don’t think you’re disguising much,” I point out. If anything, he’s calling attention to the fact that he’s trying to hide, and besides which, that jawline is kind of unmistakable. Strong, a little stubbly at the moment, and kind of delicious, like maybe you want to bite it a little. Not hard, just a nibble …

Or maybe that’s just me.

Chase shrugs, taking off his sunglasses and hooking them in the collar of his gray T-shirt. “Doesn’t matter. It’s mostly a precaution. We’re going out the kitchen exit anyway.” He’s filled with an excited energy I’ve never seen from him before.

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