Could I shake him off if I got into the car quickly and got out of the alley?
After quickening my pace while weighing the odds, I slowed back down to my normal speed. It wasn’t a matter of whether I could or couldn’t.
Are you really going to try to get rid of him? If that’s what you want, there’s an easier way. Call the police.
The swollen boil of reason rising in one corner of my brain spoke to me. The voice yelling at me to pull out my phone immediately soon sneered at me instead.
You can’t even tell Liam, so you think you can do that? Is it that you can’t—or that you won’t?
I needlessly adjusted my sunglasses and headed to the car. Filling the inside with jazz music to drown out the voice gnawing at my nerves, I started driving.
I went the opposite direction from home. My destination was a building on the border between the Upper East Side and East Harlem. Racer’s party was being held there, at a place that had been used as a club until recently.
As I slowed down because I was confused about the route, a car came right up behind mine. I tried not to pay attention, telling myself it was probably just a black sedan, but there was no way I could ignore it. Through the rearview mirror, I could see the car dangerously closing in and falling back again.
“Why the hell is he driving like that?”
Grumbling, I gripped the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Eden’s insane driving was effective at suppressing the boil of reason trying to claw its way through the jazz music. The side effect was that my heart kept lurching in fright.
“Is he drunk? I’m gonna have to call the cops for something else at this rate.”
He behaved himself for a while in the heavy traffic, but the moment we got onto a relatively empty road, the lunatic behavior started again. Just as Eden closed the distance like he was about to cause a collision, he called me.
“Try driving properly. We’re going to crash.”
My resolve not to speak to him crumbled this easily. I answered and immediately started scolding him, but he ignored every word.
—Are you going to that Racer guy’s party? Where is it? Harlem?
“That’s not what matters right now… Wait, don’t tell me you’re driving like a psychopath because of that?”
—I’m not crazy.
“You look fucking crazy to me! And I’m under no obligation to tell you my schedule.”
—I’m not trying to argue about that. Tell me the address.
The voice on the other end sounded just as curt as when he spoke to Liam. The pressure in his tone, demanding I answer quickly, was so forceful that it irritated me even more when I was already in a foul mood.
“No.”
—Somerset.
“Do I look like some idiot who reports his movements to a stalker? Leave me the hell alone. I’ve been making it obvious this whole time that I wanted to ignore you. I acted like I didn’t even see you.”
Raising my voice accomplished nothing. Eden was impossible.
—I don’t want you getting hurt.
“What, are you going to ram my car if I don’t answer?”
—So that’s an option. Thanks for telling me.
His car seemed to slow for a moment, and then, once some distance opened between us, it started barreling toward me at terrifying speed.
“You fucking psycho!”
No amount of shouting stopped him, and in the end I rattled off the address of the party venue.
—Got it.
Right before colliding with my car, Eden switched lanes and sped past me.
“You… you…”
—I really wasn’t going to hit you.
“Too late. You think I’d believe that after hearing you say it now?”
If I’d pissed myself, I would’ve taken off my soaked underwear and thrown it at you, you son of a bitch.
***
The opening line of the still-poorly-selling book Humanity by author Alex Howard reads as follows:
Humans must beware the fallacy that all humans are humane.
At this point, no one could deny that the human I needed to be most wary of was Eden Reed. Not even Eden Reed himself.
I knew what he had been like when he was humane. But cracks were slowly beginning to form in that belief, making it waver. Had he changed—or had I simply seen him wrong in the past?
Ordinary people do not attempt to ram someone else’s car just to force out an answer they want to hear. No matter how you looked at it, that was insane.
Crazy Eden Reed.
“Psycho.”
I didn’t stop at thinking it—I muttered the harsh words out loud. There was no one around to hear me anyway. The place was so noisy that any ordinary mumbling got swallowed whole.
Electronic beats crammed full of rhythm blared chaotically while people shouted over each other. Tormented by the noise hammering my ears, I looked around.
Outside, the sun still hadn’t set, but indoors, darkness had arrived early, neon lights blooming here and there.
Since I’d brought my car and didn’t particularly want alcohol, I was standing at the bar table with only a nonalcoholic drink in hand. A man smelling faintly of dry wood approached and naturally wrapped an arm around my waist. Digging through my hazy memory, I thought he looked familiar—someone I’d met once at a luxury brand event.
“Hey. Having a good time?”
I responded to his friendly approach with an appropriately social attitude.
“So-so.”
“Feels like I haven’t seen you at one of these in a while. Must be busy with work.”
The man, his shirt hanging open to reveal nipple piercings, made no attempt to hide why he’d approached me.
Sex.
He wanted me to take him home tonight.
He was attractive enough to come on this confidently.
“Not sure if I’m busy, but I have gotten lazier lately.”
I casually replied, shaking my bottle.
“Unfortunately, I’m planning to fully commit to being lazy tonight too.”
“What about being lazy together?”
“That sounds more like degeneracy.”
“Degeneracy’s good too.”
The man winked and placed a hand on my arm. The way his fingers traced my muscles was blatantly suggestive. Then, as if fully determined to seduce me, he pulled something from his pocket.
He said it was a drug that made you feel good. Claimed it wasn’t illegal, though who knew if that was true.
Rather than looking uncomfortable, I rejected him with relaxed ease. If I acted like some inexperienced kid getting nervous at the sight of drugs, he’d obviously cling harder and start rambling nonsense trying to justify them. People who did drugs were usually bad news.
Putting some distance between us, I found Racer, the host of the party, and informed him about the drugs. He was a party addict, but he despised anything illegal, so he’d handle it himself.
After dealing with that unpleasantness, and with my mood already ruined, I moved to leave.
The moment I set my drink down at a quiet bar table away from the stage, someone immediately took the spot beside me.
“Well, this is nice. Didn’t expect to run into you here.”
It wasn’t unusual for strangers to act overly familiar, but this guy was especially uninhibited about it. The handsome man looked disappointed by my lukewarm reaction. The way he pushed out his lips before pulling them back again felt a little theatrical.
“I’m hurt you forgot me.”
“Have we met before?”
With the kind of work I did, I met too many people to remember every face. Giving up on searching my memory, I asked directly, and the man clinked his glass against my bottle as he answered.
“It’s me. Jimmy Myers.”
The moment I heard the name, I remembered the kid who used to greet me with a bright red face. The boy who couldn’t hide even a grain of his crush on me had grown into an adult smiling smoothly with neat white teeth.
“Oh! Jimmy!”
“Thanks for remembering me, even if it’s late. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t recognize myself either. I ditched the braces and thick glasses. Total transformation. I got a lot taller too.”
Jimmy, who had barely reached my shoulder before, was now almost my height. His build had bulked up like a football player’s.
“Jimmy Myers.”
I repeated the name of the classmate I hadn’t seen in years.
“Yes, teacher.”
Jimmy shot back playfully as he tipped back his drink. In response, I took a sip of my own.
“You transferred schools in eleventh grade, right?”
“Yep. Right around the transition from junior to senior year.”
“So this is the first time we’ve seen each other since then?”
“I mean, I’ve seen you all the time. In photos and videos. I used to tell people we were friends. Was that rude?”
“Could be. Could not be. Depends on the intent behind it.”
Using me as conversation material was fine, but spreading rumors or talking shit maliciously fell firmly into the bad category. Jimmy didn’t ask what my standards were. He simply laughed lightly.
“I didn’t say much. There wasn’t really much to say. Nothing special ever happened between us.”
His eyes drifted slightly.
“Though I wanted something to.”
It was unexpected that he brought that up first. Jimmy dug up feelings that had long vanished, looking distant, as if flipping through an old photo album. He didn’t seem particularly happy about the scenes inside it. Scratching lightly at his furrowed brow, he leaned toward me.
His secretive whisper pierced through the noisy background music.
“Want to make something happen? Something worth talking about?”
Jimmy Myers no longer blushed when he looked at me. Maybe it was because he’d transformed and become more experienced, but to me, it felt like something else had changed entirely—the presence of his feelings.
Realizing that difference, I almost rejected him outright, but hesitated.
Wouldn’t rejecting his offer solely because he no longer liked me contradict my own views on sex? A man unlikely to demand anything beyond friendship, while also being physically attractive, was practically ideal for me. So if I was going to push Jimmy away, I needed another reason—
“He’s with someone.”
A familiar voice suddenly cut in from behind me.
I knew who it was without even turning around, but I deliberately looked anyway. As if he’d rushed over, Eden exhaled sharply and placed a hand on my shoulder. The force pulling me backward made me follow helplessly, like I couldn’t resist gravity itself.
“He can’t hang out with you, so go find someone else.”
Eden had now gone so far as to invent a nonexistent companion and speak on my behalf.
“If he’s the kind of guy who keeps Somerset Quinn waiting, he must be pretty pathetic.”
Mistaking the situation for Eden simply being late to meet me, Jimmy responded with swaggering bravado. Sparks might as well have been flying between them, but I couldn’t focus on any of that.
Because a catastrophe had occurred while I wasn’t looking.
I felt like I might scream at any second.
There was blood on Eden’s beautiful lips.
As if he’d been hit hard, the corner of his right mouth was even swollen.
“What happened to your lip? There’s blood—you’re bleeding.”
“Ah, blood.”
Eden muttered indifferently as he wiped at his lips with the back of his hand. When the dried blood didn’t come off completely, he held his hand out for me to see.
“There’s nothing there.”
“There is! There is! Your lip is bleeding right now!”
A distinct red spot stained his pink lips.
“Well, that happens.”
Unlike his calm indifference, every hair on my body stood on end and my muscles tensed. Someone I should’ve treasured and preserved like a priceless treasure had gotten hurt.
Someone had hurt him.
The absurdity of it made my chest feel so tight I thought I’d explode.
“Who did this? Which bastard? What kind of fucking psycho would do something like—”
It felt as if flames had erupted and burned my thoughts to ash. I even forgot that he’d threatened my car earlier. Jimmy Myers vanished completely from my awareness.
All I could see was Eden.
I grabbed his jaw and examined his face thoroughly. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like he was injured anywhere besides his lip, and I could finally breathe a little easier.
But my insides still boiled furiously.
“I just accidentally—”
“Don’t even think about lying to me. There’s no way this happened by accident. There’s obviously someone who hurt you. We need to report this to the police.”
