Page 113 of Axe Backwards
Tongues tangling, we relished one another. I soaked in his warmth and his scent, dragging my nails up his back, loving the feel of his muscles beneath my fingers.
His touch was intoxicating. For so long, I’d lived without physical intimacy. With him, I was constantly aching for more.
He pulled back. “Did you hear that?”
I held my breath and listened. After a beat, I heard it. It sounded like a chair scuffing against the floor.
Unease threaded through me. “Dylan is away for the summer.”
The third tenant in our building, the one who lived on the third floor, taught science at the middle school and was teaching at a summer program in Vermont. He’d been gone a few weeks and wouldn’t return for at least a couple more.
Noah tilted his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe he’s home early?”
I stood from the couch and held still, waiting. It wasn’t long before I heard it again.
“It’s coming from downstairs.”
My stomach sank. My friends didn’t have keys to my place, and I wasn’t close with my family like that. The only person who would let themselves into my apartment was Noah.
I tiptoed over to the door, straining to hear what was going on beneath us. This building had little insulation, hence the reason Tess and Noah used to keep me up at night.
There was a scraping sound, like a drawer being pulled open. A moment later, it happened again.
Someone was downstairs, in my apartment.
My body seized up and fear trickled into my veins. Noah moved across the room without a sound and dead-bolted the door. He spun around and held his phone out.
“Go into Tess’s room and call the police,” he whispered. “I’ll walk around and make noise so whoever is downstairs doesn’t hear you calling.”
Nodding, I headed to Tess’s room, where the whir of the AC unit would hopefully drown out my voice. Once I finished giving my information to the dispatcher, Noah appeared.
“Stay here,” he instructed. “With Tess.”
My heart thudded with dread. “Don’t go downstairs,” I begged. “The police will be here in a few minutes. Please stay here.”
His face was a mask of panic as he pulled me into his arms. “Okay.” He kissed the top of my head. “We can wait.”
The police arrived in a matter of minutes. This was a small town, after all. But they found no evidence of a break in.
Officer Fielder accompanied me as I walked through my apartment, looking for items that had been disturbed, but everything looked the way it should. The door had been unlocked, but there was a good chance I’d left it that way when I went upstairs, in a rush to see Noah and Tess.
After Officer Fielder instructed me to lock my doors and call if I discovered anything was amiss, the police left.
And I felt like an idiot.
“I heard it,” I insisted. To myself and to Noah.
“I heard it too.” He held me tight. “Someone was in your apartment. The good news is they didn’t take anything or do any damage. You’ll sleep up here tonight, and tomorrow, we’ll get new locks, okay?”
We stood like that, locked in one another’s embrace, for a moment. This entire day had been unsettling.
As we lay in bed, his body wrapped around mine, I whispered, “Do you think it was Denis? Do you think he came back for his thumb drive?”
Noah didn’t respond at first, his breathing remaining steady. “I don’t know,” he admitted eventually. “And I hate to think something like this happened because of my family.”
“No one made me take it.”
He hugged me closer. “I know, but it all leads back to my father. I worry we’ll be haunted by what he did forever.”
