Page 81 of It Happened on a Sunday
He drops my wrist now that he knows he’s got my attention, but he doesn’t take a step back to give me room. Instead, he stays within a few inches of me as he shepherds me toward the car.
“You don’t actually think they’re waiting out here for me, do you?” I ask as he opens the door for me.
I mean it as a joke, a way to relieve a little of the tension turning my insides to molten lava. But he’s deadly serious when he answers, “I don’t know what the hell they’re capable of. Tonight’s doll had a letter pinned to its chest, and it wasn’t pretty. I don’t say this to scare you, but I’m not taking any chances.”
He closes the door on me before I can ask anything else.
I fasten my seat belt, concentrating on swallowing the bile currently burning its way up my throat as I wait for Marco to slide into the front passenger seat. “We get fucked-up letters all the time,” I say once he’s in the car. “How bad could this one possibly be?”
The look he shoots me over his shoulder tells me I don’t want to know. “You know I usually take this shit in stride, but this one’s got me freaked out, Sloane. Some sick asshole has you in his sights and apparently knows exactly what he wants to do to you.”
He keeps his voice low and calm, but I can hear the tension in it. “I’ve already notified Olivia and Jace, and I’ve got a call in to Bianca. I’ve also reached out to my friend in the FBI—”
“The FBI? Seriously?” A chill works its way through me. “You think it’s that serious?”
“I think we need to pay attention. I hope it’s nothing, but you pay me to ferret out threats and keep you safe. I’m telling you, I think this is a threat and I’m going to treat it accordingly. Namely, I’m adding two more guards to the rotation. I want a second car with us wherever we go, and I want another person stationed on the floor when you’re in your hotel room.” He turns around in the seat so I can see his face as he continues. “Also, your days of running down hills with Sly are over for now—unless you’ve got one of us running right along with you.”
I want to argue with him, but he knows his job a lot better than I do. “Okay,” I tell him with a sigh.
“Okay?” He looks shocked, which I take some offense to.
“I’m not reckless. You’re the best in the business, and if you think there’s a threat, then I believe you. I get that you feel the need to sound the alarm. I’ll go along with whatever you want. But I would like to keep things as normal-looking as possible—at least from the outside looking in.”
“I’m not planning on wrapping you in Kevlar,” he says back, but his frown has softened now that he knows I’m not going to fight him. “I’ll try to keep things as natural-looking as possible, for now. But if the threat escalates any more, there’s something to be said for people on the outside seeing that we’ve got a fortress around you.”
It’s not quite the concession I wanted, but it’s the best I’m going to get. “As long as it prevents another jerk from masturbating all over my panties, I’m good with whatever you think we need.”
I ignore the gross feeling I get from just saying the words, tell myself they don’t matter. That they don’t have any meaning to my life and neither do the sickos who do shit like that. Some days I even believe the lie—too bad today isn’t one of those days.
“Don’t remind me.” He grimaces. “Though I think we’d both rather it be underwear in your empty apartment than you inyour hotel room. Which is why we’re going to take this shit seriously.”
Since I wholeheartedly agree with him on that, I just nod and keep my mouth shut. And try not to think about any part of this coming to pass. It hasn’t been long since someone last tried to break into my place in Chicago—I sold that apartment after the break-in, because I couldn’t stomach going back—but it has been a while since anyone’s been able to get close tome.
Marco and his team have made sure of that.
We don’t talk for the rest of the drive to the hotel. It’s late, so traffic is light and it doesn’t take very long before I’m back in my room. My freshly swept and cleared room, it turns out, courtesy of my night security.
I take a quick shower to get the sweat from the concert off, do the lengthy skincare routine that keeps me looking “dewy” and mostly blemish-free despite the heavy makeup I wear onstage every night, then settle down on the couch with my guitar, my sketchbook, and my phone to record.
In the back of my head is all the stuff Marco told me, but I block it out and focus on the only part of this job that has ever mattered to me.
The melody that’s been running through my head since I met Sly exploded today. Instead of just floating in the corners of my mind, it’s front and center, demanding to be played.
And I do, fingers flying over the guitar strings as I experiment with the melody, arranging and rearranging notes for the chorus until I have something that works with the snippets of lyrics that came to me earlier. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough to start until the rest of the words come.
I play it again, focusing a little more on the rhythm now—inspired by Pauline’s nail-washboards, of course. I speed up each line, then slow it down again, trying to find the sweet spot until… There it is.
My whole body sits up and takes notice as I play the notes again, and that’s how I know I’ve got it. I can feel it everywhere.
Even before Sly’s face pops into my mind’s eye. His brows are low, his dark eyes intense while his lips curve in a wide smile. The same smile he gave me after he kissed me in the observatory.
My cheeks heat at the memory, and little streaks of lightning zing through me. There’s a part of me that, even now, can’t believe I let it happen. I know it was dark, know there was almost no one in there with us anyway. But the truth is, in that moment, I don’t know if it would have mattered if we’d been sat next to the editor-in-chief of TMZ. Because at that moment, I wasn’tSloane Walkerthepop star, I was just Sloane. Just a girl on a date with a boy she really, really wanted to kiss.
And while I should probably be freaking out right now, I can’t say I regret it. How could I when just one afternoon with him has made me feel more cared for, more cherished, than I have in a really long time—maybe ever?
I play the first line of the chorus again, and this time, a new lyric pops into my head.
It was a Sunday when I met you.
