Page 124 of Fury

The sun was dropping in the red sky. The whole night lay ahead of us. The wild ones had been unleashed.

A local band that had made good was the third group up. They were all right. Not my scene. I preferred heavy metal to this grungy whiney shit with too much guitar thrown in for a classic rock effect. Everyone was trying to sing like Eddie Vedder these days, but nope, only in their sorry ass dreams.

“My heart’s on fire! My heart’s on fire!” the lead singer screeched.

I knew this song. I’d been hearing it from every open car window I’d passed on the road this week.

And that’s when I saw her.

My stomach nosedived like an elevator run amok.

Everything suddenly blurred out. Everything was fuzzy except for her. Only yards from me. Could’ve been five thousand or four, three, two, one. I’d know the curve of that face, those lips, the slim column of that throat. All my senses flared to life again. That ache twisted inside me hard, and it hurt.

Now she had blonde hair, waves of warm honey. Her arms were swirling with tats, her chest dancing with bold designs and colors showing from under the long white sundress she wore. She clapped and cheered for the band.

I was rooted to the spot. It had been over six months since I’d seen her. Half a year. An eternity.

Serena. Serena.

She turned.

Those blue green eyes. Oh God, those eyes.

Those eyes locked on mine, making the blood freeze in my veins and roar to life, rising like whirling storm winds, ripping and unrooting everything in their path. A sensation unlike any other—a burn, a sizzle, an electric misfire that exploded and combusted instead of simply charging.

That fuse that we’d shorted was lit once again.

She stumbled, her body twisting just a bit, and my eyes widened. That white dress stretched over a high, round middle. Her hand rose, pressing against her full belly as if guarding it from the rays of my vision.

She was pregnant. Pregnant.

Something wrenched in my chest, jamming there. A cold hammer banged at my pulse, zapping the easy lethargy of the beer and weed I’d consumed all afternoon. A fist twisted inside me and yanked whatever there existed inside me, flinging it on the ground, shredding it as it went, pitching it between me and her.

Rings were on that finger on her hand. Did she get married like she said she would? Now she was having that fucker’s baby? My eyes snapped to the stage. Of course. The guitarist.

After that time I’d tracked her down in LA, I’d found out she’d been seeing a musician, Eric Lanier.

“I’m getting married.”

Congratufuckinglations.

Now she was having a baby. His baby.

She was in someone else’s tide. A moon in another solar system. Another hemisphere. She’d dropped the axe, cut the line. Her taste of normal was working out for her.

My head spun. I didn’t have to do the math in my head. That could be my baby. Would she really have married someone else if it was? Fuck, I didn’t know. I was going to find out, though. My chest was on fire. Somehow my feet remembered how to walk, my knees to bend. I moved forward.

Her eyes widened, her mouth tightening as I stalked toward her. She reached back, grabbing her long blonde hair, pulling a stretchy around the thick handful into a ponytail.

My signal.Keep moving. You don’t know me. Don’t contact me.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

She removed a large ring on her index finger and put it on the index finger of her other hand, and my pulse kicked at my veins.

Her signal.Keep moving. You don’t know me. I’m okay, but you have to go. Don’t contact me.

Double signals. Both of them. Definitive.

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