Page 58 of Lucky Shot
I want it to be Demi.
I jump when I hear the doorbell. My eyes go wide and I look frantically around my hidden room as if someone is going to pop out of a corner, or peek in through a window that doesn’t exist.
A second later, my speaker goes off. “Someone is at your front door.”
Rolling my eyes, I get to my feet. Usually, it tells me when it detects motion at my front door. Apparently, whoever it is just randomly appeared and rang the doorbell. No motion involved.
Sighing, I flick off the light and shut the door. I take a minute to arrange all the hangers to conceal the door again and then make my way from my closet.
When I open the front door, my eyebrows nearly climb my forehead. “Loren?” I ask.
There are people in this world who you can’t help but wonder whether they belong here. That they’re actually human. Azure is a good example. The way he pauses to assess the situation or dialogue and then shuffles through responses until he finds an appropriate one. His explanation of having a personality disorder makes a lot of sense. It’s why he appears to be inhuman but trying to blend in.
Loren is not like that. I’m willing to bet he’s similar somehow but he never tries to appear human. He is what he is. Which, most of the time, is unsettling.
We roomed together for the year I was in college. Something I found amusing since he’s the son of the Van Doren legacy. I swear, before I die, that family will own half the world. They’ll probably own half the universe. I’m only being slightly facetious.
“Hello,” Loren says.
He’s got these eyes that I would bet my life on don’t ever truly focus. They’re always looking through you. As if they can see right into your very soul. Like they’re looking beyond what’s right here, what I can see, and seeing beyond to what normal humans cannot see.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
He tilts his head slightly and a chilling smile climbs his face. “I’m not sure you want that answer. But I’m killing time until I get further, necessary information, so I thought I’d drop in.” He gazes beyond me. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”
The way I tense, imagining that he justknowsabout my secret room, makes me want to shove him outside and lock the door. But he can’t know. No one knows.
I actually like Loren. He might be cold and off-putting, but since I shared a small space with him for nine months, I’ve learned that it’s not as uncomfortable as I had initially expected it would be. I muse over the fact that it’s probably because of my time with Loren that I don’t find myself as unsettled around Azure as most people do.
Taking a step back, I let Loren in. His gaze travels the room as if he’s mentally cataloging everything. He probably is. He once told me he has an eidetic memory.
“You want a drink? Something to eat?”
Loren shakes his head. His gaze touches on all the windows with their blinds drawn. Then he looks at me with a brow raised.
“I’d prefer if you didn’t ask,” I tell him and move around the rooms opening the curtains. Loren follows without a word, watching and looking out the windows when we get to a new angle of the house.
“Do you speak to your neighbors?” he asks.
I glance to the window where I can see Ibis’s house. “Please tell me you’re not here for them. They’re good people. I swear.”
Loren turns to face me. “What is it you think I do, Noah?”
A cold chill runs up my spine. “I don’t like this conversation.”
He grins and I swear, someone just walked over my grave!
Needing a distraction, I move into the kitchen and grab a bottle of water. Though Loren didn’t seem interested in a drink, I offer one to him as well. He watches me in the way he does when we haven’t seen each other in a while. Studying me. Like he can read me as he does everything else.
Maybe he can.
“What have you been up to?” Loren asks eventually. There’s a tone in his voice that suggests he already knows. Maybe he does. Maybe he’s waiting to see if I’ll lie to him. If I do, what then?
Not that I have anything to lie about. So I tell him about the end of the season. That my team lost early in the playoffs. The yacht trip. The recent gala where I nearly had a panic attack.
He frowns at this. “You shouldn’t go to those.”
“So I’ve been told.”
