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*This book contains dark elements that may be sensitive for certain readers. Read with care and prioritize your own comfort.

Sloane

The studio always feels different after dark.

During the day, there are little girls in pink tights running through the hallway, mothers balancing coffees and dance bags, instructors calling counts over piano music, and somebody inevitably crying because a bun came loose or a shoe went missing. By nine at night, all of that disappears. The front desk empties. The younger classes end. Half the overhead lights get switched off, leaving only the warm sconces in the hallway and the bright fluorescent strips above the largest studio.

I prefer it this way.

There are six of us left tonight, scattered across the floor in various stages of exhaustion while Nadia stands in front of the mirror with her arms folded across her chest. Sweat has soaked through the back of my black leotard, and the muscles along the inside of my thighs burn every time I straighten my knees. I’ve been dancing since I was four years old, which means I’m intimately familiar with the particular kind of pain that comes from doing the same movement forty-seven times because somebody decided forty-six wasn’t enough.

Apparently, tonight that somebody is Nadia.

“Again.”

A collective groan moves through the room.

Nadia doesn’t blink. “That wasn’t an invitation for commentary.”

“I’m pretty sure my left hip just filed for divorce,” Jenna mutters beside me.

“Then you’ll have more time to rehearse.”

A couple of people laugh quietly.

I reach down and rub my calf before returning to position.

My phone vibrates against the floor near my water bottle.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

I ignore it.

“From the lift,” Nadia calls.

Music floods the studio again.

Everything else disappears.

That’s the part I’ve always loved most.

There are very few places where my brain actually shuts the hell up, but put me in front of a mirror with music loud enough to feel in my ribs and my body takes over. I don’t have to think about rent. I don’t have to think about the load of laundry currently becoming a permanent fixture of my dryer. I don’t have to wonder whether Murphy ate the corner of my couch after I left him alone for six hours today.

I just move.

Three steps.

Turn.

Catch.

Release.

My partner’s hands find my waist, and I use his shoulders for leverage as he lifts me. For one suspended second, I’m weightless.

Then I’m down again.

My bare foot hits the floor.

The music cuts.

“Better,” Nadia says.

Coming from her, that’s practically a standing ovation.

My phone vibrates again.

Jenna looks toward it.

“Someone’s needy.”

I don’t have to look to know who it is.

“Eli.”

“Obviously.”

I grab my water and take a long drink.

Jenna raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to answer him?”

“No.”

The phone buzzes again.

She laughs. “He disagrees.”

I finally bend down and pick it up.

ELI

Six unread messages.

Of course.

I unlock it.

Eli: You done yet?

Eli: Sloane.

Eli: Slooooooane.

Eli: I’m horny.

I bite the inside of my cheek.

There are two more.

Eli: Like painfully fucking horny.

And—

Eli: So I’m gonna need to get between your thighs tonight. Please plan accordingly.

I stare at the screen.

There are relationships that make sense to other people.

Mine and Eli’s isn’t one of them.

We’ve been best friends long enough that I can’t remember the exact moment he stopped being someone I knew and became someone permanently woven into my life. He’s the emergency contact on forms. He has a key to my apartment. Murphy loses his mind when he hears Eli’s truck outside. My mother asks about him before she asks how I’m doing.

And somewhere along the way, we started having sex.

The first time was an accident involving tequila and an extremely questionable decision to share a bed after my twenty-first birthday.

The second time wasn’t.

Neither was the third.

Two years later, we’ve stopped pretending there needs to be an explanation for it.

We aren’t together.

We’ve never been together.

Eli dates. I date. Sometimes one of us is sleeping with someone else and nothing happens between us for months. Other times we’re both single and it’s easier to text the person who already knows what you like than spend an evening making small talk with a stranger who may or may not know where the clitoris is.

It’s uncomplicated.

Mostly.

I type back.

Me: What a touching invitation.

The typing bubble appears instantly.

Eli: Is that a yes?

Me: I’m dancing.

Eli: You’ve been dancing for like 9 hours.

Me: Three.

Eli: Same thing.

Another message appears before I can answer.

Eli: Come over when you’re done.

I look toward Nadia, who’s currently correcting someone’s arm placement.

Me: I have Murphy.

Eli: Bring him.

Me: Your landlord loves when I bring a 70lb golden retriever into your apartment.

Eli: Fuck my landlord.

Then:

Eli: Actually don’t. Fuck me.

I shake my head.

“Boyfriend?” Jenna asks.

“God, no.”

“Still?”

I glance at her. “Still what?”

“Still doing the whole best-friends-who-sleep-together thing.”

“Occasionally.”

She looks at the number of messages on my screen.

“Occasionally seems to be having a busy night.”

I laugh under my breath and lock my phone.

“Places,” Nadia calls.

I toss it back beside my bag.

For another forty minutes, I don’t touch it.

By the time Nadia finally releases us, my body feels like somebody has taken every muscle I own and twisted it. I peel the elastic from my hair, letting it fall around my shoulders as I cross toward my bag. The studio empties quickly around me. Everyone is tired, hungry, and desperate to get home.

I pull gray sweatpants over my leotard and shove my feet into sneakers without bothering with socks.

My phone shows another four messages.

I don’t read them.

I already know the general theme.

“Night, Sloane.”

“Night.”

The door closes behind Jenna.

Within a few minutes, I’m alone.

I sling my dance bag over my shoulder, turn off the studio lights, and step into the hallway.

Silence settles around me.

Not complete silence. The building is old enough that it never really stops making noise. Pipes tick behind the walls. The heating system hums. Somewhere farther down the hall, an old fluorescent bulb buzzes faintly.

Still, something makes me stop.

I don’t know what.

My hand tightens around the strap of my bag.

I look back toward the studio.

Dark.

Empty.

My reflection stares back at me through the glass door.

For half a second, I have the strange sensation that someone else is standing behind it.

I turn.

Nothing.

“Jesus,” I whisper.

I’m tired.

That’s all.

I start toward the lobby.

My sneakers squeak softly against the polished floor as I pass the framed photographs lining the wall—recital pictures stretching back decades, smiling children in costumes, competition teams holding trophies. My own face appears in more than a few of them.

The sensation doesn’t leave.

It’s subtle.

Not fear exactly.

Just awareness.

That prickling feeling between my shoulder blades that makes you want to turn around even when you know there’s nothing there.

I do anyway.

Empty hallway.

I keep walking.

The front door is locked from the inside, exactly the way Nadia leaves it when we’re rehearsing late. I disengage the deadbolt and step outside.

Cold air hits my damp skin.

The parking lot is almost empty.

My little black SUV sits beneath one of the lights, two rows away. Nadia’s car is gone. So is Jenna’s.

There’s another vehicle parked near the far end.

Black.

I don’t recognize it.

I barely give it a second thought.

I walk toward mine while digging through my bag for my keys.

My phone vibrates.

“Jesus Christ, Eli.”

I pull it out.

Eli: Last offer.

I snort.

Me: You’ve made approximately twelve last offers.

Eli: This one’s serious.

Me: Devastating.

His response comes immediately.

Eli: Come over.

I reach my car.

Me: Maybe.

Eli: That’s yes in Sloane language.

Me: That’s maybe in English.

I unlock the driver’s door.

Another vibration.

Eli: Fine. I’ll come to you.

I hesitate.

Honestly, the idea isn’t terrible.

Murphy will be happy to see him. I won’t have to drive across town after getting home. And my entire body is still humming with the restless post-rehearsal energy that makes sleeping impossible for at least another hour.

Me: Bring food.

Eli: So romantic.

Me: We’re not romantic.

Eli: Thank fuck.

I smile despite myself.

Me: And text before you come in.

Eli: I have a key.

Me: That’s why I’m telling you.

Eli: See you soon, princess.

I roll my eyes and get into the car.

The engine starts.

Heat pours through the vents.

I toss my phone onto the passenger seat and pull out of the parking space.

The black car remains where it is.

I don’t notice when its headlights come on.

Cole

She’s going home with him.

Not technically.

He’s going home with her.

There’s a distinction, although I’m not sure why I’m bothering to make it.

I wait until Sloane’s taillights disappear around the corner before starting the engine.

Three years.

I’ve been watching her for three fucking years, and Eli Bennett remains the only variable I’ve never managed to eliminate.

Not because I couldn’t.

Because I haven’t.

There is a difference.

My phone sits facedown in the center console. I don’t need it to know where she’s going. She’s going home. She’ll take Mercer to Franklin, Franklin to Ninth, then cut through the residential streets because she hates the traffic lights on Grant.

She’ll get there in eleven minutes.

Nine if she speeds.

She usually does after rehearsal.

I pull onto the road.

There are things I know about Sloane Mercer that nobody has ever told me.

She counts stairs when she’s anxious.

She sleeps with one foot outside the blanket.

She hates grape-flavored anything.

She doesn’t drink coffee after two because it keeps her awake, but she’ll drink iced tea until midnight without acknowledging that caffeine is caffeine.

She cries when she’s angry and hates herself for it.

When rehearsal goes badly, she sits in her car for exactly one song before driving home.

Tonight went well.

She left immediately.

Her right ankle has been bothering her for eleven days.

She hasn’t told Nadia.

She hasn’t told Eli.

She massages it when she thinks nobody is looking.

I noticed last Tuesday.

My hands tighten around the steering wheel.

Eli doesn’t notice things.

That’s what irritates me most about him.

He gets access without earning any of it.

Her apartment.

Her dog.

Her bed.

Her body.

Sloane gives him pieces of herself like they’re worthless because he’s been around long enough that she’s stopped noticing what she’s giving away.

I’ve watched him leave her building at seven in the morning.

I’ve watched him kiss her outside restaurants.

I’ve watched his hand disappear beneath the hem of her dress in the back of a cab.

That night nearly cost him three fingers.

I take the next turn.

Her car is four vehicles ahead.

I don’t need to stay this close.

I know that.

Tonight, I do anyway.

Sloane turns onto Ninth.

So do I.

She doesn’t look behind her.

She rarely does.

That bothers me.

She should.

People aren’t good.

Men especially.

She’s too comfortable moving through the world like nobody is paying attention.

Someone always is.

Tonight, it’s me.

It has been me for a long time.

Her brake lights glow red as she stops at an intersection. She reaches toward the passenger seat.

Her phone, probably.

I know better than to text her.

Not yet.

Sloane doesn’t know my number.

She doesn’t know my name.

Not really.

She’s heard it before. I’m almost certain of that. We exist close enough to the same circles that eventually someone mentions everyone, but hearing a name and knowing the person attached to it are different things.

We’ve never spoken.

Not properly.

She’s never looked at me and understood that I was looking back.

That changes soon.

It has to.

Because watching was easier when I didn’t know exactly how badly I wanted to touch her.

Now I do.

And Eli Bennett is on his way to her apartment.

My jaw clenches.

I force my grip to loosen.

This isn’t jealousy.

I’ve told myself that enough times that the words have lost meaning.

Jealousy implies uncertainty.

Competition.

The possibility that another man might have something I want.

Eli doesn’t have Sloane.

He has access to her.

Temporary access.

There’s a difference.

She turns onto her street.

I continue straight.

I know better than to follow her all the way home from this direction. There’s a camera outside the pharmacy on the corner, another above the entrance to her building, and Mrs. Hanley in 3B smokes beside her living-room window every night between nine-thirty and ten.

People think being unseen means hiding.

It doesn’t.

It means learning where everyone else is looking.

I drive another block before turning.

My phone lights up.

A notification.

Not from Sloane.

I pick it up at the next light and open the feed.

Her building’s exterior camera isn’t mine.

I don’t need it to be.

A grainy image fills the screen.

Sloane enters the frame.

Her hair is loose now, falling down her back. Dance bag over one shoulder. Phone in her hand.

She stops at the front entrance.

Something catches her attention.

She looks over her shoulder.

For one brief second, her face is angled directly toward the camera.

Toward me.

She can’t see me.

Of course she can’t.

But something about the way she pauses makes my pulse slow.

Then she shakes her head and goes inside.

I watch the door close.

Thirty seconds later, a second notification appears.

Movement detected.

Not outside.

Inside.

I shouldn’t open it.

I do.

The camera faces the living room.

Sloane drops her bag beside the couch.

Murphy comes barreling into frame.

Her entire face changes.

She crouches as the golden retriever crashes into her, laughing while he licks her chin. I can’t hear her from this feed, but I know what she’s saying.

Hi, baby.

She says it every night.

Murphy circles her twice before she sits on the floor with him.

I stare at the screen longer than I should.

Then Sloane suddenly looks toward the corner of the room.

Toward the camera.

My thumb goes still.

She can’t see it.

I’ve made sure of that.

She stares for another second.

Then Murphy nudges her hand and she looks away.

My lungs loosen.