Preface
If her head being in the clouds wasn’t enough of a sign, then the butterflies that flapped in her stomach every time his name rolled off of her lips was. Sam. He was everything Jules never knew she wanted. Jules was always independent, almost to a fault. Sam was the only one she had ever really let inside and it felt better than she expected.
Jules had never been one of those girls who measured a relationship by the size of the bouquet she received on Valentine’s Day. Truth be told she didn’t care that much for flowers at all; they had a funny way of always ending up dead. With Sam, though, she practically counted the hours they had been together. She couldn’t help it. It was like she didn’t want to forget a single minute of it.
And speaking of minutes, Sam was taking his sweet time getting over to her place. That wasn’t unlike him, and by now she had come to expect his utter disregard for punctuality. It was still kind of cute, and Jules hoped that she would think of his personality quirks as cute forever instead of finding them annoying like so many couples that had been together a long time. Sam could have done just about anything and she would have been fine with it. So she wasn’t exactly mad, but she was starting to wonder where he was. Her phone, dark and quiet, was not providing any answers. She checked it again anyways, and was disappointed.
Jules put her phone back in her purse and realized that she had been sitting by the door for almost half an hour. At first she felt a little bit embarrassed even though there was no one else in her apartment. It wasn’t like her to be the one waiting around for someone. At least, not until Sam began to tame her fierce independence. But that didn’t give him a free pass to just go silent- even if, who was she kidding, she would wait all night for him but she wouldn’t be happy about it.
If she did anything else to her hair she knew it would end up worse than when she started. Sam was romantic in a subtle kind of a way, and even though she usually hated surprises she didn’t seem to mind them so much when they were his idea. Jules didn’t know exactly where they would be going but she could tell he had big plans and she was getting tired of waiting. How childish of her, she thought. Strange what love can do to a person.
Jules contemplated whether or not she should look inside the fridge one more time, but was interrupted by the violent rattle of her phone against the zipper of her purse.
“Finally,” she scoffed, looking to the empty sofa for some validation that she wasn’t crazy.
She accepted the call without even looking at the screen.
“Look who it is,” she said with sarcastic annoyance.
“Jules. It’s Daniel. Are you home?” the voice on the other end was frantic, and it instantly made Jules uneasy.
“Daniel? Yeah, I’m home. Where’s Sam?”
“Thank God. Stay home, Jules. Don’t go outside. I’ll be right there.”
Jules was confused, and so was the heart that began to frantically beat in her chest. She spent the next few minutes calling Sam and getting nothing but his voicemail. The texts weren’t doing much good either. Did something happen to him? Daniel sounded scared, almost hysterical. It wasn’t like him at all and it wasn’t like Sam to fall off the face of the Earth like this. Then, the knock on the door shook her out of her thoughts.
She swung the door open and Daniel stood there, eyes blood red, panting.
“What the hell is going on?” Jules demanded.
“Jules, I’m so sorry,” Daniel cried. “He’s gone. Sam’s gone. They killed him. They…”
Jules couldn’t hear the voice of the man in the doorway anymore. All the noise in the world was replaced with a ringing in her ears that wouldn’t stop. She felt the ground fall out beneath her and her stomach fell close behind it. She wanted to pull the dagger out of her chest, but when she reached for it there was nothing there. In that moment, she wished there would have been.
