Chapter 37 The Memory

Chapter 37 The Memory
Sleep doesn’t come easily anymore.
I lie awake in Thad’s bed, staring at the canopy above us while he breathes steadily beside me. His arm is draped across my waist, but my mind won’t stop spinning. There are too many secrets. Too many pieces of a puzzle I’m still trying to assemble.
I think about my old life sometimes. The one I had before parking garages and vampires and fated mates. It feels like it belonged to someone else—a stranger I used to know but can’t quite remember.
Eventually, exhaustion wins. My eyes grow heavy, and the world fades to black.
The dream comes without warning.
One moment I’m drifting in darkness. The next, I’m standing in my old apartment, surrounded by the life I used to live.
It’s exactly how I left it. The cramped studio with the water stain on the ceiling that my landlord never fixed. The secondhand couch I bought off Craigslist. The tiny kitchen where I burned more meals than I ever successfully cooked. My laptop sits open on the coffee table, frozen on a spreadsheet I was working on for a client.
Marketing. That’s what I did. That’s who I was. Thelma Wright, junior account manager at a mid-sized agency that paid just enough to cover rent and student loans with nothing left over.
I wander through the space like a ghost, running my fingers over the spines of books I’ll never finish and the clothes hanging in a closet I’ll never open again. There’s a photo on my nightstand—me and Dana at her birthday party last year, both of us drunk and grinning at the camera. I pick it up and stare at her face, trying to remember what it felt like to be that carefree.
The scene ripples and changes.
Now I’m sitting at my mother’s kitchen table, and the familiar knot of dread is already forming in my stomach. She’s standing at the stove with her back to me, stirring something that smells like the pot roast she makes every Sunday.
“I just don’t understand why you won’t apply for that position at your uncle’s firm,” she complains without turning around. “It’s stable. It has benefits. You could actually build a future there.”
“I have a future, Mom. I like my job.”
“You like being poor?” She turns and gives me that look—the one that’s half disappointment and half pity. “Your father would have wanted more for you.”
And there it is. The trump card she plays whenever she’s losing an argument. Dad would have wanted this. Dad would have expected that. As if invoking his name gives her automatic authority over every decision I make.
“Dad wanted me to be happy,” I reply through clenched teeth. “He told me that himself.”
“Your father was a dreamer. Look where it got him.”
Dead at forty-two from a heart attack he couldn’t afford to treat because dreamers don’t get health insurance. I was twenty when it happened. Old enough to understand, young enough to be destroyed by it.
Mom never recovered. She channeled her grief into control, micromanaging every aspect of my life like she could prevent tragedy through sheer force of will. Every choice I made that didn’t align with her vision was a personal betrayal. Every risk I took was an insult to Dad’s memory.
I stopped telling her things years ago. It was easier than fighting.
The scene ripples again.
Now I’m at a bar. Murphy’s, the dive near my apartment where Dana and I used to meet for happy hour. The music is too loud, and the drinks are watered down, but the wings are decent and nobody cares if you want to sit in a corner and complain about your day.
Dana isn’t here yet. I check my phone and see a text saying she’s running late; something about her boss being an asshole, which tracks. I order a gin and tonic and settle in to wait.
That’s when he approaches.
Dark hair. Dark eyes—so dark they’re almost black. A smile that’s charming in a way that feels practiced, like he’s done this a thousand times before.
“This seat taken?”
I glance at the empty stool beside me. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“I won’t be long.” He slides onto the seat without waiting for permission and signals the bartender. “Can I buy you a drink while you wait?”
“I already have one.”
“Then let me buy your next one.” He turns that smile on me, and something flutters in my chest. Stupid. I know it’s stupid even as it’s happening. “I’m Miles.”
“Thelma.”
“Pretty name. Old-fashioned.” He tilts his head and studies me. “Let me guess: You were named after a grandmother?”
“Great-aunt, actually.”
“Close enough.” He orders himself a whiskey and settles back on the stool. “So tell me, Thelma. What do you do when you’re not sitting alone in bars?”
I should shut him down. I should tell him I’m not interested and turn back to my phone. But it’s been a long week, and he’s handsome, and there’s something about the way he looks at me that makes me feel seen.
So I talk. I tell him about my job, about the clients who drive me crazy, and about the promotion I’m hoping to land next quarter. He asks follow-up questions like he’s actually interested and laughs at my jokes even when they’re not that funny.
By the time Dana arrives, I’ve almost forgotten I was waiting for anyone.
“Who’s your friend?” she asks as she slides into the booth.
Miles stands and leaves a twenty on the bar. “Just a stranger being friendly. It was nice meeting you, Thelma. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
He disappears into the crowd, and Dana raises an eyebrow.
“He was cute.”
“He was weird,” I counter, though I’m not sure why I say it. There was something off about him. Something I can’t quite articulate. But the feeling fades as Dana launches into her work drama, and by the end of the night, I’ve forgotten all about the charming stranger with the too-dark eyes.
I wake with a gasp.
Thad is sitting up beside me with one hand on my shoulder. “Thelma? What’s wrong?”
I press my palm against my chest and wait for my heart to stop racing. The dream is already fading, but one image remains burned into my memory.
Miles. The stranger at the bar.
Menlow.
He was watching me for weeks before the attack. Stalking me. Learning everything about my life so he could destroy it.
And I smiled at him. I laughed at his jokes. I let him buy me a drink and never once suspected that I was looking into the face of my future murderer.
I knew it before, but somehow, having such a vivid memory makes it even more traumatic.