The elevator began its descent, the stomach flipping drop a physical echo of the chaos in my head. I let out a jagged breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding, my lungs burning as they finally took in the filtered, climate controlled air.
What the hell had just happened?
The question looped in my mind, frantic and accusing. That man, Mr. Jason , he was... what? Some kind of predator? A freak? He'd done something to me, dosed me with some experimental airborne narcotic or reached into my brain through sheer, terrifying charisma. He'd roofied me in a bank vault, and I'd almost thanked him for it.
How? I asked myself, my reflection in the polished brass of the elevator looking back with wide, haunted eyes. With the power of his hands? Oh, God, that was exactly what it had felt like. I lifted my trembling hands to my cheeks, shocked by the heat radiating from my skin. Even now, floors away from him, my face was flushed a deep, shamed crimson. And he had felt it, too. I knew what desire looked like, I'd seen it in movies and felt it in the early, healthy days of college and that impossibly handsome man had desired... me. A girl wasting away into double digits. A girl with a death sentence written in her blood.
It wasn't that I thought I was unattractive. Before the leukemia started eating me from the inside out, I'd been confident, petite, and full of life. But I'd come there as a patient seeking a miracle, not a conquest. What was his game? What did he want, other than subjects for a trial with a ninety nine percent mortality rate? And why did his touch feel like the only thing that could make me whole again?
I stepped from the elevator back into the marble cathedral of the lobby. The atmosphere was still hushed, the same elegant people moving with the same urgent, whispered purpose. The receptionist at the front desk looked up as I approached, her bright, robotic smile a jarring, sickening counterpoint to the man lurking in the darkness twelve floors above.
"The car is waiting for you, Ms. Amanda," she said, her voice chirping with practiced ease. "You will be taken back to your vehicle now."
I managed a stiff nod, my legs feeling like they belonged to a marionette with tangled strings. I pushed through the heavy brass doors and back into the biting Cleveland cold. The black limo hummed at the curb, an idling beast, and the chauffeur was already there, opening the door the second my foot hit the sidewalk. Dumbly, I slid inside, the door closing with that expensive, pressurized thud that seemed to seal out reality.
The car rolled away from the "First Bank of Ohio," and I sank into the fawn leather. My body ached, but it was a far different kind of pain than the dull, gnawing exhaustion that had become my constant companion. It was a part of me I thought had died long ago, stolen by the sickness and the chemo and the fear. Now, every nerve was awake and singing, a choir of electricity under my skin. They were screaming for the one thing I couldn't have.
Him.
I hardly noticed the scenery blurring past the tinted windows. I was a passenger in my own life, drifting until the chauffeur pulled up behind my battered, stained Ford Focus in the hospital parking garage. I didn't even think to ask how he knew where I was parked, or how he'd identified my car among the hundreds of others. I was far beyond wondering about the logistics of a man who owned a bank building and a limo.
I ducked out of the car, my fingers fumbling blindly for my keys as I stepped unsteadily onto the cold concrete. By the time I'd managed to unlock the driver's side door of my Focus, the black limo had already purred out of sight, disappearing into the gray city traffic like a phantom.
I collapsed into the chill of my driver's seat, the smell of old coffee and textbooks a grounding, pathetic contrast to the sandalwood and leather of the car I'd just left. For a second, I wondered if I'd imagined the whole thing, the chauffeur, the copperplate card, the man with the icy blue eyes. It seemed as insubstantial as the clouds of frost that materialized with every breath I took, evaporating before the next.
I pushed up my sleeve, my heart stopping as I stared at the tiny needle prick in the crease of my elbow. It was real. I shivered as a shadow of that liquid heat went through me again, a ghostly echo of his thumb against my skin.
I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the cold, hard edge of the steering wheel. My phone dug into my stomach through my jacket pocket, a sharp reminder of the world I actually lived in. Elisa. I had to call her. I had to tell her... something. But as I sat there in the silence of the garage, all I could think about was the one percent chance of living forever.