Page 59 of The Associate
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Sam had stayed late again.
He’d told himself it was to make up for the lost hours of his day in the closet. In truth, it was an attempt to outrun the clock, to delay the inevitable return to his apartment, where the only company were the four walls that seemed to press closer every night.
It hadn’t worked.
With a final, defeated motion, he tapped the key to shut down his computer.
The lobby was lit only by the security lights behind the reception desk. The night guard nodded to him as he wished him a goodnight. Then he was through the revolving doors, and the city night hit him.
The air was a slap; a cold, damp fist that stole his breath and needled his skin. He pulled the lapels of his coat together, fumbling with the top button, and buried his chin into his scarf.
He turned left, heading for the subway entrance three blocks away. His footsteps echoed too loudly on the sidewalk, a solitary, rapid percussion.
He walked fast, head down, eyes on the cracked concrete a few feet ahead. The cold was a mere annoyance, a surface sensation. Inside, he was burning.
The soft, initial press of lips.
The searing heat of Gael’s tongue sweeping into his mouth, the taste of dark roast and something indefinably male.
The crushing weight of a body pinning him to the door.
The sound.
Oh, God, the sound he’d made.
The shove came from behind, a hard blast of force between his shoulder blades.
The world tilted, the sidewalk rushing up to meet him in a sickening lurch. He stumbled forward, arms wheeling, a choked gasp ripped from his throat.
A hand, or hands, snatched at the strap of his briefcase. The leather, slung across his chest, went taut, a brutal garrote that yanked him sideways. There was a sharp pop as the strap tore from the case. A hot, tearing burn erupted across his collarbone and shoulder.
Before he could process the loss, before he could even draw a full breath to scream, the second blow landed.
It was a fist. Or an elbow. It didn’t matter. It connected with his right side, just below the ribs. The air was punched from his lungs in a single, painful whoosh, leaving him a vacuum, a silent, gaping hole.
He folded around the pain, and a second shove finished the job. The ground vanished from under his feet. He was falling.
Time elongated. He saw the wet, glittering concrete of the alley floor rushing up. He had a detached, almost academic awareness of the physics: the angle of his fall, the inevitable impact. His hands flew out instinctively, meeting the ground first. The skin of his palms tore on the gritty surface. A millisecond later, his knees struck, the shock jolting up his thighs. He crumpled onto his side, nose smashing into the ground.
He lay there, curled around the pain in his ribs. He tasted copper and grit; blood from a bitten cheek, or maybe it was his nose, the filth of the alley. The cold of the concrete seeped through the wool of his trousers, a shocking, immediate chill.
The cacophony of guilt and memory was replaced by a ringing, hollow silence.
It was a bizarre, almost welcome clarity. This pain was clean. It was direct. It had a cause he could point to: a mugger, an alley, a city. It required no soul-searching, no theological debate. For the first time in days, his mind was not a battlefield.
Then, light.
Blinding, halogen-bright headlights speared the alley’s mouth.
A car door opened.
Footsteps followed. Not the shuffling, predatory steps of his attackers, who had already melted away with their prize. These were crisp. Rapid. Decisive.
A figure moved, blotting out the searing glare of the headlights, resolving into a silhouette that knelt before him. Samuel’s vision swam, water and pain and shadow distorting the edges. The world was a shaky, handheld film. He saw the sharp, dark lines of a tailored overcoat, the dull gleam of a watch against a cuff, the familiar, stark planes of a face he had spent all day fearing and, in his deepest, most secret self, waiting for.
Gael?
