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W ake up.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up!

There’s someone in the room with you!

Opal. Wake. Up.

Opal sat up with a small scream.

Her heart was racing and sweat covered her skin as she glanced around.

Why was she still waking up like this?

Shouldn’t her nightmares be over now that Stefan was gone? She’d had plenty of nightmares while he’d been alive.

Most of those nightmares had been acted out while she was awake, though.

Then after they’d escaped his hold . . . well, her nightmares had been filled with him catching them.

With him . . . punishing her.

She shuddered. She’d always known that if he caught them that she’d come off worst of all. Because she’d meant the least to him.

Ryleigh had been his fiancée. Lilac, his sister.

She’d just been his whore.

And now she was going to vomit.

Opal forced herself to breathe as she glanced around the room.

She was safe.

Stefan was dead.

In the weeks after his death, the nightmares had returned. She’d kept dreaming about him coming back from the dead.

But the nightmares had eventually started to fade and she’d thought that she was finally going to be able to sleep.

Only now she was having dreams about someone being in her room.

It was fucking insane!

She was so over it.

“Stupid, stupid brain,” she muttered to herself.

She checked the clock and groaned as she saw it was one-thirty in the morning. She’d only been asleep an hour. Devon had dropped her off just after midnight, following her set.

At least she didn’t have to work today. But that didn’t help her right now. She got out of bed, feeling restless.

Maybe you should read a book? Watch TV? Drink some tea?

Nope, nope, and nope.

Now that she was awake, she was wired.

Head thumping, she walked into the kitchen before looking through into the living room.

It was a disaster.

All of the furniture from her spare bedroom was piled up in here. She hadn’t had time to remove the carpet.

Well.

No time like the present.

After getting dressed and grabbing her mask, pliers, and knife which she’d managed to get back to the hardware store to buy, she started to pull up the carpet.

* * *

God.

What an awful job.

Opal was really starting to wonder why she’d decided to do this herself. Especially when the Malones seemed to be chomping at the bit to help her.

Why not take them up on it?

Because you’re an idiot, that’s why.

She managed to roll the carpet up as much as she could, then, sweating and heaving for breath, she stared down at it.

“Well, hell.”

She needed to get it out of the bedroom at least. And she’d been hoping to get it outside. Maybe she’d be able to lift it onto her shoulder.

Two attempts proved that that wasn’t going to happen.

So she grabbed hold and started to drag it. Tugging and swearing, she got it out of the front door, then stood there in the darkness since it was still early in the morning, with her hands on her hips as she panted heavily.

“Crap.”

Why wasn’t her brain working? What was she going to do with it now? Garbage day wasn’t until Thursday and she wasn’t even sure if they would take this.

And she didn’t own a vehicle to get it to the dump. She couldn’t leave a roll of carpet on her front porch indefinitely.

Looked like it was going into the shed at the end of the driveway. Grabbing one end, she strained as she pulled the roll of carpet off the porch and around the corner of the house.

Yeah, her brain had definitely left her body. She could have taken it out the back door and saved herself having to drag this so far.

Heaving for breath, she got to the shed and unlocked the padlock with the key she kept under a rock. Then reaching down, she grabbed hold again. Only as she stood, something pinged in her back.

Agony shot through her.

Shit. Shit.

Leaning over, she panted heavily as she tried to breathe through the pain.

What the hell? With a groan that was part-whimper, she managed to stand.

Gradually, the pain started to subside.

“Fuck,” she muttered. “Fuckity fuck. This ain’t no good.”

She wanted to hobble inside, but she still had to get the carpet into the shed. Bending over once more, she moved it inch by agonizing inch into the shed as pain shot through her back.

Once it was in and the door shut, she headed inside and moved to her bed.

Why her?

If she could sleep like a normal person, then she wouldn’t have been moving heavy carpet around in the middle of the night!

And hurting her back.

Sometimes, it felt like she’d been born with bad luck. And that her luck only went from bad to worse.

She really had to learn to ask for help.

* * *

Renard sat on the sofa in his apartment.

His lonely, cold apartment.

Fuck. Since when did he think like this? He got up. He went to work. He came home.

And he worked toward his goal.

So why the fuck had this past week felt so long? Why did he feel so . . . so fucking lonely?

That was ridiculous.

About as ridiculous as you driving past her house every night to make sure she was all right.

Yep. He’d been doing that too.

Well, why change his routine, right? If he was gonna be a stalker, might as well be a good one.

He needed to forget her.

Maybe you should just fuck her. Get her out of your system.

Except that didn’t feel right. And he was worried that once wouldn’t be enough. He’d want more and more until he was addicted.

His head was thumping as he sat and stared at the television he never used.

Fuck.

Why was she under his skin? It didn’t make much sense. She was about as prickly as he was. Defensive. Secretive.

She could lie with the best of them.

Something he hated.

Yet, there were times he caught glimpses of vulnerability. And when she gave a genuine smile?

Lord, it was like the clouds opening on a gray day and a ray of sunshine falling on him.

And he wasn’t a poetic, mumbo-jumbo sort of person. But that was simply the plain truth.

He liked that she didn’t give a shit what people thought of her.

Yet, he wondered if that was always true. Because he’d seen a flash of hurt on her face a few times.

He wanted to know her better. To spend more time with her.

And that scared the fuck out of him.

Maybe he needed to go to the club and find a masochist. People came from hours away to go to Saxon’s. It was safe. People could feel free to be themselves there. Something they might not be able to do in their own hometowns.

Yeah.

Maybe he’d go to the club tonight.

Right after he drove past Opal’s place and made sure everything was safe on her street.

Not that it ever wasn’t.

As far as he could tell, nothing happened on that street except for her neighbor getting into other people’s business.

He drove slowly past her house, then parked a couple of houses away on the other side of the road.

Something seemed . . . different.

Instead of being dark, there was a light on in the living room.

Could she not sleep?

He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel.

Hell, it was only eleven on Saturday night. She could still be awake.

But there was no movement.

Aww. Fuck.

Ignoring the voice in his head telling him that he was being an idiot, he got out of the truck and headed toward her house.

Should he knock?

Probably not.

That didn’t stop him.

After banging on her door for a few minutes, he realized that she wasn’t going to answer.

Where the hell was she on a Saturday night? Last night, he’d gone to Dirty Delights and sat in the parking lot until Devon escorted her home.

It had eaten at him not to be the one taking her.

Why hadn’t he gotten her phone number?

Friends could call and text. So he had reason to ask, and now he was cursing himself for not doing it.

He walked back to his truck and sat in it for a moment.

A knock on his window made him startle. He glanced over to see that old shrew neighbor of Opal’s standing on the pavement.

He wound down his window. “What?”

She huffed. “Is that any way to speak, young man? Why don’t you give your elders some respect?”

He scoffed. “I’m forty-eight years old. I’m not a kid who needs to be scolded on how to speak to people. And I’ll give you respect when you earn it.”

“I’ve called the sheriff, you know,” she informed him.

“That’s nice.”

“Told him that you’re lurking around here every night, being suspicious.”

For fuck’s sake.

Why the hell wasn’t she in bed? Didn’t old people go to bed early?

“I’ll be telling him all about the stuff going on with your female friend too.”

Hmm.

“What stuff?”

If she was still harassing Opal, then he was going to have to do something about it.

He leaned through the open window and the old woman stumbled back.

He wasn’t even sorry. Because he wanted her to know he was serious about this.

“You leave Opal alone or I will make things very uncomfortable for you.”

She gasped in outrage.

Perhaps he should have felt bad. But that wasn’t something Renard felt all that often. He drove off before she could rally and reply.

Although he did turn around and drive back to make sure that she’d gotten inside safely.

He was an asshole.

But he wasn’t a complete jerk.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, he confirmed that Opal wasn’t at Dirty Delights.

Walking out with a frown, he was grumbling to himself as he took a seat in his truck.

Fucking Devon.

He had to have her phone number, yet he wouldn’t give it to Renard.

Asshole.

If Renard discovered that she was in trouble and Devon hadn’t helped him find her . . . he was coming back to rearrange his face.

Breathing through the anger, he didn’t know what to do.

Drive out to the Malone ranch?

Hmm. That was a possibility.

Perhaps she was visiting Ryleigh or Lilac.

He tapped his fingers on his steering wheel. And what then? How did he explain why he was looking for her? Or how he knew that she wasn’t home?

Fuck it.

He needed to do something that wasn’t related to Opal.

Yeah. He’d go to the club.

That would put his head on right.