Afterglow

scorch

Ragged heartbeat pulsing in the hollow of my throat, I turned off the ignition of Sloane's car.  The car that I might or might not have stolen.  Her keys were just there dangling on the hook in Lachlan's basement, just begging to be stolen, plus she wouldn't need it while passed out in Holden's arms still half drunk.  It was a good thing I stole her car, really...

Blowing a tuft of inky hair out of my face, I was more than grateful for the clothes that I'd left in the town car to change into that night after the ball.  I couldn't imagine having to do this in a formal dress and heels. 

Painfully cold air hit my skin as I stepped outside of the vehicle, all of the senses swamping my body the moment I did so, the action sending scorch marks of fear slithering all down my sides and spine until I was a walking, talking amalgamation of fear and anxiety. 

There I was, in the back alley behind Johny D's bar downtown, just waiting in the dark for some weird apparition or ghost to jump up behind me and yell "BOO!"

Still, I squared my shoulders and waited.  And waited...

and waited.

I was terrified that my biological father would take too long to show and my plan would fail, but I had to keep up hope that everything would turn out right.  It had to.

When I was still shivering against the hood of Sloane's car, contemplating just what kind of game my birth father was playing at, a woman appeared out of the shadows, almost like she had teleported herself directly in front of me and I had to blink a few times to clear the foggy membrane her appearance had created, like there was mist embedding itself into my eyes. 

Behind us, a lamppost crackled and fizzled, sparks flying everywhere and I was positive she was the one who had done it, her lithe curved figure twisting with each step towards me, like she was purposeful in everything she did.  That couldn't have been true, but it was still creepy as hell. 

I decided to find my voice, having had enough of this. 

"Who are you?"

"All in due time, Emilia," she almost whispered, her voice delicate and lilting with a slight accent I couldn't place. 

Elegantly dressed with dark mocha curls perfectly coiffed on the top of her head that I noticed as she stepped into the light finally, there was a slant to her eyes, a deep tan to her skin, a knowing in her gaze that somehow called to me in a way that nothing had ever before. 

"Emilia?  My name is Katrina.  Katrina Randolph.  And who are you?"

"That's not the name I gave you.  You are Emilia Suarez, and I am Luciana.  Come now, we don't have much time before he finds you."

My world rocked under my black combat boots muddy from the slushy snow slick ground.

"What did you just say?"

"I said my name is Luciana Suarez, and you are Emilia Suarez.  I named you that, not this ridiculous Katrina nonsense.  Now come with me, before your father finds out that I got here before him."

I was totally on the verge of puking right in front of this woman, this delicate slip of a woman but held strength inside of her that I knew I held as well.  She...she was my birth mother?

"You're my birth mother?"

"Precisely.  Now, unless you want to meet your birth father right here and now, I suggest that we-"

"Suggest that we, what?  Luciana?  What are you doing here?"

Her eyes went wide and slack in fear as I turned slightly to take in our newcomer, the man behind me the very person in question that I already knew, had already met.