Wildfire

Chapter 7

Lauren's eyes snapped open to morning sunlight flooding her penthouse. For a moment, she lay completely still, trying to orient herself. She was in her own bed, still wearing her silk pajamas - not the black dress from the bar. The other side of the mattress was pristine, untouched, the sheets still perfectly creased from her cleaning service.

Her head spun as she sat up. The digital clock showed 7:43 AM. Wednesday. Deadline day.

"Jay?" Her voice sounded small in the empty bedroom.

Nothing. No response. No sign anyone else had been here. No evidence of their wild night together - the bar, the dance, that kiss at Midnight Chill, her apartment...

Lauren pressed her fingers to her lips. They still tingled, still tasted faintly of vanilla milkshake. Or did they? Everything felt suddenly uncertain, like trying to hold onto the details of a dream that kept slipping away.

Her black dress hung neatly in the closet, not thrown over a chair where she vaguely remembered dropping it. Her heels sat perfectly aligned by the door, not kicked off in passion.

Yet she could still feel his hands on her waist, still hear that velvet-dark voice calling her away from safety. The memory of his cologne lingered, but when she breathed deeper, seeking it, the scent vanished like smoke.

Her phone lit up on the nightstand. A message from Rachel about the deadline. Nothing from Jay. Nothing from Dr. Winters.

Lauren moved through her bedroom like a detective, looking for proof. A receipt from Midnight Chill. A smudge of lipstick. The faintest whiff of his cologne. Any evidence at all that she lived the whole electrifying, enigmatic experience. That the careful, controlled Dr. Winters had really shown that dangerously seductive Jay-side of him, who'd been with her until reality blurred.

But everything was perfect. Untouched. Like a stage set waiting for its actor.

The morning sun caught her reflection in the window. For a moment, she thought she saw something dark move behind her - a flash of black shirt, a wicked smile. But when she turned, there was only her empty bedroom, morning light, and the weight of Wednesday's deadline pressing down like an anvil suspended over her head.

Lauren stumbled to her kitchen, desperate for coffee and clarity. The pristine space felt subtly wrong somehow - like an uncanny wax figure, recognizable yet unnatural, not a single mug out of place or ingredient misaligned, no sign of her frenzied rush out the door last night to escape the pressure of blank pages and overdue chapters.

She'd been in a bar. She was certain of that much. The faint throb behind her eyes suggested those manhattans had been all too real. Pricey, potent, and possessed of the power to intoxicate her into bad decisions apparently. But everything after that second drink...

The coffee maker hummed to life under her shaking fingers. Each provocative detail her mind attempted to pin down and examine seemed to slip and morph and fade at the last moment, replaced by another equally vivid yet somehow less substantial recollection. Jay's black silk shirt under her fingers. The taste of vanilla and pickle brine. His cologne. His kiss. The way the diner's neon had caught in his eyes, making them look almost impossible.

"Get it together, Morrison" she muttered under her breath, pressing her forehead against a kitchen cabinet.

She had a damn deadline hanging over head - today! - with her entire writing career, her whole precariously crafted life of success and prestige riding on what she produced in the next few hours. Gallery Books was waiting. Seven figures hung in the balance. She couldn't afford to lose herself in... whatever last night had been.

Her phone buzzed on the marble countertop, the screen momentarily overtaken by another message from Rachel, two words in all caps standing out: PAGES DUE. But for a moment, the screen seemed to ripple, like the surface of disturbed water. Lauren blinked hard, shaking her head, and the unsettling illusion vanished as if it had never been.