Follow Me(63)

The kind that wants to be sleeping with you.

I shook my head to clear the thought. I knew Cat thought Nick was the one who left those headless flowers that night, but she was wrong. That wasn’t the kind of thing he would do, and he certainly wouldn’t break into my apartment to watch me sleep. It couldn’t be Nick . . . could it?

? ? ?

NICK WAS WAITING for me in the Hirshhorn lobby, lounging in one of the sleek chairs as he typed on his phone. Light poured in from the huge windows, illuminating golden highlights in his hair, and my stomach twisted. This was Nick—Nick, a man I’d slept beside hundreds of times, a man who’d held my hand through tattoos and turbulence, weddings and funerals. I couldn’t believe that I was about to accuse him of something so deranged it seemed ripped from a horror movie. The idea should have been laughable, but things had gotten weird between us since I had moved to DC.

I had to ask, and I had to ask him face-to-face. I’d known Nick long enough to tell when he was lying (tugging on his right ear while saying “No, Audrey, I didn’t sleep with that freshman” meant “Yes, Audrey, I did sleep with that freshman—more than once, in fact”), and I needed to watch his reaction.

“Hey,” I greeted him, my bitter anxiety making my throat feel tight and constricted. “Thanks for meeting me.”

“Sure thing, babe,” Nick said, looking up from his phone with an easy grin. He clocked my expression and his smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

You’re being crazy, my inner voice scolded. Don’t ruin things with Nick by accusing him of this.

But I’d come this far, and so I took a deep breath and lowered myself into the chair beside him. “I need you to be honest with me, okay?”

“Always.”

“The other week, that night I wouldn’t let you stay over—”

“You’ve come to your senses and want to apologize?” he broke in, cracking a smile. “It’s okay; I forgive you. You didn’t need to call a summit for that.”

He paused, clearly expecting me to laugh. Any other time I would have, but instead I shook my head and said, “Let me finish. After you left, you went home, right?”

He cocked his head to the side. “Are you asking me if I hooked up with someone else?”

“No, I don’t care about that.” Nick looked offended and opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “Wherever you went when you left. You didn’t come back, right?”

“No, of course not. You know I didn’t.”

The tightness in my body started to subside. There was no ear tugging, no shiftiness, no indication he was lying. Nick’s face was an open book—a confused book, but an open one nonetheless. He had no idea what I was talking about.

“And you didn’t . . . linger in the alley before you left?”

“What? Why would I do that?”

“And the flowers . . .”

“Audrey, what’s going on?”

“Something really weird happened,” I admitted, pulling my phone from my bag and opening the Luna Listen app. “Here. Listen.”

Nick clicked the “play” button and held the phone between us. The thump of the door sounded, followed by a brief silence.

He turned to me curiously. “What is this?”

I shushed him as the footsteps started.

Hi, my voice said on the recording, loud enough to make my body erupt in goosebumps. I would never get used to hearing myself talk in my sleep.

“That’s you,” he said. He glanced down at the app’s interface and started to smile. “Wait a minute, I know what this is. This is one of those sleep-tracking apps. Are you sleep—”

“Listen,” I commanded.

You’re dreaming, the soft voice said. My stomach rolled unpleasantly and I looked to Nick, but he didn’t even flinch.

Oh, my voice said.

“There you are again,” Nick said. He smiled triumphantly and pumped his fist. “I’ve been telling you for years that you talk in your sleep. Vindication at last!”

Too preoccupied to correct him that I’d never doubted I talked in my sleep, only that I said the filthy things he claimed I did, I said, “You didn’t hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“Really listen this time,” I admonished him, using my finger to rewind the audio and restart it.

Nick gave me a strange look but obeyed. When the recording finished, he looked at me and shrugged. “I don’t know. All I hear is some noise, and then you saying ‘hi’ and ‘oh.’ ”

“You heard nothing between my words? Nothing at all?”

“Maybe some mumbling, I guess. Nothing clear.” He frowned. “Was I supposed to hear something?”

“You have to listen again,” I said, starting to rewind it once more.

“Audrey.”

I startled when I heard my name behind me, suddenly aware that I was in the lobby of my place of employment, playing a recording of me talking in my sleep for anyone within listening distance to hear. I swiveled in my chair to find Lawrence hovering behind me. He was staring hard at my phone, and the expression on his face made my skin crawl.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, looking pointedly at Nick. “But do you have a minute?”