The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions Book 1)

HER VOICE CURLS AROUND MY nerves.

An instantly familiar alto with a slight growl that gives her words a faintly sarcastic edge. I first heard her in a thick, pulsing crowd at a club. The tourist hordes descend on South Beach in December like beasts, but I glide past bouncers one, two, and three without effort. This Croyden idiot named Kent’s toted two of his Pine Crest friends along; I’ve already forgotten their names. They’re staring openmouthed at the girls—models, mostly—writhing to music in a haze of fake smoke.

I feel the notes beneath my skin. Atrocious, but they drown out the sound of things I shouldn’t be able to hear but can, chords of life blending together in a discordant soup of noise.

I open my eyes to find two tall, angular blondes—twins, perhaps—twining around each other and dancing feet away from us. One tosses me a look, then speaks to the other in Russian. Kent and his friends are spellbound; I am relentlessly bored. I rest against the seat, legs stretched out in front of me, and wonder if I could possibly sleep. But one of the girls moves in closer. Watching me to see if I’m watching her.

I lift my glass and take a slow sip of scotch. The girl is now dancing between my legs. If I don’t break eye contact, in six seconds she’ll kneel.

At four, I look away.

The girl moves back into the crowd, but throws a look over her shoulder. She’s hurt.

Better this way. She wants connection, and I can’t connect.

Kent says something obscene over the music, and I consider hitting him to break the tedium. I manage to resist, barely, and take another sip. I haven’t been able to get properly drunk in years, but I like the burn.

That is what I’m thinking when I hear her voice for the first time. Fear and rage twisted into three words:

“Get them out.”

Her voice brings pain with it; my head throbs and aches and every muscle feels sore. Then I go blind.

I would panic, if this were the first time this had happened. But it isn’t, and I know that I’m still with Kent surrounded by tourists, though when I try and look down at myself out of habit, I see nothing at first. Then out of the darkness, hands come into focus. Pressed up against something—a wall, a ceiling perhaps. Not my hands, though—the fingernails are small, dirty, the fingers slender, feminine. But I see them as if I’m looking through the lenses of my own eyes. They push against the wall, and I can feel the texture of the cinderblock and dirt even though my hands are clean.

The waking nightmare ends, eventually, but now, nearly two months later, I hear that same voice again. Those same words.Property © NôvelDrama.Org.

The sun is shining aggressively, and I’m staring at the thatched roof of one of Croyden’s absurd tiki huts, avoiding it and class. I don’t look up to see who happens to be beating the shit out of the vending machine until I hear that voice. I would know it anywhere, in any dream or memory, but I never imagined I would hear it in reality.

When I do, I lean up and watch her. The girl’s more angry than annoyed, as if the malfunction is personal.

“You have an anger management problem,” I say. She whips around.

My psychic disaster seems to have developed a life outside my psyche. She stands there in dark jeans that would be indecent if she didn’t wear them so casually, with a loose, faded black T-shirt that sets off her skin. Not from Florida, clearly new, and so beautiful I nearly laugh out loud. And with this look on her face like she doesn’t give a fuck what I think of her. Perfection.

She considers me for a long moment, her eyebrows drawing together.

“Get him out,” Mara says. It’s her voice, but her mouth doesn’t move. And the tone is off—oddly tinny, and far away.

“What?” I ask, or try to, but something’s wringing the air from my lungs. The sun pierces the shade of the roof.

“He’s waking up; I’ll call you back.” Those words come from nowhere. And that is definitely not Mara’s voice anymore. It’s Jamie’s.