"One freshly made tequila sunset coming right up." A voice and a drink appeared right before me.

I looked up, startled, and found the bartender answering the unasked but evidently obvious question on my face. He looked pointedly at someone behind me. "The dude back there in black bought it for you."

Pinpricks of alarm went right through me and I turned around in my seat to see who he'd been pointing at. The dude, as he'd said, wasn't difficult to find, and I watched the man in the black suit already staring at me from across the bar, eyes smiling and suggestive and head tipping forward in a nod.

I didn't recognize him. He was a stranger, my mind confirmed. Letting the loud bar music buzz against my skin, I turned back around and pressed myself a little more into the bar counter. A small shiver ran down my spine. I held the cool cocktail glass between my hands. My fingers seemed to throb at the sensation and I wiped them on my pants.

"You can take a deep breath, Alice." Professor McAdams said as he regarded me with a concerned, pensive stare. "Everyone's left. Come on, have a seat."

I closed my eyes briefly then opened them just as fast, looking around me, around the bar, and exhaling slowly in relief when I saw that nothing had changed in the few seconds I'd had my eyes closed and everything else remained the same.

All except for the drink that still sat, untouched, before me.

"Not a fan of tequila?" The bartender questioned me as he cleaned an empty glass with a rag.

I shook my head, an agreement or a refusal--I didn't know, but didn't say anything more. I felt... I didn't know what I felt exactly. There was a phantom touch over my fingertips--an ache too strong. Professor McAdams had seen the terror on my face, known something was wrong with me when I'd panicked there--right there--in the music hall. He'd asked everyone to leave, in a way that was only polite and not obvious at all. He'd asked me to sit, offered me a glass of water. But I hadn't been able to shake myself out of that pure, sheer panic because I'd seen him.

I'd seen Santiago there--standing there with the other students who'd seen me with the violin still in my hands. He'd been there or maybe I had finally gone insane. Maybe I'd been hallucinating. Neither one of those options was an easy one to consider.

"You might wanna give him a heads up that you ain't interested," he added, giving me a knowing look, "he looks like he'd be making his way here."

He didn't though; the bartender was wrong. The man in the pristine black suit didn't make his way to the bar or anywhere near me. When I turned once again to catch another glimpse of him, I saw that he wasn't even standing there anymore. He'd left. And I had a deep, troubling feeling I knew how that had happened.

The panic was there again, it was always there, although this time it wasn't screaming danger at me, and I didn't know what that meant. It felt hot and suffocating and I glanced over at the two bulky men standing on either side of the bar corners, dressed like bouncers but I knew they weren't. They looked scary enough, arms rippling with muscles and penetrating stares that seemed like they would kill, and they'd been following me.

I shuddered and turned back around, hunched in on myself, and squeezed my eyes shut again. "Fuck," a scared whisper left my lips.

Those two men, who looked like bouncers but weren't, had been following me at a distance ever since I remembered leaving the university premises this afternoon. I knew that, was aware of that because I'd seen them following me at almost every corner. I'd let pure, dreadful panic take over me the first time I noticed. But they hadn't approached. They'd only watched me from a distance, followed me even inside this bar I'd walked into under a panicked rush.

And they were still here.

It was--It was terrifyingly obvious. It was--

My phone buzzed with a text and I momentarily turned to stone. My fingers slipped around the cool glass and I almost let it tumble off the bar counter, just about managing to keep it upright as I took out my phone from my pocket.

The text was from Ryder.

Try not to accept any more drinks from strangers, querida.

I stared at the words, repeated them in my head, and let the warmth of him, of his voice in my head, envelope me. It was a brief sense of security.

And then the cold returned.

It was only one drink, I texted him back.

One second passed--two, three, and then my phone vibrated like I'd known deep down it would with an incoming call.

"I'm trying," Ryder spoke the moment I answered the call in a tight voice, "not to be angry here, Alice."

I shuddered again. "He's gone, Ryder."

"And have you thrown the drink away?"

I stared over at the still-untouched drink right in front of me. The bartender had long since stopped making conversation with me and was busy talking to someone else around the counter.

"No," I spoke softly, too softly to be registered above the loud noise. Ryder still somehow heard me though.

"Throw it away."

"I'm not going to drink it," I said flatly, clenched my jaw, then shook my head. "I can't just throw it--"

"Do it for me."

Exasperated and a little squirmy, I pushed the glass aside until it was well and truly a great distance away from me. The bartender threw me a quizzical glance but didn't say anything. I felt my face heating up in embarrassment.

I leaned forward and pressed my forehead on the cool marble counter. "It's gone. I'm not drinking it. Happy?"

"Good," he said, voice calm and steady. Not so tight with concealed anger anymore. "Yes, I am."

I bristled a little on the stool I sat on. "Ryder," I whispered.

"Yes?"

I squeezed my eyes close once again when someone walked past where I sat, an accidental brush of shoulders even though it didn't, for a moment, felt accidental.

"I..." I clenched my jaw at the strain in my voice. "You've got your men following me."

There was a beat of sharp silence from his end.

"Haven't you?" I asked, and I knew his answer before he even spoke. I knew it because Ryder never lied to me, and it was so blatantly obvious at that moment. It should've been from the start because the men couldn't have been Santiago's. Santiago was after me, but he'd been following me alone. And both of those men hadn't harmed me in any way--their presence was alarming and freaking me out but they hadn't brought any harm to me. It should've been obvious.

"I have." He finally said.

"Please make them leave me alone," I told him and I couldn't hide the exhaustion from my voice. Tired and scared, I didn't want to-- "I don't want to feel scared anymore."

"Do you feel scared?"

All the time. "I don't want you to keep tabs on me wherever I go." I managed to speak past the hot lump in my throat. "I'm scared but I don't want...I don't want anyone following me. I don't want you to have people following me. I just want..."

"What?"

You, I wanted to say. I said nothing instead.

"You're at a bar, Alice." He continued when I refused to answer him. "I've only told Ricardo and James to keep an eye on you if you go someplace that isn't safe."

They have names, I thought and then instantly berated myself, of course, they have names. I hesitated. "But I don't want to be followed."

"Alice," he said, his voice a little muffled, but I still slumped a little against the counter. "I know you don't like being followed, but I need to make sure you're safe. I will ask them to keep an eye on you from a greater distance, okay? You won't see them."

I sighed heavily, scrunching my forehead against the pounding headache slowly forming in my skull. The song in the background changed to a much louder one and that wasn't helping either.

"Now tell me why you are there."

I grimaced. "I'm not drunk, Ryder. Stop--just stop trying to make sure I'm all right. I am! I'm just not as right in the head as people think I am and I keep finding myself in bars. It's just something that happens to me."

There was silence on the other end and I instantly felt horrible.

"I-I meant--"

"I know what you meant. Did you get a call from your mother?" His voice hardened--thickening with an accent. "Your sister?"

"No." It came out weak. A weak, pathetic wish. "No, she's still not responding to my calls. I haven't contacted my mum yet. I told you I was scared." A coward. Still a coward.

No one back from my family had contacted me either. Which, I thought, meant Alyssa hadn't yet told anyone about Michael and I. Which shouldn't be possible. Michael had been bleeding so badly the last I saw him. Alyssa must've had to explain his condition somehow--how had she?

"Okay," he stated. Then he added, "I'm almost there. Come outside."

I had to close my eyes this time. I just did. Everything around me was proving to be just too much. I wished--I wished I hadn't let Nico drag me out of my dorm. The four confines of it had been fine, safe, secure. They hadn't let me think too much about everything that was wrong--that kept going wrong. Everything for a moment had seemed fine.

"I don't want to."

Ryder said something, but it was washed out by a roar of a cheer behind me. People laughed on the dancefloor and I glanced up hurriedly as the bartender picked up my untouched drink--finally.

"Can you...repeat that?" I asked Ryder because I hadn't heard what he'd said and I didn't want to miss out on anything he said to me. Anything he wished to say to me.

There was a click. "Come outside for me, querida."

Maybe he knew it too, maybe he'd realized that now of all times, how I found it hard too sometimes to say no to him.

Getting up from the barstool wasn't a hardship. What proved to be difficult was maneuvering around the crowd that stood between me and the exit doors. I had to squeeze past which only proved to be a bad decision when someone tried to shove me aside--I tried to sidestep, but I stumbled, almost met the floor face first, and righted myself at the very last second. It was a heady feeling, a nauseating one, and I wished deeply that I had not wasted so much of my time staring at the bar counter, and had at least gotten myself a decent glass of something that could've buzzed me up.

The crowd parted at the very end and I gasped, breathing deeply--in, out, in. I was afraid I would forget how to breathe. It felt like I was shaking all over even though it was just my knees that trembled. I kept walking until I'd escaped the bar entrance and pulled to a sudden halt when I spotted a silhouette shadowed by the almost darkened sky.

A couple walked past me and towards the doors I'd left behind. The girl giggled, already tipsy, and I abruptly stepped aside, afraid, anxious--because I didn't want to be knocked into or shoved aside a second time. Or the third. I'd lost count.

My gaze once again focused on the silhouette when it moved, neared me, and then the lights near the doors angled the right way and there he was--Ryder.

"Ryder," I breathed out, relieved, so goddamn relieved, and then he was just a few steps away and it was a relief. It was a heavy burden off my shoulders. It was a knowing so deep that I knew I'd be okay.

I inhaled sharply. Ryder noticed, eyes so dark and flaring with alarm, and a wayward lock of his hair fell over his forehead, disheveled with the wind, and I shuddered. He stopped when he was inches away from me, hands pulling out of his pockets, lips parting to say it--something--my name.

I hesitated, then asked myself why I was hesitating.

"Alice--"

I shook my head at him and heard him scoff in something like disbelief as he reached for me, hands brushing my elbows, and then I was falling into him, fisting my hands in his shirt and around him and under his jacket until my face was pressed right near his heart and until my ears could only hear his heartbeat over the loud thudding of mine.

"What happened," he asked, hands sliding up my arms and my waist, feeling--no, I realized with a jolt in my heart, checking if I was fine. He didn't even wait for me to answer him, maybe because he hadn't even meant it as a real question. "You're all right, yes?"

I pressed my nose into his solid chest.

"Querida, I'm talking to you." He said it like he was frowning and I couldn't--couldn't think of anything. One of his hands came up to the side of my face, sliding into my hair, and I made a noise deep in my throat. "Alice."

"I'm fine." I forced the words out, winced at the sour tang they left on my tongue, and clenched my fingers in his shirt. I repeated it more softly this time, "I'm fine."

I didn't even realize how tense he stood there, how tense he felt, until the tension rolled off of him. His grip on me tightened and he pulled me close--flush against him.

"Okay," he murmured into my hair.

No, it's not okay, I wanted to grit out, but I also didn't understand what the hell was wrong with me so I didn't say anything. I just closed my eyes, tipping my head up until the tip of my nose bumped underneath his jaw, the warm scrape of barely there stubble, and I wished--wanted him to be here because he wanted to be here. Not because of a promise he felt the need to keep.

"Ryder," I whispered, and I didn't like how broken I sounded. I hated it. I breathed in deeply and squeezed my fingers in his shirt. "You don't have to be here. I know you said, you promised, but you don't have to," he doesn't have to be here, a voice whispered in my head. "Don't waste your time on me."

You have to find Santiago first, find him, because he's the threat here, and if you don't, your father will know. He'll know. He'll hurt you.

Please don't, I almost said but then Ryder's hand was near the hem of my sweater, low on my waist, tugging me close, and my thoughts stuttered to a blinding, burning halt.

"There's--"

He pushed me back, gripping me by the nape of my neck, and fixed me with narrowed blue eyes. My own eyes widened, fingers trembling and I wished--

"No." He spoke before I could.

"But--"

His fingers dug into my hair, gripping, but it wasn't--it didn't--it didn't hurt. It should've but it didn't--

"No, querida." He leaned close, so close, and whispered against my lips, "No."

It hurt, an agony so desperately sweet deep inside me, but then there wasn't any distance, no inch of space between us, and he nudged my face, pressed his lips so firmly against my own, and all the protests died within me. Dissolved into the air around me.

My lips parted against the soft firmness of his, hands grasping him closer and closer and then he pulled away, back, and I chased his lips for more, but he held me right there, thumb catching on my lower lip as his stare bored into mine.

"Later," he murmured, blinked and his eyes met mine. "Later, I will tell you how wrong you are--teach you how to never speak of such doubts again, okay?"

There it was--the violent, almost insistent tug in my heart. I stared and I couldn't look away.

"Right now," he said and pulled his hand away from my waist--a loss I felt so, so deep inside me--to pull something out of his pocket. Two somethings, I noticed quickly. "We have somewhere else to be."

Two cards. I looked down at them, confused, and then back at him. "What...I..." I swallowed thickly, and took them from his hand, reading the dark cursive lettering written on it.

"I've found where your father is," Ryder spoke into the silence, to me, fingers still so dangerously close to the hem of my sweater. "Jonah Gray. He'll be there tonight."

Tonight. I felt the moment I pieced it all together in my head, in my heart--the way it pounded in my chest. Carlisle Symphony Orchestra, the cards read. No, not the cards--the tickets.

I snapped my head up and stared at him with wide, shocked eyes. "Dad--You think he's going to be there? At an orchestra?" That doesn't make sense, I wanted to say. But I knew it did. Deep down, it just did make sense.

"I know he's going to be there." Ryder was watching me carefully, eyes tracking every little expression that crossed my face. "Do you still wish to see him?"

Dad, I thought, and then I looked back down at the tickets, that I knew must've cost a lot, in my hand.

"I..." I hesitated, holding the tickets back out to him so that he'd take them back and I wouldn't have to hold them anymore. My fingertips itched. "Yes. Yes, of course."

Ryder slowly took them from me, brows pulled together in a calculative frown. "Then we'll go there."

I nodded, pulling on my sleeves until they were over my fists. I wanted to--"T-Together."

The frown went away as he carefully pocketed them.

"Yes, querida," he told me. "Together."