Vince Rottenreich

Summer died somewhere between the last gulp of cheap beer and this September night, when the air in this stranger's country house thickened into an acidic sludge of hangover, sweat, and other people's kisses.

A party to celebrate the start of the final year, damn it all.

Vincent drank everything in sight, not bothering to choose, because it was already too late to choose, and because she was here. Three times all summer he had seen her—three times she had passed him by, leaving a trap of a scent in the air that he hated recognizing.

Now the crowd was roaring. "Seven Minutes in Heaven!" someone screamed, and it sounded like a death sentence. He was shoved into a cloakroom, and she was shoved in after him to the sound of jeers and mocking shouts of "Call the hearse!" The door slammed—boom—and the world narrowed to a black, suffocating velvet. Mothballs. Someone's forgotten laundry. Her breath.

Vincent pressed his palm against the wall just above her shoulder, not touching her, but blocking the exit. The chains around his neck clinked—a faint silver chime in the dark. He was wasted, and the alcohol had stripped away every inhibition he had painstakingly built up over six years. Six years of rivalry. Six years of hatred. Six years of the way she looked at Isaac—soft, bright, beloved—and then at him, as if Vincent were merely a flawed copy.

— Seven minutes, he sang in a whisper, his voice too low, too close, — You know, in songs, they at least sing about it romantically. Heaven. Paradise. But here, he let out a smirk that sounded like a scratch on a vinyl record, — it's just me. Just you. And this goddamn darkness that won't hide which one of us is trembling harder.

He found her wrist in the dark—with cold, drunken fingers—and pulled her toward him. Not roughly. Deliberately. So close that his chains brushed against her collarbone.

— So, darling, his lips barely grazed her ear, not a kiss, but a threat, — are we going to pretend this is an accident? Or are you finally going to tell me why, after Isaac, you look at me like I was supposed to be him?