My fingers tightened around it. “I wanted you to see something.”

She blew out a long, low breath. “You’re freaking me out a little bit, if I’m being honest, but I’m happy to see it’s just a notebook you pulled out of there, and not a severed hand. I was getting worried that you needed me to help you bury the rest of the body.” Her smile wilted as I swallowed, forcing myself to step closer to her holding out the weapon of my demise.

I gripped my offering so tightly my pulse rocked it in my hold, causing the pages to flutter in the breeze through the open window. “You can go afterwards, but I want you to see my world the way I see it.”

Her head jerked back and her eyebrows dipped. She unfolded her arms and held out her hand.

I slipped the sketchpad into her grasp and waited. My stomach churned and bile raced for my throat. Handing her the stack of papers felt like sawing open my chest and handing over my heart, serving it up on a silver platter with a set of razor blades and telling her to have at it.

My throat was tight, choking me like it wanted to put me out of my misery before she eviscerated me.

With a skeptical look, she flipped open the cover, not taking her eyes from my face. The corners of her mouth turned down and she dropped her gaze to the first picture.

She gasped, her eyes searching the page like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

A car door slammed in the distance, and birds chirped, but every turn of the page rumbled in my ears like a hornet’s nest. Everything else was lost in the whoosh of blood rushing through my veins.

My palms were clammy and it was hard to catch my breath, like I’d been running laps for an hour. The sweat on my forehead and upper lip had come along for the anxiety slam. I wanted to break something and run and hide. I braced my hands on the back of my neck and breathed through the freak-out.

She was the first person to ever see this, and probably the only person who ever would.

Her head snapped up and she looked from me to the notepad again before moving onto the next page. A flicker in her gaze and another turn.

“Dare.”

She stepped away from me and lowered herself to my bed. The old springs creaked. “You drew all of these?”

I nodded, keeping my gaze trained on the room-wide slit in the carpet running between my feet. I’d never wished harder for a portal to another dimension in my life. The pounding in my chest was harder, like fists against a locked closet door. Was I trying to get in or get out? I wasn’t sure. The closed door to my bedroom made me cagey, but I stopped myself from pacing.

She hadn’t gotten there yet. I braced myself for impact. This was a new sketchbook. It had only taken me a month or so to fill it. Most were scenes stored in my head like snapshots to recreate in the silence of my bedroom, but after the first few pages there was only one subject that had filled my head with images I itched to commit to paper.