I started to take a step back to leave when Malik pulled back and flipped her onto her stomach in the blink of an eye. I froze in the shadows, not wanting them to know I’d walked in. I probably should’ve closed my eyes but it was too late for that. Malik gripped her hips and angled her body up to meet his then pushed back inside. She moaned. I took another step back and froze. Mei-Ling had suffered immeasurable trauma in that frat house, I’d worried she’d never let another man touch her so the very last thing I wanted to do was embarrass her when she was.

With my hand on the edge of the door, I prayed it didn’t creak when I opened it but in case, I waited for her to moan again then pulled it open. When I tried to slide out, somehow my belt loop caught the handle. I froze and peeked up to see if I’d been caught just as Malik fisted her neon orange hair, yanked her head back, and sank his fangs into her throat. Black lines covered my best friend’s mouth. She gasped. Their bodies moved in little slow rolls like he rolled his hips with every tug on her throat.

Get out of here, Frankie. She’ll die if she catches you in here.

I carefully untangled my belt loop from the doorknob while my pulse pounded through my body. After a few seconds, I managed to free myself and slide back into the hallway while shutting the door quietly behind me. Once in the hall, I cursed and then reached for the doorknob again. If Tai walked down and caught them, he would lose his shit. After what had happened to us, well, Tai had his own trauma to heal, and he was far from ready for that conversation. Without stepping back inside, I slipped my hand around and flipped the lock on the handle, then shut the door again.

Eventually I would tell her, but I’d wait until she brought up her relationship. Until then, I would go back to what I was doing. I frowned as I got to the bottom step. What was I doing? It felt like I’d been mid-thought and got interrupted by something. Yet I couldn’t think of what it might’ve been. I hurried up the stairs and pushed the door open into the living room, then scanned the room for a clue as to what I needed to do.

“What’s with the face?” Lennox stopped in front of me and pointed to her own face with her wand. “You okay?”

I sighed. “I feel like there was something I was doing or supposed to be doing. It’s suddenly driving me nuts.”