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.

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.