The Bloodied Stranger

River was not trying to manifest a boyfriend.

Especially not the one she’d made up thirty minutes ago on the phone with her mother.

But the universe, in its infinite capacity for drama, had apparently decided she needed to learn a lesson about lying, a lesson in the form of vivid hallucinations.

Because there he was.

Slumped in the alley beside Pete’s Coffee. Bleeding. Unconscious. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Ridiculously good-looking in a disheveled, about-to-change-the-plot-for-the-heroine way.

River clutched her umbrella with both hands and stared.

This cannot be happening.

Rain misted down in soft needles. The man groaned faintly, just enough to prove he wasn’t a wax figure sent to punish her imagination.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “You’re real?”

He didn’t answer. Because, obviously, real or not, he was out cold.

Still, she crouched beside him. He was pale beneath the streetlamp, black hair falling across his forehead, wet with blood and rain, and wearing… (she wasn’t kidding), a tailored black coat with a faint tear across the arm, like he'd sprinted out of a five-star hotel moments before it exploded.

A tremor ran through her.

“…Lucien?” she whispered.

She immediately hated herself.

But come on. He looked exactly like the made-up hero from that ridiculous spy romance she’d binge-read the night before. The one she’d then described in perfect detail to her mother to explain why she wouldn’t be single at Thanksgiving this year.

And now here he was. Possibly dying. Possibly insane. Possibly… (please no), an actual hallucination.

“You need to start taking your life seriously, River.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, cradling her phone to her ear. “Hi, Mom. Great to hear from you too.”

“I’m being practical. You’re twenty-one. You can’t keep playing with crayons and calling it a degree.”

“It’s early childhood education,” River muttered. “And I like crayons.”

“And you need a plan. A stable job. A good man.”

That was when it happened. That was when River panicked.

“I have a boyfriend,” she’d said. Instantly. Bold., but stupid.

A pause.

“Oh?” Her mother’s voice shifted from critical to interested, which was always more dangerous.

River’s mouth ran wild. “He’s… Lucien. He’s a special agent. He’s undercover. Very… mysterious.”

“You’re not really him,” River told the unconscious stranger. “You’re just a guy who happened to lose a fight near a florist who reads too much romance.”

Still, her fingers itched to help. Her apartment was close. Her first-aid kit was well-stocked. And her impulse control was, as always, non-existent.

“Right,” she muttered. “You’re bleeding. You’re handsome. I’m lonely. This feels like the start of a bad decision and a solution."

She took a breath.

Then grabbed his arm.

Dragging him up three streets was how River discovered two things:

He was very heavy.

She might actually be insane.

She managed to dump him on her bed, heart pounding as she cleaned the blood off his temple, her necklace slipping forward, the pink stone glinting faintly in the lamplight.

It had been just a silly trinket, something she’d bought because the old man at the flea market promised it would “tie two fates together.”

“If this is your idea of romance,” she muttered at it, “we need to talk.”

Up close, he was worse in that devastating, completely unfair kind of way: angular cheekbones, a scar along his jaw, and lashes too long for someone who looked like he could kill a man with a pen.

“Lucien,” she whispered again, trying not to laugh. “If you say something cool when you wake up, I’m calling the Vatican. This will officially be a miracle.”

She cleaned his wounds, his skin was too warm and the alcohol stung her nose.
She bandaged his hands next. Stared at the bruises. Wondered what he’d been through.

And then, because her night wasn’t strange enough, she sat beside him, tea growing cold in her hands, and whispered:

“Okay, fake boyfriend. Here’s the deal. You just need to wake up, pretend you love me for twelve hours, and survive dinner with my mother. That’s fair. I saved your life, after all.”

He did not respond.

Because, again: unconscious.

She sighed. “Why do I feel like you’re going to ruin my life?”

Then he stirred.

He turned his head slightly, bedsprings creaked sharply in the silence, his brow twitching, lashes fluttering open.

Those dark, heated eyes she’d imagined only hours ago were now staring straight at her.

River froze.

Her heart skipped.

Dangerous.

River’s smile froze. “…Hi?”

He sat up like he was expecting a gun to his head. His eyes scanned the room, sharp and calculating.

“Where am I?” His voice was gravelled, low, and carried very not-just-some-dude energy.

River blinked. “Uh. My apartment?”

He looked at her suspiciously… and then, with a movement too fast to follow, cold steel flashed in his hand. A blade. Small and curved. She hadn’t even seen where it came from.

It was then that she understood something primal:

He was not a hallucination.
He was not Lucien, the fake boyfriend.
He was something else entirely.

Something very real.

And very, very dangerous.