"Good Things Come: A Psychological Thriller" Excerpt

PROLOGUE

It’s dark. So dark, I almost believe my eyes are still closed. But they’re open.

Yet the dark... that’s the first thing I notice.

Next, I notice the silence. It presses in from every direction, crawling into my ears, my nose, through my skull. It’s loud in a way that defies logic and questions its existence. But it’s real, and it’s speaking words just beyond my understanding. I know better than to ignore it. I need to listen, figure out what silence is saying, because something treacherous is happening.

I have to get out of here.

I try sitting up, and pain answers with a low, guttural groan, rising from the back of my dry throat.

“Umph.” I press my lips together, waiting for the stinging in my joints to pass. It’s my right shoulder and hip; one or both might be dislocated—I can’t tell yet.

“Help?” a weak voice calls out from the opaque blackness. It belongs to a woman.

I snap to attention. “Hello? Someone here?” I ask, straining to see something—anything—even just the outline of the other person.

“You’re my help?” she says, her voice trembling in the air. She keeps repeating those same words, and something in her tone suggests she’s not all here.

I grit my teeth and try again to push myself up. I can’t help her until I figure out what’s going on with my body. The pain is sharp and consuming. I reach out blindly for anything to brace myself on, something solid, something real, but there’s nothing. No wall. No furniture. Just cold, unyielding concrete beneath me.

I take another beat to collect myself, breathing in and out deeply, settling into the reality that something terrible has happened—to me, and to the other woman, or perhaps girl. She sounds very young, but that could just be the result of her condition.

“Do you know where we are?” I ask, trying to break through her delirium. I force my vision to focus, pushing it to adjust to the darkness faster than it naturally would. I need to see something.

“Please… You have to… I can’t anymore,” is all I get from her, and I try to keep my cool because it’s frustrating. I can already see she’s no help.

I try to piece together how I could have gotten here. My last memory is hazy, the edges blurry like a dream. I see myself working—I'm always working because I love what I do. I see myself at my desk, on the phone with a department head. But what were we discussing? I can’t recall a word of it. I must have left my desk at some point, unless I was knocked out while still sitting there. That would explain the headache. All the throbbing is internal. I don’t feel that I bled. I touch my head, pressing against the front, back, and sides to prove it.

So, at some point, I must have gotten up and left the office—left the building—walked forward into my future. Closing my eyes tight, I try to remember something, anything, but nothing comes. All I feel is this damn headache, sharp and insistent, pulsing behind my eyes like a warning bell. It’s not normal. I must have been drugged. Maybe I went to happy hour and someone slipped something into my drink.

“I’m dying,” the girl says.

I take another breath and try harder to spot her. “Where are you?”

“And no one knows I’m here. I should’ve never…” Her voice trails off into that horrible silence again. I still can’t see her. But it’s clear she will be no help to me. So I inhale through clenched teeth and force myself to sit upright again.

The pain is brutal, radiating through my hip, shoulder, leg, and lower back. Every inch of my right side feels like it’s been pummeled. I’m panting, parched, my stomach gnawing at itself. But I’m alert now, aware of where it hurts the most.

Thankfully, I’m left-handed. That gives me something to work with.

I glance up. A white ceiling comes into view through the haze of blackness. It’s high—too high—and sterile. There must be a hatch or an opening up there. I must have been dropped from above. That would explain the pain. It must have been the angle of impact.

“I don’t know…” the woman says suddenly, her voice low and dazed. “Where we are. I don’t know.”

I grunt and begin dragging myself toward what I think is a wall. My vision is finally starting to adjust. A smooth, bare white surface emerges from the shadows, and I can now see that we have been stored in a big, vast, empty space. It looks more like an unfurnished and not-quite-finished basement.

What the hell is this place?

Who did this to me—to us?

“There’s no way out,” she says, her voice hollow. “We’re trapped.”

“How did you get here?” I ask, my eyes fixed on the far wall, testing the edges of my focus as they slowly sharpen.

“I don’t know,” she murmurs. “I... it was him.”

“Who’s him?”

“The guy…” Her voice catches. “My perfect match.”

* * *

CHAPTER 1

This man checks boxes I didn’t even know I had. Around us, the clinking of flatware against porcelain blends with the low hum of conversation, rising and falling like background music. Yet somehow, his voice carries above it all—steady, smooth, assured. He’s confident and relaxed. I like that. He feels novel, so new he’s like a gift from above. He is a reward for all I’ve been through, all I’ve sacrificed to get here, in this seat, experiencing every sensation stirred by my quantum energy–established, perfect match.

“Some people mistake comfort for happiness. That’s why too many stay stunted, never expanding their minds,” he says.

I barely register what he’s saying. This attraction I feel is too potent, like freeing a genie from its bottle. All I want to do is shut him up by kissing him. It’s strange. That’s not like me at all.

He’s been talking a lot, though. Maybe because I’ve been saying so little. I should speak, ask questions, show that I’m fully invested in taking this connection wherever it may lead, which I hope is into forever.

“So, Mia, what do you do for work again?” he asks, cutting in just as I inquire about his past relationships, or better yet, whether I’m the woman he envisioned when he signed up for Your Perfect Match.

But he said—again? I don’t remember him asking about my work the first time. Maybe he did. The fact that I’m already forgetting parts of our conversation is proof that I’m not myself tonight. All I want is to wrap myself inside this man. To be consumed by him. And that’s what scares me. It hasn’t even been an hour since we sat down for a late lunch, and already, the process is taking off, my emotions spiraling out of control. I’m afraid I’m already losing myself.

I drop my gaze to my salmon salad, still mostly untouched. Funny—we ordered the same thing. We also arrived at exactly the same time. There was no need to ask whether he was my date for tonight; we just knew. While we waited to be seated, which wasn’t long, we kept grinning at each other like we were in on some sweet, private joke.

It was beautiful. I’ll never forget it.

The introduction brochure said most connections report a tug in the gut, others a sensation like free-falling. I’m still feeling both, along with waves of disbelief and elation. At times, I find myself unable to look away from him. I can hardly believe my luck. More than that, I can’t believe it’s working for me.

Nothing in my life has ever come easy. That’s how I know this must be fate. My just reward for being a good and faithful daughter to people who rarely returned the favor.

“I’m a digital archivist with this company, actually,” I say.

“What company?”

I look up, his curious gaze spreading across my face like the approaching light of morning. With my hand pressed to my warm cheek, I’ve never felt so beautiful. Does he also like what he sees?

“Um…” I refocus on answering his question and tap the device on my wrist. “Your Perfect Match.”

He sits up straighter, clearly intrigued.

There’s no use admitting that if I didn’t work for the company, we probably never would’ve met. Who can afford this product and service, really? After twenty years on the market, you’d think the price would have come down by now. If they want to increase the number of users and subscribers, they’ll have to do exactly that.

That’s why nearly sixty percent of YPM wearers never reach match confirmation status. It’s because of what we call dead matches—people who are paired with others who never keep their subscription active due to the high monthly fee, or who never engage with the product at all because of the cost of the band. And unless the company makes a change, like significantly lowering the price, that statistic isn’t going to improve.

The band costs $9,999. I only managed to purchase it because, as an employee, I received a seventy percent discount—which is still too much for my blood. But I’d been saving for a long time. And sitting across from him now, I know it was the best investment I ever made. If this is real, if my luck is finally turning, he could change everything for me.

“Wow,” he says quietly, almost to himself, rubbing the trimmed hairs on his chin. I think he’s genuinely impressed that I work for the company responsible for our union. “Are you a programmer?”

I shake my head quickly. “I can program; everyone can these days. I mean, it’s the first language we’re taught. But no. My job is mostly administrative.”

My skin heats as I scramble for something more impressive to add, but nothing comes to mind. The truth is, what I do is kind of sad. I archive people’s hopes, filing away the matches of those who, for whatever reason, will never meet their soulmate the easy way: through quantum entanglement matching.

The technology is breathtaking, really. It captures the energy flowing through a person’s body and makes it visible. According to the science, true soulmates share a unique energy signature—a string that hovers exactly two inches above the navel. It’s no longer than a few inches, delicate, pulsing, shaped with colors and patterns that are identical between two connected people. That’s how you know. That’s the match.

“I see,” he says, still stroking the neatly trimmed stubble along his chin. “So what do you like to do for fun?”

I let out a small breath, grateful for the shift in topic. His question lets me off the hook.

“For me, fun is the gym,” I say. “It’s where I go to work out the kinks, you know?”

His eyes narrow slightly. He’s still rubbing his chin.

“What?” I ask. He’s thinking something.

“I like the gym too.”

“I don’t do it for vanity,” I add, a little too fast. “I do it to...”

Images flash through my mind. My mother on her deathbed. My father on his. Two people broken by addiction and diseases that prey on the careless. They fought constantly—fought through me, used me like a rope in their endless tug-of-war. And now here I am, somehow sitting across from this man. A man who smells so, so good. A man who doesn’t have a thread out of place. He is the perfect match. It’s my turn to see to my needs.

“Work out the kinks?” he finishes in a voice as silky as that of actor Sidney Poitier from nearly two centuries ago.

My attention pulls back to him. He’s smirking, flirting—and oh boy, is that a good sign. A sign that my life is taking a turn for the better. Proof that good things really do come to those who endure.

*** End of Excerpt***

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