“Don’t fuck with me, bitch! This is all your fault!” he screamed at me.
I didn’t listen to the words, couldn’t afford to be distracted from the matter at hand. I scratched his wrists until I could feel my short nails sinking into his flesh, the moistness of his blood becoming embedded in their length. I couldn’t get him to let me go. I tried shaking my way free but that only caused me more pain.
The panic of helplessness sliced through my chest and like a video on rewind, I was back in my bedroom when I was twelve years old and my stepfather had come inside after I’d gone to bed. He’d yanked the covers off me then roughly pushed my nightgown up past my hips. I hadn’t known what to do, only knew that fear was a nasty taste like bile in my throat and I hated it. So I kicked and swung until he finally stumbled back after one lucky shot had given him a bloody nose. Before he could come at me again I jumped off the bed and kicked him again, this time in the bulge I’d seen between his legs. He’d run out of my room then, groaning and calling me all kinds of vile names, but he never came back again. But whenever he beat my mother from that point on he would look to see if I was in the room, locking gazes with mine as if he wished he were beating me that way. To this day I’ll never understand why he didn’t come back and beat the hell out of me the way he did my mother.
I stopped fighting Dex back then, just focused on keeping my feet firmly planted for another second or so. My lack of movement must have thrown him off. No, that had been his cell phone ringing. It had been ringing on and off since Caleb had left us alone but this was the first time Dex had attempted to answer it. He released one hand from my hair and I knew that was the only opportunity I was going to get. The moment I heard him speak into the phone I rammed my head into his groin with all the strength I could muster.
My hair was instantly freed as Dex stumbled back, dropping his cell phone. I didn’t wait for any more reaction but turned and ran as if the devil himself were chasing me.
Apparently that wasn’t fast enough because in the next second I felt fingers wrap around my calf, pulling me down. I fell onto the ground, using my hands to break the fall and to keep from busting my face wide open. Turning quickly I began kicking to get him off my leg. My foot caught the side of his face and he reared back, releasing me again. I stood quickly, knowing what would happen if he got up and I stayed down. I was going to run again, but this time I paused and stomped Dex right in the neck. He howled like something unearthly and I did it again, adrenaline racing through my body like fresh blood.
Then common sense kicked in and I got the hell out of there. The pain didn’t hit me until I’d rounded the building. I could see the door to the bar and was aiming for it, but pain escalating from my ankle up to my thigh stopped me and I crumpled to the ground.
All I could remember thinking was, please don’t let him come up behind me, but I couldn’t stop myself from falling, couldn’t stop the pain from taking its ugly hold.
CHAPTER 7
Caleb
I’d just pulled out of the parking spot, finally. Too many conflicting emotions had been battling through my head, keeping my foot off the gas and the truck stuck in park. Eventually, I’d kicked myself in the ass enough to say it was done and put the truck in drive so I could get as far away from this bar as I possibly could.
That’s when I saw her.
She rounded the corner like a flash of light, her torn white shirt almost glowing in the night. She didn’t look back, just kept going which instantly told me she was on the run. But I didn’t give a damn. This was her fight as she’d so decisively put it for me one last time. I wasn’t stopping because I no longer gave a rat’s ass what happened to Zoe.
The second she went down all my bravado went out the window. I slammed on the brakes and tried to jump out of the truck before I’d even gotten the door all the way open. Over the hood of the truck I went sliding, coming down with a thump on the other side and jumping onto the sidewalk just before her head could hit the concrete.
“Zoe, goddammit! You’re so damned hardheaded,” I scolded, all the while lifting her into my arms.
“I don’t want you to hold me. I want you to let me go so I can get in my car and go home,” she whispered, her head falling into my chest so her words were a warm whisper over my neck.
My teeth clenched but I didn’t waver. “Not this time, menina. Not this time.” I said the words while I moved.
Opening the passenger-side door I gently sat her on the seat and fastened the seat belt around her.
“He’ll come for me. I heard him yelling that he would come for me,” she was saying, her head lying back on the headrest, eyes barely opened.
When I looked at her to respond her face was contorted in pain and I growled low and deep, the anger rippling through both me and the cat too much to ignore.
“Shh, menina, I’ve got you,” I told her then rounded the truck again and climbed into the driver’s seat.
I slammed the truck into gear and pressed the gas, turning to get out of the parking lot as fast as I could. I didn’t look in my rearview mirror because I knew what I would see if I did. There was a cat back there, one angry jaguar declaring war on me and on Zoe. “Game on, you sonofabitch,” I mumbled to myself.
After the first or second traffic light I’d sped through Zoe moaned and leaned forward in her seat. She was rubbing her right ankle and cursing.
I reached over, putting a hand on her shoulder and tried to ease her back, but she jerked away instead.
“It’s probably a bad sprain and not a break. I can take you to the emergency room …” I told her, trying to ignore the sting of her rejecting my touch, once again.
“No!” she yelled and grabbed my arm. “No hospitals!”
She was squeezing my arm so tightly, her eyes had widened, and the scent of cold, hard fear permeated the air.
“Okay, okay. No hospitals. I’ll take you back to your place then.”
Her grip didn’t lessen but she looked away from me. “He’ll come there,” she spoke quietly.
Fear was thick and choking me into action. So she was not only afraid of that jackass coming for her again at her apartment, but apparently of hospitals as well.
“I won’t take you to your place then,” I told her, using my free hand to touch her cheek, turning her slowly so that she was once again looking at me. “But I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
I didn’t think, didn’t consider, didn’t waver, but drove straight to my apartment.
CHAPTER 8
Zoe
His hands were like magic, gentle and soothing, careful and steady. I lay on his couch, which was a really soft material that I sank into as soon as he carried me through the door and set me here. I’d been to a few bachelor pads in my time and this one definitely did not qualify. Though the furniture was sparse, what was here, i.e., the couch, was really nice. There were heavy curtains at the window that were probably room-darkening during the day. I figured it was okay that he didn’t like sunlight. That didn’t automatically place him in the vampire/serial killer column.
I noticed the walls were blank as he went to the other end of the couch to switch on another lamp. He had one near the door and this one, and that was all as far as I could see. He also had the couch and a humungous television directly across from it. There was a rug on the floor that looked fancy and possibly expensive and I wondered how it would feel beneath my bare feet. The altercation with Dex may have rattled my mind a bit because I couldn’t control the path my thoughts were taking, and they were really running rampant.