A hand snaked through the broken pane on the door and untwisted the lock, swinging the door open.
“Fuck,” Coop hissed, tearing open his bedside drawer.
Two men walked into the apartment, glass crunching under their shoes. Though my instincts screamed not to, I couldn’t help it—I looked at their faces.
They were both tall. The one with long hair had a scar running diagonally across his pale face, so deep it changed the shape of his mouth. The one with a buzzed scalp had eyes so dark the pupils were drowned.
I froze, heart thundering. These were not good men. I could see the evil in their faces.
“Cooper,” said the one with the scar. “Bad time for company.”
Coop reached an arm across me like a shield, his other hand still rooting in his drawer.
The one with the buzzed scalp stalked to him and wrenched his hand from the drawer. He reached in himself and pulled out a long knife—a machete. “Nice try.”
Coop had a machete? Next to his bed, this whole time? That meant he knew he was in danger, no matter how much he insisted he wasn’t.
The man with the buzzed scalp pointed the tip of the knife at Coop. “I told you you’d regret trying to leave.”
“Fuck off,” Coop said. “I have neighbors. Cops are probably already on their way.”
The man with the scar smiled a jagged smile. “In this neighborhood? Nah. I’m sure we have plenty of time.”
My attention had narrowed to one place: The machete in the man’s hand. My body was so tense, so still, it was like I was dead already, suffering rigor mortis, head to foot.
“I’m not changing my mind,” Coop said, brave and stupid as ever.
The man with the scar walked closer, shaking his head. “Not only are you changing your mind, but you’re going to level up. From now on, weed’s for high schoolers. You’re on tweak, making us some real money.”
“I don’t know what I have to say to get this through your thick skulls—”
The man with the scar seized me, and I screamed, the rigor mortis broken. I scrambled in the bedsheets, trying to wrench my arm from his grasp.
He pulled a gun out of his jacket with his free arm and flipped the safety. He held it to my head, and my entire existence became a ring of cold metal pressed against my temple.
“Watch your mouth, or I’ll put something through her skull.”
Coop lunged at him, moving so fast I didn’t have time to react, knocking the gun out of his hand and shoving him to the floor.
“Coop!” My scream was gutteral. But Coop wasn’t listening to me; he was punching the man, over and over, blood flying.
The man with the buzzed scalp shoved Coop off his partner and thrust the machete under his chin. “Don’t move.” His voice was ice. His eyes dilated, making him look mad, and his veins twisted like dark tree branches under his pale skin.
Coop froze. The man with the scar scrambled to his feet and wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand. “You’re going to regret that.”
I leapt from the bed to the kitchen, where I’d left my phone.
“Hey!” barked the man with the machete. “Move one more inch and I slit his throat.”
I stopped and turned.
The man with the scar seized Coop’s wrist. “You’re not quitting. You’re coming back and you’re recommitting.”
“Go to hell,” insisted Coop.
The man grinned and pulled Coop’s arm straight. For a second, I was confused, because it looked like a dance move. Then the man struck like a viper, snapping Coop’s arm at the joint.
For a split second, it was the worst sound I’d ever heard—bone shattering, ligaments tearing—until Coop’s bloodcurdling scream.
He dropped to his knees. I rushed forward, barely able to see past my tears, knowing I had to protect him. But the man with the machete pointed it at me, and I halted before I ran into the blade.
“Coop,” I sobbed.
“If you don’t come back,” said the man with the scar, “we will hunt you down.” His eyes shifted to me. “We’ll hunt her down. And we’ll kill you both.”
“You don’t get to walk away,” the man with the knife said. “Remember that.”
Waiting in the emergency room that night, alone and shaking, all I could see was Coop’s face when the glass door first shattered, his lack of surprise. The way he reached automatically for the machete in his bedside table—the movement quick and fluid. Practiced.
I’d known, but I’d forgotten: Coop was dark, wrong, the opposite of perfect. What was I playing at?