“Vincent!”
His hand cracked across my cheek. “Say my name!”
“Vincent!”
He shoved his hand down the front of my pants, savagely prodding and grabbing between my legs. “Say it! Say it! Say it, bitch, or I will shove my dick so far up your cunt you’ll fucking taste it.”
Tears streamed down my face. But I couldn’t let Caleb rape me. Not again. The first time had made me want to die.
I needed help. Vincent had said he’d be here, but there was no one. My sobs got lost into the dark night, each of them sounding like Vincent’s name and the heartbroken realization he wasn’t coming.
33
VINCENT
Sitting low behind the wheel of my car, my black ball cap pulled down on my forehead, I watched Bliss toss the money onto the passenger seat of her car and drive out of the Psychos parking lot.
Like a shadow, I followed smoothly behind her, keeping an eye on her taillights as I trailed her through Saint View.
Every muscle in my body hurt. From my toes to my fingers. Every muscle in my back and in my gut.
I’d been fighting an internal battle all week. Ever since I’d dragged War off Bliss at the club, he’d been in my ear. While I was at work, surrounded by noise, it was easier to drown him out. But now, in the silence of the car, his taunts started again.
You let another man touch her?
“She said she wanted him to,” I muttered.
Jealous?
I refused to listen. Bliss and I had talked. She liked War. He was allowed to touch her like that. Her screams hadn’t meant he was hurting her. But seeing them like that. Thinking she was being hurt, had opened up something inside me. It had given Scythe room to move around, and I’d been paying for it ever since.
War wasn’t going to hurt her. And neither was Nash. Neither of them were threats to her.
Scythe was.
His laughter mocked me.
I focused on the road ahead. The rain was worsening, bucketing down now in heavy sheets that seemed to only get worse the higher up the cliff face we went. I could barely see Bliss’s taillights through the onslaught.
I needed to be closer.
I accelerated, ignoring the slippery roads and lack of visibility. I couldn’t lose her.
She flashed through a green light, but by the time I got there, it had turned red.
You know you’re going to lose her, Vinnie boy.
I wasn’t. And I fucking hated when he called me that. I put my foot down harder.
The truck hit the back end of my car with a sickening screech of metal against metal.
It spun me around the slippery road in dizzying circles. My head bounced off the window, a sharp pain splintering through my brain while black flickered at the edges of my vision. Around and around the car spun, sliding through the intersection, finally coming to a stop on the other side, facing in the wrong direction.
Things moved slowly. Outside, the dark was pierced with lights and horns.
None of them were Bliss’s.
The pain in my head only added to the rest of the pain in my body.
“Bro! Are you okay?”
The rapping of knuckles across the glass window to my left jolted me, and I twisted my neck to see who it was. An unfamiliar face peered through, his eyes big with worry.
“Can you move? You need to get out of the car! There’s gas leaking everywhere!”
Well, that wasn’t ideal. The moment he mentioned it, the toxic tang seared my nostrils.
I pushed on the door, and it gave way.
The man’s hand gripped my arm as he helped support me, half dragging me away from my car and over to the side of the road. “Fucking hell, bro. That was the most intense thing I’ve ever seen. Look at your car!”
But my car was the last thing on my mind. My gaze landed on the black motorbike behind the man.
The keys still dangled from the ignition; a black helmet abandoned to the side of the road. I staggered toward it.
“That truck just cleaned you right up! I can’t believe you walked away from that. Are you sure you’re okay— Hey!”
I slammed my foot down on the kick start and shot off into the night, the wail of police sirens and ambulances forgotten in the need to get to Bliss.
Well, you fucked that up, didn’t you? One simple task, Vinnie. All you had to do was follow her.
I pushed the bike as hard as I could, a rising sense of danger growing with every mile I passed. The road curved, and I leaned with it, back and forth, winding my way up the mountain while a clock ticked in my head, each movement of the second hand whispering, Bliss, Bliss, Bliss.
The rain started up again, soaking through my clothes and jeans, the wind whipping at my bare skin like ice.