My stomach cramped, hard. Nausea punched a path straight up my throat, so violent I almost stumbled.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
No.
The hair on my arms rose, and so did every single other fine hair on my body. I shivered out in the morning sun, and I knew. I knew.
I turned, and I fucking ran.
And it was then, immediately right fucking then, three long strides in, that I saw that The Defender had followed me out. He was standing at the open doorway, one hand on each side of the railing, his body stooped. His nose in the air.
“Run!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Go!” I shouted like a fucking banshee. “Don’t let them get you!” I screamed, my voice cracking in panic and worry and desperation.
Please, please, please, let him get away, I thought as I ran for my fucking life.
Because that was exactly what I was doing.
Just not in the direction I should have. Because I couldn’t let them get him. That was what I’d understood. There was going to be no running away.
More of just trying to distract them away from him.
Fuckkkkk!
I’d remember for as long as I lived, that he stood there on the deck, barely able to stand just as a sound exploded across the sky at the same time something hit me in the back hard—so damn hard, oww, oww, oww—once, twice, three times, sending me flying forward.
Just like in the movies when a bomb exploded.
I went airborne for what felt like two minutes but was more than likely just a second before coming to crash, skidding across the hard ground.
My ears rang.
My mouth tasted like… iron. Like blood?
And oww, oww, oww, my ribs… my back. I tried to take a breath, but the pain was unreal. But somehow, even as my vision blurred and my back was on fire and hurt like the worst hell, I lifted my gaze and looked for him.
I found him.
Well, more like the mound of white and gray on the ground by the stairs to the deck.
Why hadn’t he run? How the hell had they taken him down? Had they shot him too?
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw feet. One pair of black boots after another surrounded me, coming so close I thought for sure I was going to get stepped on if I could care about anything other than The Defender.
They couldn’t take him.
No, no, no. “Run,” I tried to say, even though I didn’t actually hear my words because my ears were ringing. “Don’t let them take you,” my lips moved.
Something wet slipped down my cheek as more boots came forward. My back hurt so bad. All I could do was watch the figure on the ground get surrounded by those men wearing black too.
Tears poured down my cheeks, and I whimpered, at least it felt like I did it and—
My ears throbbed harder, and I slapped a palm over the one aching the worst, but I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t even see The Defender anymore, but I hoped more than anything he had managed to get away. He could, I knew he could. Lifting my gaze, I realized I was in the middle of what had to be… twenty… thirty men dressed in paramilitary-type outfits, holding guns all aimed at me.
I had to… I had to do… something…
I couldn’t let them hurt him. How had they found me? I’d been so careful.
I struggled up to my least painful hand and balanced on my other forearm, trying to sit up. “He has nothing to do with this,” I tried to say. “Leave him alone.” I tasted even more blood. Why did my teeth hurt? “Let him go. I won’t fight you. Please. I’ll go with you.”
I would. I’d go with them. Promise.
Everything hurt, everything hurt.
But I had to… I had to…
The sound of a gunshot cracked across the air at the same time something hit my back so hard, I screamed.
Had they shot me? Was I about to fucking die?
Sheer fear wrapped me up entirely at not knowing what was going on.
At failing him.
Failing myself.
My grandparents.
I felt the absolute terror of thinking this was going to be the end. After everything. Here. In the driveway, alone.
I had missed out on so much… and maybe that thought hurt more than the physical pain.
All I’d ever wanted was to be myself. To have a choice. To be valued. And now?
Then there was another crack, and I had to close my eyes.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
It was the pounding in my head that woke me up.
Or maybe the fact that the pain coming from my back was almost unbearable.
The terrible taste in my mouth might have also been a factor.
More than likely, it was all of it.
I felt like I had gotten my ass whooped, and it had been a long, long time since that had happened. Back then too, it had been a bunch of people ganging up on me, except in this case it wasn’t just because I was the new kid.
I wished it was that simple.
But the second I opened my eyes, the second my pupils adjusted enough to the blinding white bulbs installed in the ceiling, I realized something was wrong.
Really, really wrong.
Because daylight bulbs? I didn’t have money for that. So what…？
The shots. The men who looked like soldiers but weren’t, at least not the good kind of soldiers. The Defender sprawled on the ground in front of my trailer.
I sat up so fast my head swam, and I had to squeeze my eyes closed when everything went white.
Holy fuck, my back. My fucking everything. Oww, oww, oww. Blindly reaching backward to try and touch it, I stopped at the weight on my wrist and forced myself to look. There was a band on my hand. One single, thick, heavy cuff.
Where the fuck was I?
There were white walls. The floor was a cold, pale gray concrete. There was a door that looked to be made of some kind of metal with no window of any sort. A toilet and a sink took up one corner.
But it was the figure on the ground to my right that shocked me the most.
It was The Defender.
On his side, in the hoodie he’d borrowed and gray sweatpants that were a lot dirtier than they had been the last time I’d seen them, he was there. Just within reaching distance.
I reached out, instantly going for his throat. Pressing my fingers against a spot on it, I waited, trying to ignore the painfully sharp silence from the plain, empty room that I’d wonder later whether it was soundproofed or not. A steady, ultra-slow beat pulsed against my fingers, and I let out a relieved breath.
He was alive.
He better fucking be.
Blowing out a breath, I pulled my hand back as I crossed my legs under me and pretty much wilted over.
I was alive, and he was alive, and those were both good things, I tried to reason.
But that was about as far as the “good things” here went, and I damn well knew it.
Maybe my head was still throbbing and every survival instinct in my body was going off, but I wasn’t too out of it to not have a good idea of the situation we were in.
A fucked one, that was what.
Totally and completely fucked.
My throat suddenly squeezed in on itself, and when I tried to suck in a breath, my lungs decided otherwise. Tears filled my eyes, and everything went blurry. Panic didn’t just rise in my chest, it tried to eat the whole damn thing in one bite.
I tried to suck in another breath through my nose, and that didn’t work out either.
There was only one thing my body wanted to do, and it didn’t include calming breaths. “Oh no, no—”