“Stop.”
I sucked in a breath, pinched my nose, and tried to remind myself… tried to remind myself that this wasn’t the end of the world.
Things were just things.
Maybe I could explain and beg for forgiveness so that my students would come back.
I was free, and I had no reason to think I wouldn’t have a long life ahead of me. I could hide again. So what if I was technically broke and had no identity?
Home could be anywhere.
The sob exploded out of my mouth.
I was full of shit.
If they had found me once, they could find me again. My cover was blown. What the hell was I going to do? This wasn’t the eighties or the nineties. You couldn’t even rent a hotel room without a credit card.
I cried.
I cried and I cried, silently at least, and my chest shook as even more tears came out of my eyes and out of my soul.
I had nothing, and they had almost killed me in there. I’d thought I was going to die. I really had.
My brain hurt. My nose hurt. My throat felt like it was never going to be the same again because of what they had done. I was so fucking mad at being so damn helpless, my brain instantly hurt even more.
Deep in the back of my head, I heard a growl, and at some point, there was a poke at my side.
Then I heard a super-serious voice ask, “Why are you crying?”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy pressing my hands to my eyes harder.
“Why are you crying?” he asked again, that time in an almost gentle voice that was hard to ignore.
“I’m s-sc… I’m… scared.” Oh shit, my voice broke. In half. In pieces. I was blubbering.
Another poke came at my side, followed by a “Gracie” that was so deep I couldn’t ignore it. “There’s nothing for you to be afraid of.”
He was right. I knew he was fucking right, but… but…
No. No, I didn’t know that. I was full of shit.
There was another poke to my shoulder, and I wept even more. Wept for the last few weeks. For the last few months, for the last few years since my grandma had died. For the last six since my grandpa had passed away.
I was so alone—so goddamn alone—and so overwhelmed, and I wasn’t sure how the hell I was going to get through this next chapter in my life. I would. I had to, I knew that, but how?
After what might have been a few minutes, but might have been longer than that, there was another poke so hard that I had to lift my head because oww.
Long fingers curled under my chin, and the next thing I knew, he was tilting my face up and Alexander was dipping his. Right there, he was right there. “No one is close by. They won’t find us.”
“Okay,” I said as I cried even harder and it hurt. It fucking hurt.
“What are you worried about?” he asked after a long moment.
I told him the truth. “Everything.” My bottom lip was trembling. I could feel my chest shaking too if I was going to be honest. But I couldn’t summon a lie, even a half-assed one. It felt too big for that. I blubbered out, “I… don’t… have… a… home.”
He blinked. “This again?”
Again? I gasped and felt even more tears slip down my cheeks. “It’s not a little thing!” I didn’t have multiple ones sitting around, dammit. “I don’t… I don’t have anything. No money. No ID. No home. No computer. No job. No nothing. I’m really worried I lost my voice mails. They know my name. They found me. I got waterboarded. I’m sweating it just thinking about taking a shower. What if they find us? I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die alone. Not like this. I’ve got no loved ones, no one who gives a shit, no one to—”
Alexander tilted my head just a little bit farther back, and his face got that much closer. So close I could feel the heat of his forehead just shy of mine. “Stop.” His bossy voice was back.
“No.” I shook my head and then instantly froze. “Why? Am I being too loud? Is someone coming?”
His breath brushed against my mouth. “No one’s coming.”
My relief was out of this world, at least until he opened his mouth next.
“You’re right about some of that.” He paused. “You are fucked.”
No shit.
I just about snorted at the oversimplification before really taking in the sober expression on his face.
Then he kept talking. “Part of what happened is my fault.” Something moved across his features that might have been guilt. Maybe? “The life you knew is over, you’re right.”
I knew it was bad when he was telling me it was bad.
I whimpered. Dammit, he didn’t have to rub it in. I bent over and slapped my hands against my knees as my head swam, and I suddenly felt dizzy all over again. Nauseous. Oh boy, I was going to fucking throw up.
“Not again. Calm down,” he told me in his bossy britches tone.
But I didn’t care. I was going to have a panic attack.
No, scratch that, it was going to be a straight-up shit attack.
I gagged.
He cursed. “Stop.”
Was this what a panic attack felt like? An imaginary elephant sitting on your chest? “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” I was human. I should be proud of myself for keeping it together in the first place. Shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t I?
“You’re so dramatic,” he had the nerve to say because his life wasn’t over. Everything he had tried to keep a secret for, oh, his entire life, hadn’t just gone into the shitter.
Mine had.
Literally every precaution I’d ever taken, every sacrifice my grandparents had ever made, had gotten blown up with C4 and then lit on fire all over again.
It was all for nothing now.
I didn’t have the money, resources, and sure as fuck didn’t have the power to protect myself.
My whole body started shaking.
The man cursed again, dropping an f-bomb, then another, and a third, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw he dropped to a squat beside me and sighed just as he moved his head to meet my eyes. “Calm down,” he ordered in what was definitely his superhero voice.
I didn’t give a fuck. I shook my head. “No!”
He groaned. “Please.”
That got me to peek at him.
“You haven’t been thinking things through, but I have.”
He had?
“Take a damn breath and listen.” He almost sounded patient.
But my body shook again anyway.
“Gracie,” he enunciated my name in a way I’d never heard before.
I tried, opening my other eye to look at him. His face was smooth, and considering how the day had gone, he didn’t look tired. He still looked pretty damn good despite the clay-like mud all over him.
But his features were serious, not grouchy, not irritated, just absolutely solemn.
He looked like he was about to give me bad news, and I braced myself.
“My people… we take life debts seriously.” He didn’t exactly sound happy about that. “That’s what I owe you. My life. Time and time again.”
I sniffled, wanting to tell him that he didn’t, that that wasn’t true, but…
“Your life is over—stop it and listen. You might be the most hardheaded person I’ve ever met,” he grumbled, peering at me with those purple eyes. “The life you knew is over. Any alias you’ve lived under or were planning on living in the future, isn’t an option anymore. They went through your whole house. They opened and looked at everything. You’re good at erasing your browser history and keeping your tracks covered, but they took your laptop. You have to expect them to find something. They are going to go to the ends of the earth to find you.”