Page 8 of It's Always Been You

I hear my name again.

Fuck…

I can’t breathe.

“You piece of shit,” Harrison hisses. “You should have never betrayed me. I trusted you, Son. But you stabbed me in the back.”

I blink, reminding myself to breathe and forcing oxygen into my lungs. Harrison stumbles away from me and toward Riley, but I grab onto his ankle. Holding him back.

“You’re going to die, Grayson,” he grits through clenched teeth. “But not before I make you watch me defile that little girlfriend of yours.”

He tries to shake off my hold, but I use every bit of my remaining strength to pull myself up. And then I pummel my fist into his face.

I hear a bone crack.

And Harrison lets out a high-pitched scream.

I wrestle the gun from his hand as we both stumble away from each other. The ground continuously sways underneath my feet.

Everything hurts.

My body. My skull. And there’s a burning pain in my abdomen.

I don’t look down at it; I know I’m bleeding. I see the knife in Harrison’s hand. It’s my blood on that knife.

As long it’s my blood and not Riley’s.

Harrison pounces toward her with his bloody knife, but this time I’m faster. A loud gunshot rings out through the silent darkness. He screams and through blurred vision, I see him slump to the ground.

My knees weaken, and everything goes black.

“Grayson!”

My name…

Her voice.

“Grayson, oh God! Please wake up. Please, please.”

“Ri—” Fuck, I can’t even speak. My throat is parched and my tongue feels heavy in my mouth.

“Yes! It’s me, Riley. C’mon, baby. I found a car. Harrison had a car. I got you in it. Do you remember? We drove… but— b-but a deer, I didn’t see it. It happened so fast.”

I don’t understand what she’s talking about. Car? What car? Harrison? What happened?

I can’t…remember.

“Oh God, I tried to avoid hitting it, but I think I was going too fast. Our c-car—we flipped…Grayson…Grayson?!”

I can’t make any sense of her words.

Everything hurts.

I blink my eyes open and I see Riley, standing over me. She has a gun in her hands, and she’s pointing it at someone. “You take one more step, Harrison, and I will shoot you. I swear, I will fucking shoot you.”

There’s a dark, masculine laughter.

“You shouldn’t have escaped, pet.”

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