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“Do you want me to leave?” I surprised myself, uttering the words with a steady voice.
I don’t know why I thought he would say no, or say nothing. I was wrong, either way.
“Yes.”
The tears started flowing then, but he couldn’t see them. He didn’t move from his position on the bed. I couldn’t even be angry, because I’d crossed a line and I knew it, and meaning well wasn’t good enough. I grabbed my purse and keys from the kitchen table and my coat from the sofa, ears pricked for the sound of him coming after me, telling me to stay. There was nothing but silence from his room.
When I opened the door, Francis shot inside, along with a burst of cold air. I pulled the door shut behind me before a sob broke free. Gulping the frigid air and wondering how I’d managed to screw this up so thoroughly, I was determined not to cry until I was in my truck. I slid my hand along the railing as I rushed clumsily down the steps, because I couldn’t see through the combination of a moonless night and my tears. A splinter pierced my hand two steps from the bottom.
“Ow! Dammit.” The physical pain provided the ideal excuse for the sobbing to start. I sprinted down the long, curved driveway, unsuccessful in my attempt to curb my tears long enough to get into the truck. “Damn. Damn. Damn. Fuck.” I jammed my key into the lock by feel.
Déjà vu. That was the first thing I thought when I felt myself propelled across the bench seat. That was where the resemblance ended, though.
Buck shut the door behind him and slapped the automatic lock. His weight immobilized my lower legs and he had my left wrist in his hand before I could make out who he was, though I knew. “Good enough to spread your legs for anybody but me, huh Jackie?”
Chapter 26
On my back, with my head at an awkward angle against the passenger door, I jerked at my arm and struggled without success to move my legs. “Get off!” I yelled the words, knowing they would be meaningless to him. I was parked in the street—too far for anyone else to hear me. “Get out of my truck!” I’d dropped my keys onto the truck floor when he’d shoved me into the truck, and I searched the floor with my right hand, intending to use them as a weapon.
“I don’t think so.” He grabbed my right wrist and shook his head like he could read my mind. “You’re not going anywhere until we’re done talking. You and your lying cunt friend have ruined my f**king life.”
And then, I heard Ralph’s voice in my head. Your body is already a weapon. You just need to know how to use it. Abruptly, I stopped struggling and took stock: I couldn’t kick. I could possibly get my wrists free by rotating and jerking them straight down, but then what? He would just grab me again, immobilize me further.
I needed him closer—the last thing I would naturally seek. I turned my eyes away.
“Listen to me when I’m talking to you, goddammit!” He grabbed my chin roughly, his fingers digging in as he leaned over me and forced me to face him.
Right hand free.
While shoving my hand between us, grabbing and twisting his balls and yanking up as hard as I could, I slammed my forehead into his nose with as much force as I could manage in a straight upward trajectory.
The night in the frat parking lot, everything had happened so quickly that getting my bearings was impossible until it was over. This time, everything was in slow motion—so for an impossibly stretched space of time, I was positive that nothing I’d just done had worked.
And then he screamed, and his nose started gushing. I had never seen so much blood so close-up. It poured out of him as though I’d opened a faucet full-blast.
Left hand free.
He was listing to the side. Still yanking up on his balls, I raised my left knee and turned into him, shoving his shoulder with my left hand. He fell sideways into the cramped crevice in front of my truck’s bench seat. The feeling rushed back into my legs, tremors wracking through me, and I went for the door, shoving it open so violently that it almost bounced all the way back.
Just before I cleared the door, his right hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, like the never-quite-dead psycho in a horror movie. I spun and smashed my fist down on the sensitive spot on his upper forearm, inches down from his the crook of his arm, and he released me, bellowing angrily and attempting to flail himself into an upright position.
I didn’t wait to see if he succeeded. I vaulted from my truck and ran.
This would have been an ideal time to scream, but I could barely gasp breaths. I heard his footsteps pounding unevenly behind me and I focused on Lucas’s door at the top of those steps. I was halfway down the driveway when Buck lunged from behind and grabbed at my hair, yanking me to a stop painfully. I yelped as we went down, immediately turning onto my side as Lucas had taught me, dislodging him.
Suddenly, Lucas was there. Like a dark avenging angel, he yanked Buck away from me and threw him, and then installed himself between us. I scrambled backwards, crab-like. He spared me one glance, his colorless eyes flaring in the dim light cast by the flood lights at the side of the house, before he turned back to Buck, who’d rolled to his feet. Blood coated the space between his nose and mouth and was smeared on his chin, but there was little on him aside from that.
A second floodlight at the corner of the house popped on, illuminating the scene.
Panting, I glanced down at my chest and started. My pink and white knit shirt was stained dark from the neckline to the top of my belly. Because of our positions when I’d slammed Buck’s nose, my chest had caught the majority of blood that gushed from his face.
I battled the urge to rip my shirt off in the Heller’s front yard.
Crouching, he tried to circle Lucas. Rather than turn with him, Lucas moved sideways, remaining with his back to me, blocking Buck from getting any closer to me.
Buck’s voice was a gruff snarl. “I’m gonna bust that lip wide open, emo-boy. I’m not f**ked up this time. I’m stone-cold sober, and I’m gonna kick your ass before I f**k your little whore nine ways from Sunday—again.”
Lying bastard.
Lucas didn’t rush him, and didn’t respond at first, and then I heard his very controlled voice. “You’re mistaken, Buck.” Never shifting his eyes from him, Lucas unzipped his leather jacket, shrugged it off and tossed it aside. As he shoved the sleeves of the dark long-sleeved t-shirt above his elbows, I noted the worn jeans he’d pulled on earlier and the shit-kicker cowboy boots he grabbed when he was in a hurry, because they didn’t require the time-suck that lacing his black combat boots involved.
