Chapter 13
Waking up felt like trying to swim through glue. Thick, slow, and wrong. My head pounded something fierce, making me feel a teensy bit sick to my stomach, and my mouth tasted like I'd licked the restroom floor in that mangy rest stop.
“—told you he’d come,” a voice said somewhere beyond the fog. “Guy’s got a reputation. He won’t risk it. And you saw the way he stared after this damned idiot when he rode off with those puppy dog eyes. Jackass has it bad for the pathetic little twink.”
Another voice, lower, rougher. “He better not try anything stupid.”
Oh. Oooooh... Fun!
First things first. I made ahugemental note not to move. Nor open my eyes. I had to stay super duper still.
I couldn't even so much as twitch, because I may be many things—dramatic, impulsive, and yes, a devastatingly attractive twink—but I was not stupid.
Okay. I wassometimesstupid.
But not right then.
“As soon as we get Graves, we’re done,” the first voice continued. “It will be quick, and then he'll owe us, so he might let us in on his next job.”
Graves? Graves? Oh... Were they talking about the super skeezy dude that shot my Daddy and then got his ass handed to him by said, sexy Daddy?
Wait. Not my Daddy. And also not what was important at the moment.
Focus, Alfie.
Everything snapped into place like a really terrible jigsaw puzzle. They had taken me to get to Crowe. All so they could get the creepy bad guy that Crowe had worked so hard to catch. My stomach dropped. No! No, no, no! Not a fucking chance. Absolutely not. Because that meant Crowe would come, and save the day, and give up his bad guy. For me!
He was such a stupid, stubborn, frustrating man with a stupid sense of responsibility and his stupid refusal to let bad things happen to people he—
Felt responsible for. Not care about or anything, because that would be asking way too much.
Ugh. I couldn't have him give up his bad guy for me. That would be totally uncool and prove to him that he was right to push me away.
I cracked one eye open, just enough to take in my surroundings. I was surrounded by rough industrial walls and quite uncomfortably nestled on cold, unfinished concrete floors. There was one small window, too high and unfortunately too small to be of any use to me. And then a closed metal door across the room.
I was probably being held in some storage room in a warehouse. Like... like... astupidfucking cliche. And if there wasone thing that I was definitely not, it was a cliche. I was way too sexy and classy for that.
Other than my pounding head and a terrible ache in my face, the rest of my body seemed to be doing okay. I even still had all my clothes on, which was a definite bonus. If anyone was going to be undressing me, it was Crowe. And then there were my wrists... which were bound infrontof me with zip ties.My wrists were bound in front of me with zip ties.
I almost laughed. “Oh, you idiots,” I whispered under my breath. Of course, they’d put them in front. Because why would anyone expect the prettytwinkyhitchhiker to know anything useful?
I shifted slowly, carefully, testing the give. It was tight enough to keep my hands close together, but not so bad that it was cutting off circulation.
Perfect. Exactly what I needed. My heart kicked up a notch, adrenaline slicing clean through the lingering fog in my head.
Okay, Alfie. You’ve got this.
I focused on the lesson I got from that random cop that gave me a lift the one time... he'd been so upset with me for hitchhiking, but once he'd realized this was my passion and I could not be talked out of it, he insisted on teaching me a few self-defense tricks, and a few other handy tricks in case anyone ever got the better of me.
You know... Like knocking me out and tying me up with zip ties.
Right. Focus. Twist, angle it just right, put just enough pressure, and... I twisted my wrists inward, ignoring the bite of plastic against my skin, forcing the tie toward the weakest point.
It didn’t budge.
Fuck. Cool, that's fine. I could do this. I adjusted, tried again, and this time my movements were sharper and faster. The plastic creaked. “Yes,” I breathed. Again, I pushed, twisted, andpulled. The edge dug into my skin, a sharp sting blooming into something warmer, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. Not with voices outside talking about trading me for some crazy, icky, bad guy and getting one over onmyCrowe.
One more—
