“I’m acting crazy?” I twisted, trying to rip my arm from his grasp, but his fingers only dug deeper. “Marv, you’re hurting me.”
“Then stop fighting.”
“I’m fighting because you won’t let me go.”
I swung my free hand and slapped the side of his face. The blow barely moved him, but the surprise loosened his grip long enough for me to tear my arm free. I ran toward the door and reached for the lock. He then yanked the back of my ponytail. Pain ripped across my scalp as my head snapped backward. Iscreamed and Marv dragged me away from the door while my slides scraped against the tile and my hands clawed at his wrist.
“Let go of my hair!”
“You think you can put your hands on me?”
“You hit me first!”
He pulled harder as tears sprang to my eyes from the pain. Reaching behind me, I drove my elbow backward until it connected with his ribs. Marv grunted, and his grip loosened enough for me to turn. I shoved both hands into his chest with every bit of strength I had. He stumbled into the entry table. The table tipped sideways, and a framed picture crashed against the floor. Glass scattered across the tile, swallowing my keys beneath the broken frame, but the door was close enough that I no longer needed them.
Marv came toward me again. My hand closed around the first solid thing within reach, a heavy ceramic candle holder from the table. I swung toward his head. He ducked, and the candle holder slammed into his shoulder.
“Bitch!” The word came out of him like a growl.
I didn’t wait to see what he would do next. I grabbed the lock, twisted it, and yanked the door open. His hand caught the back of my shirt. The collar tightened against my throat as he pulled me backward. I twisted inside the fabric, hearing stitches tear near my shoulder. One slide slipped from my foot as I drove my heel down against his shoe causing him to curse. I threw my weight forward. The shirt stretched, then ripped enough for me to slide from his grip and stumble into the hallway.
“Help!” My voice broke around the blood in my mouth. I slapped one hand against the wall to steady myself as I ran toward the stairs, one foot was bare and the other still trapped inside a slide.
“Somebody help me!”
A door opened behind me, another followed farther down and an older man stepped into the hallway wearing plaid pajama pants and a white undershirt. A woman peered from behind another door with a phone already pressed against her ear.
“What’s going on?” the man called.
“He attacked me!”
Marv emerged from my apartment. His eyes moved from the neighbors to me, and uncertainty showed across his face for the first time since he arrived, more doors were opening now and somebody shouted that the police were being called. Marv wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looked down both ends of the hallway, then ran behind me.
I raced down the stairs, my bare foot slamming against concrete hard enough to send pain shooting up my leg since one of my damn shoes came off. Fear carried me faster than the pain could slow me. Somewhere behind me, a stairwell door slammed hard enough to echo through the building.
I was still yelling. “Help me!”
My voice carried across the parking lot. A woman loading groceries into her trunk froze with one bag still in her hand while two men were standing beside a parked car straightened and turned toward me. Above, one of my neighbors leaned over the railing and shouted for someone to call the police. The blood coated my tongue each time I breathed. My cheek throbbed, my scalp burned where Marv had pulled my hair, and the arm he grabbed felt hot beneath my torn sleeve.
I kept moving though pumping my arms like I was on the track field. I didn’t know where I was going. My keys were buried beneath broken glass upstairs. My phone lay somewhere on the apartment floor. All I knew was that I needed distance between myself and Marv. An engine roared behind me and I turned. Marv’s car jerked away from the curb, with one tire dropping from the grass onto the pavement. He leaned over the steeringwheel, and his face was barely visible through the windshield as he cut across the lot.
For one terrified second, I thought he was coming toward me. Instead, he swung wide and nearly struck a parked SUV before racing toward the exit. People shouted as he passed, and someone threw both hands into the air as if that might slow him down. I turned away and searched the parking lot for somebody safe. That was when a black truck came speeding from the far end of the complex and I noticed it was Lev. Relief hit me so hard my knees nearly gave way. His truck cut around a row of parked cars far faster than anyone should have driven through the lot.
“Lev!” I waved both arms to make sure he saw me.
Through the windshield, I could see him leaning forward with his attention fixed on me. The truck accelerated, closing the distance. I started toward him then tires screamed somewhere to my left. The sound was so sudden and violent that I turned without understanding why. An old Impala flew over the speed bump instead of slowing down. Its front end bounced hard, and sparks flashed beneath it as the undercarriage scraped the pavement.
For the smallest fraction of a second, I thought the driver had lost control, but the car wasn’t swerving it was aiming. The voices around me seemed to stretch and fade. I saw the grille rushing closer, saw the sunlight reflecting across the windshield, and then saw the silhouette behind the wheel and knew it was Rome.
His face looked nothing like the man I had once loved. His eyes were wide and dark, fixed on me with a hatred so deep it distorted everything familiar about him. Both hands were locked around the steering wheel, his body pitched forward as if he could force the car to go faster by leaning into it.
I tried to run but my bare foot slipped against the pavement. The car struck me before I could take another full step. Theimpact lifted my body from the ground. Pain ripped through my hip and lower body, hotter and sharper than anything I had ever experienced. My back slammed against the side of a parked car, and Rome’s front bumper crushed me between the two vehicles. A scream ripped through the parking lot. I couldn’t tell whether it came from me or from one of the people watching. Metal groaned behind my back and pressure crushed my legs until it felt as though every bone below my waist had shattered at once. I tried to move, but my body no longer obeyed me. My palms struck uselessly against the hood while I fought for air.
Through the windshield, I saw Rome staring directly at me. There was no shock in his face and no regret. He meant to do it. The realization hurt in a place the car couldn’t reach. Gunshots erupted and the first tore into the windshield near Rome’s head, spreading a web of white cracks across the glass. Two more followed before he ducked. More bullets punched through the car as he threw it into reverse.
The vehicle jerked backward, releasing me so suddenly that my body collapsed toward the pavement. My legs folded beneath me, and I landed hard on my side. Rome’s tires spun against the ground. Smoke rose around them as he reversed, swung the back end into another vehicle, then sped toward the exit. Gunfire followed him across the lot as people screamed and dropped behind cars. Somebody shouted for Lev to stop shooting, while another voice yelled that an ambulance was already coming.
I tried to lift my head, but the world tilted around me. My ears rang, and every breath scraped through my chest. I couldn’t feel one of my legs. The other burned as if something had been poured inside it and set on fire.
