Page 7 of Dreadful

“I fucking got it.” Beckett sweeps the piece of metal along the frame, clearing the remaining jagged glass. “Go, Lola. I'll cover you.”

Lola doesn’t hesitate. She grabs the ledge and pulls herself up, kicking once against the wall before disappearing through the opening.

I look at Beckett. “You’re next.”

Something passes between him and Rafe over the top of my head—a look I don’t fully catch, quick and wordless. Beck’s jaw shifts. Rafe’s hand is already finding my waist.

“Baby.” His hands close around my waist, and he lifts me toward the window before I can argue.

The broken frame snags my shirt as I tip over the edge. The drop is short, but the landing isn’t. My arm hits the pavement at the wrong angle, and the pain is sudden and total, a white-out that steals the breath straight from my chest.

I’m still blinking the edges back in when Beckett drops beside me, absorbing the impact in a low crouch before he’s already upright and moving. His hand wraps around my good arm. “Bells, let's go. The building is gonna come down any minute.”

“Not without him.” I shake my head, never pulling my focus from the open window. Smoke pours through the broken window now, thick and black against the night sky.

“Goddammit,” Lola curses, lifting her gun and looking from left to right.

I know I should do the same, make sure we're not about to be taken out after we just escaped. But I can't make myself look away. “Rafe!” I yell, fear constricting my throat.

Then Rafe's gorgeous face appears in the window. His gaze locks onto mine just as something inside the warehouse groans. His eyes widen, and he shouts, “Get back!”

The command barely leaves his mouth before he launches himself through the window. He lands on his feet in one breath, and in the next, his arm is around my middle, and I'm lifted off the ground. My arms go around his neck instinctively, and he's running.

We make it ten feet.

Then the warehouse comes apart.

THREE

BELLAMY

The world is on fire. It’s bent and melted at the edges. Sound is everywhere—inside my back teeth, behind my eyes, in the soles of my feet. Something enormous and invisible shoves me forward a half-step before Rafe’s arm yanks me down and his hand finds the back of my head and then there is only pavement: my shoulders, my elbows, the injured arm screaming on impact. Rafe’s weight crushes the last of the air out of me in a single hard compression, and for a moment there is nothing left inside my chest at all.

For a few seconds, I can’t hear anything except a violent ringing filling my skull. The world blurs in and out around the edges. Smoke rolls across the pavement while flames burst through part of the warehouse roof behind us, lighting the night sky orange.

Rafe is still on top of me, one arm locked around the back of my head, and the other still clutching a gun and bracing hard against the concrete beside my shoulder. His chest heaves violently against mine, his mouth moving.

I blink up at him through the ringing in my ears, trying to force my brain to catch up. But I can't hear him.

His eyes scan my face frantically instead. He pulls back, his hands immediately sliding down my body like he’s checking for injuries before I can even breathe properly again.

I grab weakly at the front of his shirt. “Rafe.”

The ringing subsides enough that sound fades in. The roar of a fire, metal groaning as it warps in the heat, someone shouting maybe.

Rafe grips my chin, turning my face toward his again. “Talk to me, Bellamy.”

I tilt my head to the side, trying to still his roaming hands long enough to look him over. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” he says instantly.

“You used your body as a shield.” It comes out like an accusation—and maybe it is.

His jaw tightens sharply. “Tell me where you're hurt.”

“I’m fine, Rafe.” I settle my palm on the back of his neck, and he stills.

He drops his forehead to mine, brushing his lips across mine as he breathes out, “Baby.”