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The sound starts to crackle, the cement walls of the stairwell not helping my reach.
“Drag it out, Lola, baby. You’re doing great. I’m coming for you.”
And then there’s a noise, a sound from her that I know is pain, and my feet move faster.
My mind goes blank, the call going foggy like the mic is being covered, but it doesn’t matter now. I can hear voices echoing in the garage below me—only a few more flights left.
They’re at the valet.
I see her now. A black car, the door open, Lola’s sweet body pressed against the open doorway, her hands on the metal, going white with strain.
Johnny, a crazy fucking look in his eyes, using his body to push her in.
The noise that comes out of her as his hand comes down on hers, trying to lose her grip.
Pain.
Agony rips through me.
Why wasn’t I with her?
Why did I ask her to come to this?
It was too public. I put her in this position.
So many different scenarios go through my mind, trying to figure out what I could have done, or should have done, but the truth of the matter is, nothing can be changed at this point.
I need to get her.
I hit the pavement as his hand goes behind him.
I know before I even see it what he’s doing.
A gun.
He won’t shoot her, not here. Too obvious, too many cameras and witnesses. But he will bash her head in so she blacks out and he can get her to a safe location without trouble. I reach him as he brings the gun butt down to the back of her head, grabbing his wrist.
Lola’s head, cheeks tear-stained and scared, looks back with the sound of a struggle, and her eyes go wide with relief.
She knows every inch of the art on my body as well as I know her curves, having painstakingly taken each in over the past weeks, each night an art show of its own.
The relief is short-lived as I pull the wrist back, pointing toward the sky, and the gun goes off.
The next two minutes move in a slow montage, a mix of images and feelings and panic.
So much panic.
Because there is a gun, there is a desperate man intending to do harm, and both are within reach of my Lola.
Rage flows through me, though, when my eye moves to her fingers. Cut and bleeding, one swelling already. Then her eyebrow, which is bleeding in a slow drip down her face.
“Who the fuck—” Johnny tries to say, turning toward me.
My hand stays on that wrist, and my hand goes to his neck.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I shout in his face.
“Fuck off, mind your own fucking business!” His hand moves, trying to move my hand from his neck, but I hold tighter, the gun and our hands high in the air. We’re fighting for control.
