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“Avery!”
I pump my arms. My lungs burn, but I don’t slow down. I don’t stop. Heavy bootsteps fall behind me. If I look back, I’m sure I’ll faceplant, so I keep my eye on the prize—the main street. Once I get there, I can probably cut through another alley or jump into a store.
When I finally break free of the alley, the heavens have given me a gift. A yellow cab sits idling at a red light.
“Avery! Get back here!” He’s angry now, I can hear it shaking his voice. I’m not taking my chances with him.
I jump into the back of the cab. “Go!Please!” I slap the plastic barrier between me and the driver.
He glances back, sees the large Russian running toward his car and hits the gas. The light turns green, allowing us an escape into traffic. I turn, watching Luka through the back window. He stops running, hooks his hands on his hips, and watches me back.
“I don’t want any trouble,” the driver says.
“No. No trouble. Thank you.” I lean back into the seat and catch my breath. Sweat breaks out along my forehead. I haven’t run like that since high school. “Thank you,” I say again.
I close my eyes. I’m safe now. Right? That big man can’t run down the taxi. I’m safe.
Right?
Avery
Who feltthe need to name every single bone in the hands and feet? Seriously, more than half the bones I have to memorize are in the damn hands and feet.
For the dozenth time, I cover the image in my textbook with my hand and rattle off the names in my mind, blanking out after only twelve bones. That’s fourteen short.
My self-contempt is short lived because there’s a knock at the door. Finally! My pizza has arrived.
It’s been a shit day, so I decided to splurge and spend the last twenty bucks in my rainy-day jar on a double crust, veggie and sausage pizza. I’ll regret my decision in a few days when I’m scraping the bottom of the peanut butter jar, but that’s a problem for future Avery.
After I grab the twenty from the jar on the kitchen counter, I flip open the lock, noting the chain is missing, but I find it on the floor and pick it up. It must have finally lost its will to hold on and fell off the wall. Maybe once I finish school and finally get a medical assistant job, I’ll be able to pay for a better apartment than this three hundred square foot box I live in. But I have a long way to go.
With an annoyed sigh, I open the door. My mouth waters at the idea of pizza.
But there’s no pizza. Only a mammoth of a man wearing a leather coat with an intense expression.
Luka.
He’s even bigger now than he was at the bar. I bet he has more than twenty-six bones in each of his feet. He’d have to in order to hold up his body. It’s unnecessary, all that muscle he has. And his height doesn’t help matters either. The top of my head barely comes to his pectoral muscles. He could quite easily pick me up and squash me with one hand. Like a bug.
“You don’t even ask who it is before you open the door?” He lowers his chin, making his dark eyes appear even more sinister. His tattooed hand reaches out to me, pulling the short chain from my fingers. “What’s this?”
It takes my brain a beat to catch up to what’s happening. Luka is standing in my hallway, glaring at me, and is now holding the chain to my lock in his hand. LukaRomanov.
“Nothing.” I try to take it back from him, but he raises his hand out of my reach. What the hell is he doing here? Deciding I don’t want to know, I just want him to not be here, I step backward, pushing my door closed.
His massive hand slams against the door, pushing it back at me. I stumble over my feet, and before I can tumble to my ass, he snags my arm and rights my balance for me.
“No. You can’t be here.” I yank free of his grip. “You need to go.”
As casually as if he lives here, he kicks the door shut behind him. Then he turns his back on me and inspects the chain lock. The screw that holds the chain to the faceplate is missing.
“Cheap workmanship,” he grumbles then pockets the chain.
“I want you to leave!” I survey the living room for my phone. Where did I throw it when I got home? It’s a complete time suck, so when I sit down to study, I hide it from myself. Out of sight, out of mind.
He checks the bolt on the door and grumbles more. “You might as well leave your door open with all the protection these locks give you.”
I spot it. It’s tucked beneath my rolled-up yoga mat in the corner by the windows. Maybe I can get out the window and onto the fire escape. I outran him once; I might be able to do it again. Though I have no idea where I’d go this time.
