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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rynn
I thought it wasn’t possible to feel worse than I had right after the beating took place.
I’d been so incredibly wrong about that.
The following day had been infinitely worse.
I couldn’t move without my stomach screaming in objection. I couldn’t so much as swallow my own spit without feeling like I was gargling glass. My legs and arms felt too sensitive and sore from the cuts.
And to top off that shit sandwich, I had a blinding migraine that made it impossible to do anything but try to sleep it off after taking one of the pills I’d gotten almost a year back after falling off a stupid fire escape and onto the corner of a dumpster, fucking up my shoulder, and landing in a brace for a few weeks.
That pill had to be why I hadn’t heard Cato knocking. I wasn’t a light or heavy sleeper. I was, you know, normal. I could sleep through some sounds—especially the repetitive shit like the garbage trucks knocking around the dumpsters on trash day, the car horns, the sirens, the loud sounds of the city—but always woke up to something off—a knock at the door, the buzzer, something falling in the apartment because the cats decided they wanted to jump on a shelf they weren’t supposed to be on.
It wasn’t like me to sleep through someone knocking, then forcing their way into my house, into my room, calling my name, then touching me to wake me up.
And, yeah, I’d been sleeping with a knife.
In fact, that wasn’t all I’d been sleeping with.
I had a knife under my hand on the mattress, a bottle of mace on my nightstand, a bat under the bed, and a couple of tools—hammers, screwdrivers, a mallet, shit that could do some damage—placed strategically around my apartment.
I wasn’t normally paranoid. Not even after a job didn’t go to plan.
But that had been close. Way, way too close. As I replayed it over and over in my head, I saw all the ways that I could have been hurt, abused, violated, before someone finally decided to put me out of my misery, and dump my body somewhere.
And I’d been face-to-face with the guy for a long time. Long enough that I was worried he saw through my wig and makeup. Or that I could have been followed.
I expected that Josie might show up eventually, sensing something was off because I never called out of work like I had. Especially when I still had to give the client the information I’d gotten for them.
I thought maybe she would show up herself.
I never anticipated her sending Cato.
Or even that he would come, that he would be looking for me when he hadn’t heard from me.
Not only had he shown up, but he’d insisted on staying, he’d treated my wounds, he’d gone out to get me things I could eat with my sore throat.
He’d held me when I cried.
I thought I would die of mortification afterward, but somehow, he just… made it seem like it was no big deal.
As I drifted off to sleep with him still right there beside me, I was reasonably sure that I had fallen for him. I mean, the whole ‘love’ thing was new to me. So I couldn’t be certain, but that warm, chocolate lava cake sensation was back, and stronger.
Which sure seemed a lot like the love they talked about in music and movies.
I woke up the next morning alone, thinking he was gone, that he’d had time to think it over, and he was done with me.
There was no accounting for the crushing sensation in my chest at the idea.
Just to distract myself from it, I went into the bathroom, brushing my teeth, and pulling my hair up.
It was as I was coming out that I heard voices.
Male voices.
I rushed toward the bed, grabbing my bat, and creeping down the hall toward the sound, ready to beat some white supremacist’s brains in.
