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I stare at her, unsure if she’s finished.
“Let’s just do it.” She spins so her back is to me. “Now I can’t see you. It’ll be like a real attack.”
“Tessa, I’m not attacking you.”
“Fake attacking me.”
I walk over to her slowly. “Did I scare you yesterday in the ring?”
Her shoulders raise and lower, as if she’s taking a deep breath. “No.”
I was moving faster then. Hitting another guy. Shouldn’t that have been the place she was scared?
“So why do I scare you now?”
CHAPTERTEN
TESSA
I placea hand on my chest, willing myself to breathe slower.
“Can we talk about something else?” I mumble, heat washing over me. Why can’t I get myself under control?
He steps even closer, unnaturally silent for his size, but there’s a primal awareness that alerts me to his nearness. “If someone came up to you like this,” he murmurs, “would you be able to act? Or would you freeze?”
“I… I don’t know,” I admit.
My eyes squeeze shut as memories from that awful night engulf me. Frozen stiff lying in my bed, helpless to do anything as that giant climbed through my window, somehow not noticing me in the darkness of the room. Mind racing with worry, wondering what I should do. Shout for Mom? Lock my bedroom door? Follow him to see what he’s doing? Crawl out the open window and head for the neighbor’s house?
In the end, I couldn’t do anything, too terrified to move, even after hearing Mom’s scream, the deafening bang of the gun, the front door opening and closing a few moments later. Lying motionless for who knows how long, eventually gathering the courage to rise from my bed once I was sure he was gone. Padding down the hallway, my feet the only noise in the house, that sickening drop in my stomach as I’d discovered Mom, glassy-eyed in her bed, red all over her chest.
Is that destined to be me forever? The girl too paralyzed with fear to act? If I’d screamed for Mom, she would have had the forewarning that someone was there. If I’d gone straight to her after he’d left, maybe I could have saved her somehow. Called 911 and they would have told me what to do.
A light hand settles on my shoulder, bringing me back to the present.
I blink, realizing there are tears in my eyes, that I’m shaking, that it’s difficult to take a breath.
“Tessa?”
It’s the gentleness in his voice that undoes me, the tears flowing faster. I wipe at my face frantically, not wanting him to see me like this.
“I’m sorry if I did anything,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
He’s silent, probably because I’m clearly lying.
I step away from him and over to his couch, tucking my feet under me as I sit down. “What would you do if someone broke into your house while you were sleeping? How would you defend yourself, then?” That’s what it all boils down to, right?
He studies me, that sharp, gray gaze flicking over me, face impassive. How red is my nose after crying? How puffy are my eyes? How pathetic must he think I am?
“What I’d do is different than what you should do,” he finally says.
I find a loose hangnail on my thumb, pulling it off. “So, what should I do?”
“Do you sleep with your bedroom door locked?”
I nod, picking at my thumbnail now.
