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The sound of his voice, deep and husky, fills me with a powerful sense of dread so thick, I feel like I can’t breathe.
“Lanie, stop,” he calls.
The sound of his footsteps quickens and I let out a sharp yelp and start to run.
“Lanie!”
“Leave me alone!”
Lucky for me, I know this neighborhood well and duck through a small hole in a fence that takes me through a vacant lot. I hear him howl in rage as he hits the fence and tries to clamber over it. I have no idea if he made it or not because I duck through another hole in the opposite fence, and with my heart trying to pound its way straight out of my chest, I grit my teeth and run for everything I’m worth.
And when I turn another corner and see the lights of my building, tears of relief blur my vision and sting my eyes.
10
LANE
“What in the hell were you thinking, Lanie?” I snarl.
Lanie’s eyes widen and she stares at me with an expression of stunned disbelief on her face. When she came bursting through my door out of breath and looking like she’d just been chased by the devil himself, I was ready to raise hell. It took a little while and a couple of drinks, but I finally got her seated and calmed down enough to tell me what happened. And as I listened to her story, fury roared in my chest.
“You’re mad at me?” she gasps.
“I told you that I don’t want you walking home alone at night,” I press. “You told me that you’d text me. You swore it.”
“I wasn’t even supposed to work tonight,” she counters. “My boss called me in last minute and asked me to cover a shift—”
“You should have texted me to let me know. I would have been there to pick you up, Lanie. None of this would have happened,” I seethe.
“Nothing happened, Lane. I’m fine. He startled me but—”
“But you got lucky. This could have turned out so much worse.”
“But it didn’t.”
“It could have,” I growl.
Lanie is sitting on the couch with Daisy’s big head in her lap, idly stroking her. I pace the living room, my fingers interlocked behind my head, my frustration boiling over. I’m doing everything I can to rein it in and keep from blowing up at her, but knowing how close I came to potentially losing her scares the shit out of me. Even worse than that is her cavalier attitude about the whole thing.
Just imagining someone hurting her is enough to make me see red.
“This can’t happen again,” I finally say.
“I can take care of myself, Lane.”
“No, you can’t. That’s what I’m here for,” I grit my teeth. “I’m here to take care of you, but you don’t make it easy.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me. You’re not my dad.”
“No, I’m not. I’m somebody who actually cares about you.”
She recoils like I just struck her, and I silently kick myself for letting that slip out. That was about as cheap a shot as I could have taken, and I’m instantly filled with shame and regret.
“That was… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” I say.
She shrugs. “It’s fine. It’s true anyway.”
“I’m just frustrated, Lanie. This is exactly why I told you to text me when you work at night—to keep anything like this from happening.”
