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Fear pulses through me, trembling every nerve in my body as my heart demands that I do something. But he holds my wrists between the press of our bodies while his other hand maneuvers the gun.
I can’t fight back. I can’t scratch his DNA beneath my nails to save for when they find me later. So I do everything I can. I memorize the shape of his eyes. The height of his body several inches above mine. White male. Brown eyes. Five-seven at the most. Little-man syndrome is alive and well.
“He said I could do whatever I wanted with the body. I think he meant your dead body, but I like the fight of the live ones too much.” His amused words skim against my ear as he grinds his hips into mine.
“Fuck you,” I grind out beneath his palm as my knee comes up hard with shaking, a fight-or-flight reaction racing through my veins.
His legs shift to block my knee with ease. His chuckle is this disgusting thing that washes over me on his hot breath.
“Yes, you will,” he promises.
And then the metal of the gun is pressing against my thighs. He shoves harshly at the hem of my dress, and all I can think about is how my leggings and jeans were all dirty in the laundry this morning. It was so cold today. I wanted to wear jeans. I should have worn jeans.
His fingers grip my panties, and I hear the fabric jerk and tear, forcing a gasp from my lungs and pain to shoot through my skull. Warmth heats my eyes and lashes as all my quick rational thinking starts to bleed into uncontrollable fear. I blink it away and focus on something else. The lights lining the main road are blurry, but I focus there. My vision blots, and I sickly hope I pass out before he begins. I can’t hang on to one more trauma in my life. It’ll break me. Even if this man doesn’t kill me, the memory of this night will.
I can’t look at him. I think of the cars that pass by. They all drive too fast. Everything is happening too fast.
None of it will matter soon.
“You’re gonna have to make more noise for me, sweetheart.” The gun shoves between my legs, and I clench them harder together. “Come on, sweet–”
And then his words cut away. His body stills against mine. I pull my attention back to the man and past his wide, expressionless eyes is another form. A larger form. A monstrous form of a man. He’s so big, he blocks out the light from the street beyond. His hand lifts swiftly from my attacker’s side, and the glint of his knife is barely seen before he shoves it in again. And again. And again.
I blink hard against the lightheadedness that’s threatening to overtake me.
An empty breath slips from the disgusting man’s lips and fans against my neck as he goes limp against my chest. The guy, my savior, he holds my attacker between us as he studies me in the silence. We’re so close, his hand lands above me against the brick wall. His bright blue gaze is interrupted by a cruel scar that slashes down his left eye. He, too, wears a mask. A white goalie mask, the kind they used in slasher movies in the eighties. It’s splattered with blood, and I can’t for the life of me decide if it’s real or not.
None of this feels real.
He pulls his knife back, and the weight of the body slumps down before dropping at my feet. He takes a single step closer, and I want to fall into him and hide away from my entire life in the safety of his arms. It’s the wildest sensation I’ve ever felt with a total stranger. Especially one that might just be Jason Voorhees reincarnated.
He saved me.
His hand remains pinned above my head as his other palm presses to my hip with a careful sense of intimacy. Why is he touching me, and why does that touch not send a cold panic crawling down my spine like it usually does? It’s then I realize I’m slipping down the rough wall. My knees give out, and he holds me against his chest.
“You’re okay,” he whispers on a warm, gravelly voice. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I blink slowly. I believe him. Blackness seeps in at the edges of my vision as the adrenaline and fear and anxiety finally crash down over my system, but unlike when I repeat that sentiment over and over again to myself like a broken mantra... I believe him.
Everything’s going to be okay.
Six
Rowan
My knuckles split further, caking my skin in blood as I close my fingers around the body and heft it up with barely a grunt. With my eyes trained on every window on the buildings above me, I make sure no one is watching as I haul him towards the rusted dumpster and toss his worthless body inside.
“See what you made me do?” I growl, the rage in my mind surmounting, exploding into fragments of pain and anxiety.
Just another fucking thing for me to clean up. Another fucking thing to take care of. I thought I could multitask and try hockey again? What a fucking joke. My life is too far gone from the dreams I had when I was kid.
“I’ll deal with you later.”
I hate talking to the dead man, and yet I can’t stop the words from coming out, crawling through the dank alleyway.
I swipe up the gun that lies alone and forgotten in the rocks and slide it into the back of my jeans. I’ll look into its registration tonight. No one steps on my shoes. And no one–fucking no one–touches my girl.
Once that asshole’s temporarily taken care of, I walk over to where Atlas lies. She’s so still. More relaxed then I’ve ever seen her. If it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of her chest, I would assume she was dead.
