Chapter 10
June
I felt my legs tremble and my blood pressure drop so fast that my vision got blurry.
“Try to scream, and I’ll cut your tongue out. Do you understand?” I nodded when the guy repeated his threat.
I would’ve done anything for him to take his sweaty hands off me. I would’ve done anything to take those sweaty hands off my face. The pungent smell of smoke made me nauseated.
He finally took his hand off my face, leaving me free to look at him.
It wasn’t Ethan Austin.
I was convinced that it would be him, and instead it was someone I’d never seen. But they definitely looked like each other. Same glassy eyes, same wild reddish beard.
I wasn’t thinking rationally then. Fear turned me into a ball of disjointed impulses.
I looked down at my bare thighs, then lifted my leg and kneed him hard right between his legs. I wasn’t expecting the guy to scream and double over. I ran away immediately. Or at least I tried to, because a figure emerged from the parked SUV and swiftly stopped me.
“Did you get beaten up by a little girl?”
Austin’s dark, gloomy voice startled me.
“Let me go!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
His grip tightened around my arms, and his body clung to my back. I tried to break loose, but he was too strong. I was never going to break free. I needed to call for help.
“Now, here’s what we’re gonna do.”
I glanced down crookedly and saw him take a knife out of his wrinkled jacket pocket. At that point I stopped breathing.
“Shut your mouth, or I swear I’ll cut you.”
He pressed the ice-cold blade against my cheek, making me burst into quiet sobs.
“Okay, I’ll be quiet,” I muttered between my teeth, shaking like a leaf. My assailant started laughing, but not at me.
“A high-school girl beat you up? Seriously?”
“That bitch kicked me in the balls!” the other howled.
Finally, Austin moved the knife away, but brought his head a little too close to my cheek.
“Who would expect that from a little angel like you, huh?”
I tried to stretch my neck out to avoid touching the tip of his cold nose, which he was rubbing against my skin.
My eyes widened in terror, then I said the first thing that came to mind.
“Of course. He said that he wanted to kill me!”
Austin’s expression changed quickly. He moved away from my face and glared angrily at his friend.
“Seriously, Tom? Dad told us to scare her, not kill her,” barked Ethan at his accomplice.
They started arguing. Austin still held me firmly with his arm, so I put my free hand in the back pocket of my shorts to pull out my phone just as cautiously.
I still had to distract them.
“He said that he wanted to hurt me and that he’d do it even without you!” I accused Tom, making Ethan scowl angrily.
“Why do you always act like this? Can’t you ever follow two fucking orders?” Once they were engrossed in their argument, I typed in my pin number with my right hand to unlock my phone.
Shit. My Face ID was on. I had to scroll up twice and then enter my pin. I tried again, trying to duplicate the mechanical movements I did every day, but it was much harder to do without looking.
“Do we have to do what he says? Always? What if I wanted to have some fun with her?” The conversation made me want to unlock it even faster.
I clicked on the first green icon. The last chat was with my mom, the second to last was with William.
I had to call him. Or maybe it was better not to drag him into this?
“You’re the one who screwed everything up that time, not me!” I heard Tom scream.
Maybe I’d call James.
I was wasting time, so much so that Austin tightened his grip on my arm.
No, no way.
“Nobody’s stopping you from banging her, but we’re not here for that.”
“But he said he wanted to slit my throat! And he also said you don’t have the balls to do it. You can choose not to believe me, but you better know that he said that.”
My words triggered another argument that bought me a few more precious seconds. I craned my neck back to look at my phone screen. I had to call someone as soon as possible. This was my only chance. I scrolled through my messages.
I saw James’s profile out of the corner of my eye. I’ll be damned.
I called.
“I don’t have the balls to do it, Ethan?”
I looked behind me again.
The call started. I had to say something.
“Austin, why’d you come here?”
He looked at me befuddled.
“You’re here with . . . Tom, right?”
“What the fuck are you saying, little girl? Shut up. How do you know our names?”
That dialogue would’ve been enough. James would understand, so I put my phone back into my pocket.
“He said it.” I pointed at Tom. “He said ‘Ethan isn’t capable of doing something like that alone!’”
“No, it’s not. She’s a liar! I didn’t say shit!”
“I know you, Tom, and it isn’t the first time you’ve said something like that.”
“Look, Ethan, let’s put her in the car and bring her to the club,” the other said, grabbing my arm roughly.
Ethan Austin held my other arm. “No! We have to wait here.”
Okay, now they were really hurting me.
“I’ll just bring her in there for a little bit. I wanna see what she’s got under there,” the other guy sneered in an unnerving way as he tried to lift up my hoodie.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Let’s stick to the plan. Do you understand that you don’t make the decisions?”
What plan?
Their eyes lit up when two blinding lights lit up the deserted street.
The two of them didn’t seem scared or disappointed when they recognized James’s Mustang.
Oh no, don’t tell me that this is what they were trying to do.
Was it a trap? James hit the brakes, and I smelled a pungent burning odor release in the air.
The two laughed in unison as soon as James bolted out of his car.
His hair was messy, and he was sweaty. He wasn’t even wearing a shirt.
He looked like he’d jumped into the car without even thinking.
“Calm down, knight in shining armor. There’s no rush,” said Tom, stopping James with a gesture.
“The damsel isn’t in distress,” sneered Austin. “Well, not yet.”
James didn’t even look at him; he was staring at me with his dark eyes.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. Austin tightened his grip on me. He squeezed me against his swollen chest while he dragged the ice-cold blade across my throat, making my heart skip a beat.
James took two steps forward, then lifted his hands in surrender.
“See how easy that was, Tom? Was I right or not?”
“Yeah, bro,” the other mumbled.
“We had our doubts, and now they’ve been resolved.”
I couldn’t believe it. I’d just made James fall into those two thugs’ stupid trap.
“What do you want from her?” James asked.
“Know your enemy’s weaknesses, and you’ve already won,” Austin said. James’s face looked stunned.
“What the fuck do you want from her?!” he shouted, this time more angrily.
“Easy, I don’t want anything from her, bro.” Tom kept laughing like a hyena.
“Let’s see how baby Edward behaves later and maybe we’ll leave your girlfriend alone.”
My assailant’s voice made me jump. Maybe because he didn’t show any signs of taking the damn blade away from my throat.
“I don’t give a flying fuck about her. You could let her go or do whatever you want to her!” snarled James defiantly.
I felt my heart stop. Then Austin laughed sadistically.
“Oh really? Even if I do this?”
He held me still with his arm around my hips while he slipped a hand under my hoodie.
“No!” James’s exclamation made them both laugh. “Tell me what I have to do to make you fucking stop.”
The cold knife rubbed against the warm skin on my stomach. I closed my eyes, terrified when I felt the sharp tip slide up and worm its way under my bra.
And at that point I couldn’t answer for myself anymore.
“James!” I shouted, my voice cracking with fear.
I felt my tears stop in my throat and my skin get colder. This wasn’t really happening. Up until yesterday, the most exciting thing for me was Taylor Swift’s latest album release, and now, what the hell was happening to me?
James threw caution to the wind and pounced on us without even thinking about it for a second. Austin was forced to push me to the ground to face him.
“See how it easy it is with little kids, Tom? They’re blinded by their hormones. This one would take a knife to get laid.” Ethan grunted angrily, pointing the knife at James’s throat as James looked at him with his head held high, as if he was calling Ethan’s bluff.
“Let her go. Take it up with me,” spat James as Austin came threateningly close to his face.
“Don’t ever try to fuck with me like you did the other morning. Keep doing what you’re doing and quit coming to fuck shit up at my house. We’re never gonna give you that gun back.”
“Why?”
“Because if there ever comes a day when you get the crazy idea of crossing us, we have something that belongs to you.”
“I’m doing everything that you’re asking me,” James burst out begrudgingly.
“You and Dad made an agreement,” interrupted Tom.
“And I’m holding up my end of it.” James spat those words, looking my assailants right in the eye.
“No, Hunter. You’re trying to come to our place to fuck us over.” It was predictable. Austin knew everything about the other day.
James was right; Will and I had been stupid and reckless. So that was how we’d ended up in this mess.
“The gun’s not mine.”
James’s words whipped through the dark, tense air, adding shock to it.
“Are you kidding?”
Austin’s abrupt reaction startled me. He looked like he wanted to put his hands on James from one moment to the next.
“No, I’m not kidding.”
Why was James telling him that now, making the tensions run even higher than they already were?
“You’re a real dick.”
I saw Tom grab his phone to call someone.
“You wanted us to do your dirty work with a gun that wasn’t even yours?”
Dirty work?
“Did you do it or not?” James gazed at Tom, who widened his eyes guiltily.
“Well.”
Ethan elbowed his accomplice, who seemed to have let one word too many slip.