Chapter 31 #2
But that unwelcome reality I’d been trying and failing to keep from my mind all day was now all I could think about, and I suddenly didn’t know what to do because I was spiraling over the meaning of two inconsequential, yet monumental pink lines.
And panicking over the fact that I was spiraling at all during a situation I was normally completely calm and collected in.
That I needed to be completely calm and collected in.
Force it back.
Turning on Davis, I noted just how close he’d gotten to me, and offered something that might have resembled a smile as I sidestepped him. A move he seemed to track. “You know, we never went on that date,” I said, letting the words trail to make them sound like an offer.
He let out a hesitant sound and dipped his head to look excited yet uncertain. “Yeah, uh . . . you sure you’d be up for it? Especially after . . . well, you know . . .”
“Yep,” I said definitively. “He already stopped it once. I’m not letting him stop it again.”
With a more genuinely excited look, Davis said, “Then let’s go.”
Given the warning chill racing down my spine, I doubted he planned to let us go anywhere, but I just nodded toward the couch and said, “I’m going to change first. Make yourself comfortable.
” But as soon as I took a step toward my room, I remembered what that warning chill was from, and turned for my kitchen instead.
I could hear my dad and brothers mocking me for being weak. My own voice joined in because I’d always prided myself on being able to handle every situation without help from anyone, but my splintered thoughts were far too frantic to do what needed to be done.
Clearly . . . I’d nearly forgotten an entire person within just a handful of seconds.
“Want something to drink while you wait?”
“Water’s fine,” Davis called back, before quickly adding, “But only if you’re getting something.”
Keeping my steps silent as I listened to Davis’ response, I beelined toward my back door, where Gray would be waiting. I could almost feel his anxiety amplifying my own, and I couldn’t even fault him for it.
If the roles had been reversed, if I would’ve watched him walk into his apartment with a mafia member who had managed to fool us, I realized I would’ve felt the same.
I would’ve wanted eyes on him. I would’ve wanted to be his backup.
And, suddenly, I understood why he always pushed to be with me—to never let me go into fights alone.
Funny how it’d taken this. And he didn’t even know there was another person hiding in here.
He didn’t even know that I’d failed so completely because I couldn’t get my mind to settle—because I couldn’t keep my thoughts off of—
Stop!
I reached for the deadbolt and had just grazed the metal of the lock when I was yanked backward by my hair, snapping my head up and forcing a shocked gasp from me that morphed into an enraged grunt when my back slammed against Davis’ chest.
In an instant, all my racing, panicked thoughts fell blissfully silent as I found myself in his arms, staring at my ceiling, with his hand now gripping my jaw instead of my hair.
If it’d been any other day, I would’ve heard him coming up on me.
If it’d been any other day, I would’ve been able to fight him before I’d found myself like this.
Even still, I knew more than enough ways to get out of this hold and overtake him.
But the distinctive sting of a blade nicking the side of my neck as I’d been forced backward was enough to make me pause. Wait. Evaluate.
Beat myself up as my dad’s voice infiltrated this moment.
“Tell me what you did wrong. You let him sneak up on you. If your enemy sneaks up on you, you’re dead.”
But I was clear-headed now, and I refused to die today.
“You were so close too,” Davis mumbled into my ear, his usual, awkward excitement replaced with something sure, amused, and sinister. “What gave me away?”
“You first,” I said tightly. “Tell me what you wanted with me.”
“Want,” he corrected. “Just know that you’re going to be well taken care of. Or maybe it’s the other way around.” I heard the smile in his voice before I felt the curl of his lips against my ear. “After all these months of studying you, I plan on being one of those you take care of.”
Even if we hadn’t known about the club and what they trafficked, we’d dealt with enough people like this that I would’ve known what he’d been talking about.
Disgust and rage curled through me and left a bad taste in my mouth as too many memories flooded my mind of men who thought they were allowed to touch me just because I was there. Because I was a woman in a man’s world.
And these particular men wanted more. Not just from me, but from Lainey, Chloe, and Wren too.
“If that’s your plan, then you should be careful with that blade,” I said in a dull tone, and felt his chest pitch with a silent laugh.
When his lips dragged along the shell of my ear, every instinct screamed for me to jerk away, but I remained still when he roughed out, “You’ll still be useful with scars.”
That earlier disgust rose in my throat, but I drove it back as I focused on keeping my pulse slow and stable, even though his words, my failure, and our position begged for it to race.
All that focus crumbled into ash in the next moment.
“But even if you bleed out right here . . .” he taunted, passing the blade along my neck like a violinist would draw their bow across the strings, slicing more of the skin so dangerously close to an artery I couldn’t afford for him to cut, until a worrying stream of blood was racing down and soaking the collar of my shirt.
“And it looks like you just might . . .”
My chest shuddered and my heart rate spiked in a moment of panic when he made another pass back the opposite way. Panic I couldn’t afford because, while adrenaline was useful at times, this wasn’t one of them.
But there was so much blood.
I didn’t have to see it.
I could feel it.
With another too-intimate brush of his lips along my ear, he whispered, “I’ll still be doing my job.”
Clenching my teeth, I made myself ignore the feel of my blood-soaked shirt and his lips on my skin.
I forced my pulse back into that calm, steady rhythm and my attention back onto the position of the blade.
I pushed all other thoughts out of my head except for the fake Davis behind me and the ominous weight of the other, hidden presence I could still feel in my condo.
Because I wouldn’t be dying today.