21
Ty
Iwoke with a start, sitting up quickly.
Some sensitive impulse within me was rattled, as though I’d been having a nightmare, one I couldn’t recall but just knew had been terrifying. I looked to my side, noticing Liam’s absence from where he’d been lying before I’d drifted off to sleep.
My gaze shifted sharply to the other side of the bed, where the silhouette of a person was illuminated by the moonlight flooding in through the now open window behind it. At no point had my mind even entertained the thought it could have been Liam.
Not tall enough.
The shape wasn’t right.
I couldn’t even detect Liam’s familiar scent..
The figure moved quickly, but I sprang into action, twisting in the bed and reaching between the mattress and box spring for the blade Liam had planted there for me.
Gone.
“Fuck!” I called as the intruder snatched my shoulder and yanked me back.
I wasn’t going down without a fight.
I kicked the intruder in their face before hurling myself off the side of the bed, cursing again as I hit the floor. When I scrambled to my feet, my attacker had recovered on the mattress, rising to a crouching position. The moonlight revealed the threads in the fabric of the ski mask they wore.
Jesus, did all bad guys wear ski masks?
I noticed a glimmer…a blade in their hand. For an instant I wondered if it was one of the knives that had been under the bed, but it didn’t appear to be a match.
The trap behind the door!
“Come and get me, asshole,” I said, and they pounced off the bed and came at me.
But before we reached the door, the intruder lurched forward abruptly before tumbling to the floor.
The fuck?
“That’s right, you sloppy motherfucker!” A familiar voice filled the air, and all the tension and adrenaline racing through me soothed as I realized it was Liam.
I flicked on the light beside me quickly to make sense of the chaos.
My attacker had dropped their blade on the floor, and Liam crawled out from under the bed, stabbing at my attacker with a knife.
The intruder kicked Liam in the face before Liam got them in the leg, making them cry out. Just as Liam drew the blade back, his opponent struck a blow to his face and kicked him in the Adam’s apple with a force that made Liam release them.
This all happened in what seemed to be a split second, and as they duked it out, I swooped down and snatched the blade the intruder had dropped.
Liam and the enemy pushed to their feet, and the intruder glanced between us.
“You’re going to hurt yourself with that thing,” the intruder told me in a deep voice before Liam went in for another attack.
The villain jumped out of Liam’s path, but Liam suddenly halted in place. “Hurt yourself. What the hell?”
I was still in defense mode, rushing to help Liam, my blade heading straight for the intruder, who moved swiftly out of its path, grabbing my arm and throwing me back against the wall. My arm skimmed against the wood, rubbing until it burned.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Liam said. “Ty. We’re good. Worse than any enemy, I know this asshole.”
Sweat streaked down my forehead. I panted from even such little combat, surely more from the adrenaline coursing through me than anything I’d done.
