My pulse pounded in my ears as he crouched, and when he reached out a hand like he was going to touch my leg, I tried to jerk it away from him. The wire snagged and tightened painfully, and I cried out.
“Don’t move, you’re gonna make it worse.” His hand came down on my knee, holding me still. He trailed it lower on my leg until he reached the wire, sliding his index finger around to the back of my calf.
“I can try to cut it off,” he said, glancing up at me. His voice was so rough and raspy, and the faint smell of cigarettes hung around him.
Wait, cut it…
Cut it off? With what?
“Can you just leave? Seriously. I can figure it out myself.”
He wrapped his hand around my ankle, just under the wire, and held my gaze with a mischievous glint in his eyes.
It was better than the hollow deadness that’d been there earlier, but was still unsettling.
“Can you?” he asked, and now his thumb was moving back and forth over the material of my pants.
His hand felt like a hot iron, even through my clothes, and I was tempted to kick him.
“Yeah, I can, so please go away.”
I wasn’t sure why I was even entertaining his weird bullshit; if he hadn’t crept up on me, I would’ve already gotten myself out of this and been on my way.
“I wonder why Louis put wire here, he’s probably gonna get in trouble for this. He’s already on thin ice for putting out illegal snare traps last year.” My stomach flipped as he smiled at me and said, “Looks like he caught himself a tiger. Or maybe I did.”He tilted his head and winked at me. “Is finders keepers still a thing? ’Cause I found you first.”
…what in the fuck?
My heart pounded in my chest as my mind tried to keep up with this guy and all the different turns he kept taking in what was becoming the strangest conversation of my life.
“What? Who’s Louis?” I asked, licking the rain off my lips and ignoring his question. What the fuck was I even supposed to say to that?
The stranger’s eyes darted down to my mouth, then flashed back up to mine. “The groundskeeper. Pretty sure he’s an alcoholic, too, which is sad. He looks and sounds like the Crypt Keeper and lives in a small house just past the cemetery. But I dunno how long he’ll be here, the dean doesn’t mess around and he already gave him a warning.”
I just grunted because I didn’t know what to say to that—or to anything that came out of his mouth.
“Were you trying to go to the cemetery?”
I wanted him to go away, but he just kept talking to me. “Yes.”
“How come?” His eyes flickered briefly to my birthmark before returning to mine.
“That’s none of your business,” I said, holding his gaze and raising my eyebrows. “Just like this.” I gestured at my ankle. “None of your business. Can you—” All of a sudden there was a knife in his hand, and panic took over. “Whoa! What the fuck?—”
His grip on my ankle tightened, and his eyes lost all traces of amusement. “You need to hold very, very still.”
“Are you insane?! Don’t do that!” I leaned forward and grabbed his forearm, trying to push it away—which was really stupid when he was holding a fucking knife.
I had no plan, I never did—I always acted first and thought later, which was exactly why I’d had to transfer to Ashbrook in the first place.
His eyes widened, and he tried to yank my hand off his arm. “What are you doing, you’re gonna get?—”
He grunted when I kicked at his leg, then he flung the knife somewhere to his left in a weird flicking move. It landed in some weeds a few feet from him.
I growled in frustration when he rose over me, grabbed my wrists and forced me back down into the mud. I tried to kick him but he straddled my waist, easily pinning me.
“That was so fucking stupid and dangerous,” he gritted out. “You could’ve gotten seriously hurt. Fuck, I’m just trying to help you!”
“I don’t want your help! Get off me,” I snarled, jerking against his hold. His eyes searched mine for a moment, his fingers flexed on my wrists, and then he let go and shot to his feet.
