Fuck.
He twisted the blade and my eyes flew open. This asshole was trying to kill me. His teeth were still on my ear and our bodies pressed close. It took work for him to get the knife out of me and I still couldn’t get a hold on my gun, but I forced my body off the wall and against him. I was a sack of bones and dead weight, but I knocked him off balance and both of us fell, crashing together onto the dirty ground.
It didn’t take work for him to get out from under me, straddling me and raining his fists down against my face. My eyes burned from the blood and I wasn’t convinced my cheekbone hadn’t shattered. My body throbbed like he’d torn my organs out of the knife wound in my stomach, and I closed my eyes with a sigh as he continued to attack me.
He stopped when I went limp—which was an amateur move. Even through the drugged and painful haze of my consciousness, I knew that. If I was him, I wouldn’t have stopped hitting me until I was sure I was dead. I willed myself to move, even though I couldn’t see and shifting an inch felt like murder.
Fuck.
This guy was trying to murder me.
What the fuck had I ever done to him?
That thought made me mad.
Really mad.
Being found dead in the alley of a dive bar on the edge of the city, blocks away from the man I was obsessed with. Though no one would know that last part. But Golden would know; when he saw the news, he would know what I was doing there. That I was waiting for him, hoping for him. Suddenly the prospect of dying without the touch of him again sounded completely unreasonable. I didn’t want to do it.
With as much force as I could muster, I threw my body to the side, flinging that asshole off of me. He crashed into the wall, his head hitting the bricks with a sickening crack. He wasn’t dead, though, at least, not yet. I could hear his breaths rattle in and out of his throat, and I had half a mind to choke him to death, but I knew I didn’t have it in me.
I reached behind me, managed a grip on my piece and aimed at what I thought was him; my blurry vision made it hard to tell. I steadied my finger as much as I could on the trigger, but something stopped me before I pulled it.
Gunshots are loud.
People will notice.
“Fuck.”
Crumpled against the wall, the blond asshole groaned and moaned, and I hauled myself toward him. I was bleeding out. I could tell. My vision swam from the drugs and darkened around the edges from the blood loss. I’d never been this close to dying before, but I knew the symptoms. Knew the signs.
I flung myself toward him, heaving a knee across his throat and pinning him to the ground. I was weak, but he was half unconscious, and it didn’t take long for his face to go slack, for his mouth to fall open. I didn’t know if he was dead, and I didn’t rightly care. I just had to get away from him before he cared enough to find out if I was dead or not.
There was no way I was getting my gun back in the holster, so I tucked it into the pocket of my jacket and clawed at the brick wall, pulling myself until I stood. Every inch toward my full height was agony and for the first time since I’d stepped out back, I wondered if I would make it out of the alleyway alive.
I breathed in, looking up at the sky.
The night air was brisk against my wet cheeks, my blood-slicked jaw. I wiped myself off, not sure what I looked like, not sure I wanted to know. I counted my breaths, forced them to come. Deep and gasping lungfuls of air that I sucked in through my mouth. I pressed my hand against the stab wound on my stomach and dared a look down.
Shit.
There was a lot of blood.
I was literally covered in it. Dirt and blood and whatever else I’d picked up on the ground. If I didn’t die from blood loss, there’s no way I wouldn’t get an infection from whatever I’d rolled around in. Served me right, letting my dick do the thinking for me.
“Asshole.” I kicked a flurry of gravel at the piece of shit I’d left on the ground. “Fucking. Had to. Fucking drug me. Fucker.”
I kicked his ribs and lost my balance, falling onto my hands and knees with a muffled grunt of pain.
“Weak ass bitch,” I muttered, crawling away from him and toward the sidewalk.
I refused to die in that alley.
Refused to die by the hand of a man with boring, fucking wood colored eyes. I blinked slowly, long and heavy, then I forced myself to my feet. Using the wall as a crutch, I managed my way onto the street, stumbling west two blocks, north one block.
Golden’s house wasn’t anything like I’d pictured it, and his macho car sat parked in the driveway, right beside a lattice covered in pink bougainvillea that climbed toward the roof.
The sky had started to turn from black to that purple gray of a winter sunrise. I didn’t know how long it had taken me to get from the bar to Golden’s house, and I honestly didn’t even know how I was still alive. Every inch was agony and I knew tears had washed away most of the blood and dirt that had coated my face when I started the walk.
