“WAIT! DON’T!”
A hulking figure came rushing at me; from out of the darkness. I didn’t need any of the dim light from the distant street lamp to know who it was.
“I just want to talk!”
I felt the heel from my right shoe sink. It disappeared into a muddy hole, then snapped off mid-stride.
“HAYDEN!”
A hand clapped over my wrist, huge and wet and offensively thick. I tried pulling away, but it might as well have been a hydraulic steel clamp.
“Get the hell off me!” I shouted.
Cole’s expression was a marriage of frustration and suppressed anger. He smelled like body odor and alcohol; rum, most likely. A pair of deep, dark circles under his eyes told me he hadn’t slept in days.
“Hold on, goddammit! I just want to—”
I swung my arm around and struck, as hard as I could, wherever I could reach. My eyes were closed, but I felt my fist connect with a giant ear.
“Ow! You BITCH!”
The hand on my wrist loosened slightly, even just for a half-second. But it was all the time I needed to pull away.
“Hayden, wait—”
I kicked my heels off and ran. The gravel and jagged asphalt ripped at my tender feet, but I never broke stride.
“HAYDEN!”
Cole finally found his legs again. It took a while for him to get his great bulk moving, but when he did, it was absolutely terrifying.
I stopped looking back and instead focused on my goal: the Refuge’s back door. It was cracked just enough to stay open. Light spilled forth — a thin strand of yellow against the darkness of the parking lot.
“Just… want… to… TALK!”
My whole body jerked backward as Cole’s fingers found my hair. He pulled hard, and without mercy. All I could do was scream…
~ 53 ~
SAWYER
“Pizza here?”
“Not yet.”
“You ordered wings with it, right?”
“Two dozen,” I sighed. “just like you asked.”
Carter nodded but he still looked lost, his hands moving aimlessly over the smooth, clean bar. He’d been a bartender for too long. This always happened when he didn’t have anything to do.
“What about the cake?”
“I told you, it’s in the fridge,” I repeated. “They fucked it all up, though.”
He frowned. “How do you fuck up a Carvel cake?”
“You put ‘Brodie’ on it instead of ‘Bodie.’”
