He was out fucking whoever he wanted, drinking, doing things he really wanted to be doing with people he wanted more than me.
As I process my feelings, he's peering out the window again.
“If you hated me so much, why didn’t you pull the trigger outside the diner?” I ask, wiping the tears from my face. “Why didn’t you kill me before you set my apartment on fire?”
As if startled by my voice, he looks at me as if in the time it took him to cross over to the window, he forgot I existed. “You humiliated me. Divorcing me made people wonder why you ran out of town without coming to my trial.” He shakes his head, eyes hardening. “No. You’re going to pay for that in a way that won’t land me in jail.”
“You won’t get me away from here without someone seeing you.”
“I got you here, didn’t I?” he chuckles. “All I have to do is wait until it’s dark. No one will notice a couple walking down the street together.”
He’d been steering me right when the group of college-age girls walked out of the diner, forcing us away from where he must have parked his car. That’s why he’d asked about my car, and that’s why he was pissed when I told him I didn’t have my keys on me. Now we’re stuck here, waiting for it to get dark so we can leave town.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say firmly.
He walks over to me, his face a blank slate.
I lean away from him, my head against the wall as he drops into a crouch in front of me.
He gets in my face. His eyes are cold and hard. “When it’s dark out, you’re going to get into my car, and you’re going to sit quiet and docile-like in the passenger seat. Then you’re going to write whatever I tell you to write so the people in this nosy, boring town stop looking for you.”
“And then you’re going to kill me?”
He doesn’t respond.
I shake my head. “I won’t do it. Kill me now, but I won’t write anything, and I won’t go anywhere with you. You’ll have to carry me out of here. You made my life hell. I won’t make it easy for you.”
“So because those men fucked you, you think they’ll save you?” he sneers.
I startle.
He laughs, the sound hard and bitter. “I heard all about you shacking up with four construction workers, and I saw you outside the diner. If you think you’re nothing but a quick fuck before they move on, you’re deluded.”
When I was too afraid to even look them in the eye, those four alphas watched out for me. For a month, they stopped in at the diner, telling me a bit about themselves, making me feel safe. They were kind, sweet, and endlessly patient.
They are still those things now.
“They love me. Just because you saw me as worthless doesn’t mean they do. They won’t stop looking for me until they find me, and they will kill you if you hurt me,” I say, looking him right in the eye.
I know what I am to Hunter, Elias, Knox, and Wyatt. They love me as much as I love them. Whatever happens to me, they willneverstop looking for me.
Derek’s fist flies toward me. I try to dodge the blow before it lands.
Too late.
I cry out. My head rings, and everything goes black.
The apartment is darker when I blink my eyes open.
My head pounds as it rests on the smoky-smelling floor, and Derek is back to standing at the window, peering out.
I spot the gun tucked into his waistband. It’s not in his hand, which means I have a chance to run.
He glances toward me, and I slam my eyes shut, pretending to be out cold.
For ninety seconds, and I count slowly, I focus on pretending to be unconscious as I feel the weight of his stare on my face.
When I risk cracking my eyes open a sliver, Derek is standing in front of the coffee table with his cell phone in his hand, frowning at the screen.
