“Why should I believe you?” she mutters, still walking toward me with her hands behind her. “Why have I been questioning my gut since the second I laid eyes on you?”
“Because when someone is in confinement for as long as you were, there is no reason to trust anyone ever again. Your gut was right to protect you, but I’m not the one it should be protecting you from.”
“Then who should my gut be protecting me from, Sin? Who? Can you tell me that? Because I’m guessing you can’t. Just like before, you know nothing, yet you know how to keep yourself alive and safe. It makes no sense. None of this makes any sense. Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?”
Her words hurt more than that scalpel probably would, and I don’t know what else I can say to make her believe me because there isn’t anything left to say. I’m left with no other choice but to leave my fears behind and rush toward her, doing my best to forget about whatever is behind her back. Wrapping my arms around her stiff body, tight enough that she can’t escape or stab me, I crash my lips into hers, showing her with every ounce of emotion I have stored inside of my frigid body that I do in fact love her, that I do not want to hurt her, and that God, I would do anything to keep her safe, even if that meant…
I pull away, breathing heavily from the missing breaths that got lost within hers. “If you didn’t think that was real, go ahead and use that scalpel on me now.” I felt the cold metal clenched between her fist. I know she’s not capable of hurting me, let alone killing me, but I need to give her that option as a truce. Her eyes are wide, glossy and staring into mine. The powder-blue hue her eyes take on in the sunlight looks more like the color of murky ocean water in this hazy lit room, but she still has that shimmer when she looks at me. It’s a look that tells me how thankful she is that I at least tried to save her. “Go head. Do it if you don’t believe every word I have said to you in the past few minutes.”
Her arms drop to her side and the scalpel falls to the ground, the ping of metal bouncing against the empty walls of the room. “What are we going to do?”
The fast beat of my heart eases at her words and at the understanding of being one team against the unknown. “Find a way out,” I tell her.
“The only place you two are going is back to wherever the hell you came from,” a man says from the doorway. Shit. It’s not just a random patrol, of course. It’s the guy I beat the shit out of in the alley. I almost forgot about him. I’m smarter than this. I don’t get caught.Shit.
I lean down slowly, grabbing the scalpel Reese dropped. I’m not sure if the guy noticed it or not, but I’m in his face in a matter of milliseconds, slicing the knife through his throat. “You should have learned the first time, man.” Sorry.
As I could have assumed, the sound of heavy steps comes barreling down the hall within seconds. I’m searching the room for a way out, but there probably isn’t one—because isn’t that the way this story always goes? I grab Reese by the wrist and drag her over to the corner of the room so I can attempt to pry open the window. It’s the only hope we have, even if I know it will only buy a few extra seconds of time.
It buys us no extra time at all, though. The window is sealed. There is no way out. And the room is immediately swarmed with men in plastic suits.
