Chase’s voice follows his fists, and even though he is one of the last people I want to see right now, there is someone else…someone that I fear much more that could be standing beyond the door.
“Open the door, Laik.” Chase’s voice is low, racking a shiver through my body.
I suck into my palm harder until blood touches the back of my throat.
“Just go, Chase,” I muffle my words.
I listen to him scoff, and the derisive sound sends something similar to rage thundering through me. Reaching for a piece of glass in a bruised and bloated cloud of fury, I turn and throw it. It shatters against the wall and my heart pulses rapidly behind my ribs.
“I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to be around you. I can’t fucking stand looking at you!” I scream, an echo of the exact same words he’d hurled at me three years ago.
Chase’s voice is surprisingly calm when he repeats, “Open the door.”
He doesn’t use my name this time.
Anger and fear andneedpropel me forward, and I unhitch the lock. But before I can register what’s happening, before I can catch my next breath, Chase is through it, one hand on my throat, the other at my waist, his forehead pressed to mine, backing me against the wall.
“Didn’t take you for a coward, Laik.”
My statement is received with vehemence. The glare in Laiken’s eyes could cut glass.
Time stands still, but only for a moment.
“You bastard.” She tries shoving me, but I’m quick to catch her wrists.
I jerk her arms down to her side, backing her against the same wall she just flew off. She’s panting, her tits pressing against my chest, her breathing erratic, matching mine.
The grip I have on her is tight enough to hurt, but she isn’t squirming or trying to get away.
Her mouth pops open. Her bottom lip trembles. Her teeth click.
“I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to be around you. I can’t fucking stand looking at you.” Her voice is dead calm, echoingmy words back at me, no longer behind closed doors and thin walls.
A muscle in my jaw ticks. I wet my lips. “Too bad. I’m not going anywhere.”
Something dark, almost volatile flickers in Laiken’s deep green eyes. Tension quickens between us.
“You’re too late, Chase.” She presses her hands against my chest, forcing me back.
And I let her slip past.Just this time.
My gaze tracks her as she storms toward the kitchen, the barrel of her gun brushing against the bottom of my spine when I twist. A cold and sharp reminder to make sure she knows what she is doing with it, even though I have no plans on leaving her alone with it.
I curl my arm around to my lower back, dragging the alloy metal out of the waistband of my jeans and throwing it onto the table beside me with a thunk.
She’s at the sink, and spins around, her vacant eyes instantly finding the culprit of the thud. She keeps them there, recognition flickering. Dark and terrified.Determined.
“You know how to use it?” I ask,again.
“Fuck you,” she bites, then she levels her eyes to mine.
And when I stare back at the only girl in this world I give a single damn about, all I see is hell in her eyes, a deeper subtext layering into the chill between us. Crossing my arms at my chest, I drop my shoulders to the wall behind me, asking her what I’d wanted to a couple of nights ago.
“Why was I your flinch?”
She freezes. Time stretches. She knew exactly what I was asking. The truth she handed me the other night when she’d told me that every time she’d tongued the barrel of her gun she’d seenme.
“I was so fucking scared, and you left me. Do you know how many times over the past three years I was ready to do what my father did? What my mother did? How many times I have cried helplessly against the barrel in my mouth? Do you know how many times I just wanted to end the…”
