Then Brett grabbed my wrist.
Not hard enough to bruise.
Hard enough.
The entire world flashed white.
Not visually.
Inside me.
A bright, soundless burst of memory and fear and old smoke.
My body stopped being nineteen on a crowded Santa Monica sidewalk. It became seventeen again. Drugged. Trapped. Pulled. Moved. Hands deciding for me. Men deciding for me. Girls laughing. Red paint on stone. Blood on my lip. Fire behind my eyes.
I didn’t scream.
I went still.
That was worse.
Brett leaned in, voice low. “You think you can wreck my family and walk around out here like nothing happened?”
Lily’s voice cut sharp. “Let her go.”
He ignored her.
His thumb pressed against the inside of my wrist.
Right over my pulse.
Wrong place.
Wrong night.
Wrong boy.
My free hand moved before my brain fully caught up. I twisted the way Tarak had taught me over Christmas when he decided my campus self-defense class was “cute but insufficient.” Brett cursed when my wrist slipped halfway free, but he caught me again, tighter this time.
Lily swung her tote bag.
It hit him in the shoulder with a heavy thump because Lily carried textbooks like weapons.
“Let go of her, you boat-shoe fungus!”
The other guy grabbed Lily’s bag strap.
That was when I stopped trying to be brave.
I used my free hand, hit the emergency contact in my phone by muscle memory, and prayed I had not accidentally called Regan because she would somehow teleport from wherever she was and commit a felony in designer sandals.
The line connected on the second ring.
A male voice answered. “San Diego.”
I swallowed.
The sidewalk blurred.
