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“Whoa, wait—” His arm shot out and he grabbed a handful of my shirt just below the collar, lifting me clear off the ground.

Save me, my ass.

I grabbed his wrist with both hands, glaring at him.

“Fuck’s sake,” he said, starting to sound exasperated for the first time. “We need to go, I’ll explain everything later so can you just⁠—”

Fuck this fucker.

I kicked my foot up into his groin.

He shouted, “Fuck!” and loosened his grip enough that I was able to squeeze out of it. I dropped to the floor and crawled between his legs, shoved to my feet, and tripped over Jay’s leg.

“Margot!” the man’s voice boomed behind me. He didn’t sound pissed, maybe a little worried—maybe I was the crazy one—but I didn’t look back.

I quickly got to my feet, burst through the double doors, sprinted toward the front of the store—and collided with Tom.

We crashed to the floor as he let out a startled yell. He knocked me off him with a snarled, “You stupid bitch, what the fuck are you doing?”

Before I could react, he palmed the side of my head and slammed me into the ground so hard that everything went black for a moment.

Fuck. A blinding pain beat against my skull, a ringing piercing through my ears and muffling the world around me.

“This is what you—what the hell?!”

Tom’s words cut off on a strangled scream, and his hand left my head, taking some of my hair with him. I moaned and tried to turn onto my back, but my head was pounding fiercely, my vision spotting.

The sound of glass shattering nearby had me trying to get to my hands and knees in earnest. I felt like I was underwater, but I managed to move my arm, bracing my hand on the ground. A sharp sting of pain in my hand momentarily eclipsed the agony in my head, and I rolled my eyes, looking at the glass scattered all around me.

Tom’s screams sounded faraway, and when something went sailing past my line of vision, I groaned and braced my forearms on the ground, preparing to army crawl my way out of here.

I had to leave. I had to go.

“No, stop—” Tom’s plea ended abruptly, replaced with the sound of a fist hitting flesh and then the sickening cracking of bones. The bloodcurdling shriek that came after that sent a chill through me.

I rolled my eyes open, watching blood drip from my face or my head or some part of me onto the floor beneath me. “Fuck,” I slurred. This was so fucked.

A siren wailed in the distance, and I gasped, pulling myself forward an inch.

“Come on, time to go.” Two hands caught me around my waist, and I was carefully lifted off the ground. I grunted when he cradled me in his arms.

“No,” I rasped, weakly pushing against him. Bile burned in my throat. I blinked, then squeezed my eyes shut when something dripped from my temple into my lashes.

Wait, where was I? Who was he? An enemy?

Of course.

Everyone was my enemy.

“I’ll kill you,” I rasped. A deep laugh vibrated through my entire body, then chased me into an all-consuming darkness.

FIVE

“Court. What the actual fuck, man. I said get her number, don’t fucking kidnap her!”

Cade stared at me in disbelief, his default expression when dealing with me lately.

I calmly finished dressing the wound on Margot’s head. “I didn’t kidnap her, she needed medical attention.”