Page 25

“Margot!” He shouted behind me.

I didn’t look back, just ran as fast as I could. The stairwell was riddled with graffiti and peeling paint, and I had to jump over random piles of garbage. Tiny rocks dug into my bare feet, but I barely felt the pain. The pounding of boots was followed by a loud thump, and I imagined him jumping down five steps to the landing.

“Margot! Fucking stop!” His voice echoed through the stairwell.

I didn’t fucking stop.

My heart hammered in my chest as I pumped my arms, hopping down the last two steps and taking off across the empty parking lot. When I threw a glance over my shoulder, he was ten steps behind me.

I raced toward the overgrown field, my lungs on fire. It was a losing game, I already knew that, but it didn’t stop me from trying to get away. If I could just make it to the tree line, maybe I could⁠—

The impact from behind knocked the breath from my lungs, and just when I thought he’d crush me into the ground, he twisted so that he was the one taking the brunt of the fall. I groaned in his arms, his warm breath huffing against my cheek.

“Goddamn, you’re fast,” he panted as I tried to catch my breath. His legs were practically twice as long as mine, and the letter opener was still jutting from his right thigh.

Instead of struggling in his hold, I went limp. I had to conserve my energy. There would be other opportunities to escape, but I had to acknowledge that as long as he was around it would never be the right time to try. I had to go with a different tactic—convince him that I’d play his game.

I asked, “Were you being serious about that twenty grand?” No part of me thought he was being serious about it. It had to be some kind of ruse, and I’d figure out what he wanted and why he wanted it from me. I just had to bide my time and make him think I was complying. For now.

My entire body shook when he laughed beneath me. “Yeah. I was. You in?”

“I want my money back.”

“Your money?”

“Yeah, asshole. My money.”

“No.”

The anger came flooding back in a rush. “Look,” I said, barely hanging on by the thinnest thread. “I don’t know what you’re playing at⁠—”

“I can’t give it back because it’s gone.”

I blinked at the cloudless blue sky. Gone? Where the fuck did it go? “What do you mean it’s gone? You just had it!”

He sighed, and it tickled my neck. All of a sudden his hand was in my hair, and I tried to swat it away, but he was holding both of my forearms in his other hand.

“I mean it’s gone. I spent it. I had to.” He sounded resigned and exhausted and just the tiniest bit sorry, but also not.

The sort-of sincerity of his words drifted over me and settled around my shoulders like an annoying shawl I wanted to shake off. His earnestness soothed me, for whatever reason, and I hated that.

“Can you let go of me?”

“Are you gonna run again?”

I stayed quiet for a long moment as he kept threading his fingers through my snarled hair. I was baffled at his behavior, but when he trailed a finger down my cheek to my jaw, I snapped, “No.”

He laughed again, the sound reverberating through my entire body. “I don’t believe you.” He tapped his finger against my nose, then—still holding onto me—he stood up. Before I could jab him in the balls, he let go of me, and I whirled around to face him, eyeing him warily.

He stared into my eyes, looking back and forth from one to the other, like he was searching for something. He didn’t speak for a long time, and I tried waiting patiently, but his eyes were making me antsy. I was about to shove him when he finally spoke, that cool, low voice curling around me.

“Anyone ever told you that you’re really beautiful?”

Huh?

I was so floored I didn’t even flinch when he reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear. My stomach did a somersault and I chalked it up to not having eaten in a while. His fingers glided along my jawline until he was resting them under my chin, his thumb coming up to rub just below my bottom lip. He stroked the skin there back and forth, his eyes watching what his thumb was doing like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “And those eyes,” he murmured, glancing up at my eyes. “So damn pretty.”

Feeling flustered and frustrated—he never answered my question—I shoved his hand off my face and glared up at him. “Don’t change the subject. What did you spend that money on? That was my ticket out of this place!”