One of the girls yelled as she banged against the door, and soon the other’s voice joined in.
I watched Johnny carefully as they yelled for him to open the door, and saw the war that raged within him. The way he responded to Einstein’s distress, as if hearing her caused him pain . . . the way his hatred and suspicions overcame that pain and concern every few seconds.
I waited for his hesitation and finally flicked the blade out.
Johnny growled as he swung his frustrated glare back on me, his forearm shoving harder against my chest. “Who the hell—?” His pained roar filled the bathroom when I jammed the knife into the wrist where his hand now barely circled mine.
He tore his arm away, but before I could swipe at him again, he rammed his shoulder into my chest. “You fucking bitch!”
The air flew from my lungs as the towel rack dug into my back, but I somehow managed to tighten my grip on the knife when Johnny grabbed my hand and bashed it against the wall over and over again.
Everything ached as I struggled to suck in air to cry out for help.
Blood was steadily dripping down his arm and transferring onto my own as he attempted to pry my fingers loose one at a time, his movements sloppy as his hand trembled against mine.
“Knew not to trust you,” he rasped out again as he stepped back.
My legs threatened to give out without him keeping me against the wall. But just as soon as my knees weakened, Johnny’s shoulder collided with my chest once . . . twice.
A hint of a breath wheezed from my lungs.
My vision darkened.
I no longer heard the voices outside . . . I no longer heard anything.
But Johnny was there—unfurling to his full height as his hand moved to my throat, the other gripping mine to once again drive it against the wall.
My mouth opened on a soundless cry.
There was so much pain. I wanted to close my eyes, but knew I needed to stay awake. Knew I needed to hold on to the knife.
I needed to breathe . . . and I couldn’t.
All I remembered was the feel of his fingers tightening around my throat and the crazed look in his eyes before he was suddenly gone, and I was collapsing to the floor.
An eternity made up of seconds passed as I struggled to make my lungs work.
Someone reached for me. I swung. My hand moving across the floor sluggishly.
And then eyes . . . those eyes.
Dark, knowing eyes.
Truth or dare.
“Firefly.”
The pulse-pounding fear I’d experienced when I’d woken that morning was absent when my heavy eyelids slid open to an unfamiliar room. But I knew I wasn’t alone. If a man silent as the night could no longer hide from me, the one watching me in that moment didn’t have a prayer of catching me unaware.
Besides, I’d been prepared for this.
Dark eyes were the last things I saw before everything went black and somehow, I’d known they would be waiting for me when I woke. Only now that I was awake, I didn’t know what to expect.
I’d been determined to have our lives go back to how they’d been—a silent, longing dance along an invisible wall. The memory of his mouth, the ache for another taste, it was all so dangerous in ways he couldn’t begin to imagine. For my sanity, for my frail resolve, for Dare’s life if Kieran ever found out . . .
But now it was all so much more complicated than seeing the man who had freed me with a kiss and pretending I wasn’t trying to resist a pull unlike anything I’d ever experienced—a pull I wasn’t sure I wanted to resist.
Because I’d been hiding from him at his sister’s apartment. I’d stabbed his friend. And now he was waiting for me.