I breathe out in relief, because that edge is gone. Apparently I was definitely reading into it.
He hangs up, and his arms come around me in one of those awesome hugs I love so much.
“As soon as I get back, I swear to take you on that damn date I promised so long ago. You’re better than a sex-a-thon with whatever food I burn.”
He totally burns pizza. But it was sweet for him to attempt to cook. It might have gone better if we hadn’t forgotten it was in the oven and ended up in the bedroom.
“I’ll eat burned food every single day that I get to have you to myself. I’d rather not waste time having to go out in public and lose all our privacy.”
He chuckles, but I’m not kidding.
I’m greedy. I want him all to myself.
He hurries through the motions of getting ready, and I kiss him much longer than necessary before he leaves.
Since he’s going to be gone, there’s no time like the present to get back to work and skip the second day of the break.
As I climb into my car, I pull out my phone and call Jake.
“You still with him?”
“I’m on my way to grab Lawrence. You can handle
Tyler.”
He’s cursing as I hang up, and I smirk as I start the long drive to New York. I haven’t studied him in his daily life. But fuck it. I’m stronger than all of them.
Chapter 13
We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.
—Albert Einstein
LANA
New York isn’t prepared for me when I arrive. It’s dark when I finally set about the task of planning my ambush. My sweatshirt is on, my head is covered, and I prop up in an alleyway.
This place gets dangerous in dark alleyways, but after slamming a guy’s face into the brick wall hard enough to knock him out, most of the regular thugs give me a wide berth for the rest of the time that I wait.
“Hey, sweetheart,” says another stupid thug who is holding a knife at me as he grins a rotten-tooth grin.
I say nothing.
I guess he missed my earlier demonstrations, unfortunately for him.
He takes a step closer, and that’s when I smirk at him. He looks confused for a split second before my hand darts out, colliding with his throat. A pained wheeze escapes him, and he swings the knife.
Midair, I catch his wrist, spin under his arm, and listen with pleasure as a satisfying cry pierces the night. The knife falls to the ground, and I slam my foot into his spine, still wrenching his arm behind him so tightly that I feel it when the bone crunches in my hand.
A shudder of pleasure ripples through me, listening to the way he screams and begs for mercy. It’s not as satisfying as it is to hear as the ones I want dead, but it’s still a high to punish someone like him who preys on the weak—or who he thinks is weak.
With a hard thrust, the knife slices through his back, the skin tearing, and his screams grow louder. People scatter by us, pretending they don’t see anything in typical city-alley fashion.
As he starts gurgling on blood, I release the knife with my gloved hand, and let him sink to the ground with a hard thud. Right beside the dumpster, all that’s visible from the streets are his feet. The city is too loud for the sidewalk dwellers to overhear him.
Even if they did hear, they’d keep walking. That’s what people do. They tell themselves they’ll just die too. They tell themselves their life is more precious than the person dying close to their feet.
They just don’t give a fuck, in short.