“This is the second time tonight you’ve had your hand around my throat, Agent. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
He blinked slowly, tensing his jaw. But he didn’t deny it. “What do you think it is?”
“I think you wanna do it.”
The cut of his stare sharpened. “You think I want to choke you?”
“I do. I think you’re an angry man. Angry at the world, at my dad, at me. I think you’re so angry that you lose yourself in that anger until you’re just a thing of rage. No mind, no reason, no logic. Just a wall of muscle and rage… and I think you need to let that out.”
Reyes' chest expanded against mine as he breathed deep, staring me down over his nose. “That’s a cute analysis.”
“Do it.”
Agent Reyes’ gaze jumped from my eyes, to his hand, and back up. I nodded, squeezing his fingers through mine. “I want you to do it.”
Just fucking do it. Please.
He had the power in him to strangle me dead in less than two minutes. I wouldn’t fight back. I wouldn’t struggle. I’d make it easy for us both. He could snap my neck in two with one squeeze, and I’d fall to the floor with an easy smile on my face. Finally done. Finally nothing. No fire. No guilt. No pain. No memories.
Nothing but a broken girl on the floor, happy to have her story finished.
“Come on,” I pressed. “I already got out once. I’ll get out again, and next time I won’t come back.”
He searched between my eyes. “Why’d you come back this time?”
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’ll get out unless you do something about it.” I thrust his hand harder against my neck, caving my own windpipe narrow. Pain and pressure clashed inside my throat, and air struggled to climb up to my brain, rasping already. Agent Reyes’ eyes bored into mine as I crushed our hands together around my neck, refusing to react or help in any fucking way.
“Do it,” I snapped, a note of desperation cracking in my voice.
The heat in his hand matched that in his gaze, both intense and uncomfortable. The look in his eyes burned up the remaining oxygen in my lungs, and now, I really was straining to breathe. Not because of the power in his grip, but that which was in his eyes.
Locked together by skin and challenge, our hands around my throat began to move not by my accord. Protest spiked an outcry up my relieved throat but got caught as our hands rode down my neck together. He felt my skin, my pulse, and anything else he wanted to feel, and I let him. Curiosity got the better of me as we watched each other as he settled the palm of his hand right over my chest.
Right over my heart.
“Your heartbeat is normal,” he observed, lips barely moving.
“And?”
Something strange unfolded through his stare, pulling his eyebrow to a perplexed point.
“You aren’t scared.”
Ah. Fear. I supposed any normal person would be scared to have the hands of a man twice their size wrapped around their neck.
“No.” I shook my head weakly. “I’m not.”
Dying was something I’d accepted long ago and had been semi-patiently waiting my turn up until now. Death didn’t scare me. There was only one fear that kept me up at night, the idea of it pouring nervous sweat down my body and anxious tears down the sides of my face.
Living long enough to forget Johnny.
Living long enough to be a disappointment to him.
Pictures and videos helped keep his voice and his image alive in my head, but my authentic memories of him were beginning to dull. He lived in my mind and, day by day, he was fading away to wisps of a blurred face and misremembered dialogue.
Last month, I tried to recall our joint sixteenth and eighteen birthdays to Demitri and found the memories failing on my tongue.
I wouldn’t live long enough to forget him. I couldn't.