“Yeah…” I curled my fingers around my ear, pulling a strand of hair with it. “I’m gonna use the bathroom.”
And stay in there until James comes back.
Pivoting on my heel, I beelined it for the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind me. My hand went to reach for the lock and stuttered mid-air as it realized there was none.
Below my breath, I whispered, “What the fuck kind of bathroom doesn’t have a lock?”
“You don’t sound like you’re actually using the bathroom.” Derek’s voice slithered through the cracks in the door, and I jumped back like it had shocked me.
What the fuck?
The sound of him so close set my nerves on edge.
“I’m getting ready to. Can you not listen to me pee?”
“I’m checking on you. Making sure you don’t escape through a window in there I don’t know about.”
“I’m not, so can you kindly fuck off?” I raised my voice, hoping the teeth in my tone could chew through the door and bite him in the ass.
“Jeez, you’re feisty.”
The excitement in his voice nearly slapped me through the door, filling my cheeks with hot blood. Worried blood.
In the center of my chest, there began a prickling of sorts different from the fire, like a nail digging between my ribs, scraping against bone and trying to stab my heart but couldn’t quite reach. It was nagging, aching, and damn near crippling as I remembered that I’d felt that same nail before.
I’d felt its punctured fear before, sucking the air clean out of my lungs to leave me with nothing to scream with.
My eyes fell to the unlocked door, a piece of wood standing between me and Derek.
Suddenly, it didn’t feel like enough.
Drawing my sight across the countertop, I lunged for and yanked open every drawer I could get my hands on searching for anything to help myself. Maybe I was insane for jumping to conclusions as rash as this, but if I was crazy, I was only that way because people had made me that way.
“You know, James doesn’t get along with anyone back at Quantico,” Derek called through the door. “But you seem to have made it on his good side. Well, not good, but tolerable side.”
“Lucky me.”
So far, nothing. Not even a goddamn toothbrush.
“Lucky him, I’d say.”
The sound of the doorknob wiggling bulleted through the tiny bathroom. My focus snapped to the door, eyes rounding in my head as I watched the silver knob creek back and forth.
“You left the door unlocked, Ms. Avery.”
His voice was a taunt of the worst kind, emboldened with a perverted excitement that said he thought this was a game. My rejection was a fucking game to him and other men just like him who told themselves I was interested in playing even when I said I wasn’t.
Even when I screamed it from the top of my burning lungs.
The villains from my past were projecting into something real and tangible behind that door, twisting the knob and barging into my present.
“It doesn’t lock!” I screeched as the door swung wide open.
I tumbled back, heels hitting the bathtub as Derek stepped into the small room, the same hungry smile peeling his lips up from side to side. My heart yelled just as loudly as I did.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Get out!”
“Calm down,” he laughed like I was a fucking joke to him. Like my screams and terror were nothing more than sand falling through his fingers. “I’m just checking in on you. You’re the one who left the door unlocked.”