“If you do that, the stubborn old thing will come right back home. Do you know how hard it was to get him to leave in the first place?”
The man lowers his phone. “Yeah, I guess he needed to get away. He was going crazy all alone out here.” He leans in and peers inside, his tone shifting as much as his body. “You all by your lonesome, too? Big ol’ house for just one girl.” He rubs a thick hand through a scraggly black beard.
My tightening stomach fires a warning shot through my body. It’s a familiar feeling.
“Well, I best be going,” I tell him as I try to close the door.
He puts his hand out to keep me from closing the door, and I nearly slam it on his thick fingers. “Oh, don’t be like that. We’re just talking,” he says.
With a motion too swift for me to react to, he tugs me out by my arm and puts his big hand over my mouth. He even covers my nose, and soon my lungs beg for air. Unlike every time Lex has done something similar, there’s an instant panic that drains the pent-up oxygen and makes my body lurch with need from the start. I feel like I’m suffocating.
Dying.
“You ain’t his niece,” the man says with a snarl. “His kin don’t look like you.” He pins my chest against the house, and his hand rides up my thigh over my leggings. “Goddamn, if you weremyniece, I’d be tempted to put you on my lap.”
My stomach clenches until I feel like I’m going to vomit. With his hand covering my nose and mouth, I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. I’m trapped in this pervert’s predatory grasp.
I should have listened to Lex.
Tears slip down my cheeks. The hand over my face moves down and lets me draw in several panicked breaths through my nose. His other hand goes down the front of my pants. More tears fall.
“Fuck,” he groans. “That’s a pussy like we ain’t have around here.” His hot tobacco-laced breath rushes over my neck.
I don’t see or hear Lex walking along the side of the house until he’s in my vision’s periphery. He crouches, holds the pistol, and aims. There’s no way he’ll miss me if he aims at the man’s head when it’s so close to mine.
He seems to realize this and lowers the barrel. Lex shoots once, and the sound of squelching flesh erupts behind me as the deafening boom makes my ears ring. The man stumbles back, clutching his side. He looks shocked as he wordlessly holds the wound, blood spreading around his fingers.
Lex takes aim once more and puts a bullet through the man’s face, taking him down in a bloody spray of brain matter along the porch. I throw my hands over my ears and fall back against the house. Lex runs to me, but I can’t hear what he’s saying over the ringing in my ears. He lifts me to my feet and drags me inside.
“Selena!” He smacks my cheek, cupping it the last time. He pulls me into his chest, but that safe feeling is gone.
Completely gone.
My ears begin to clear, the residual ringing becoming quieter until it’s nearly gone. I don’t register what’s happening, but Lex sits on the couch and places me on his lap. I turn my head to nestle into his neck, and he lets me for a moment before making me look at him. His eyes glisten with a show of concern I haven’t seen from him before. Not as Rodney tried to do what he did or when Bryce went even further.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers as he brushes back my hair. “That’s why I didn’t like your idea, rabbit. If something happened, I knew you’d be in the crossfire. I had no choice but to go around the house so I could get a shot off without hitting you, which meant he had you in his grasp longer than I would have ever allowed.”
“I just wanted to get rid of him without hurting anyone else,” I whisper.
“This is why this life isn’t meant for you. You have to put yourself first and anyone else beneath you.” He drops his forehead to mine. “Actually, I’m failing at that, too. I put you above me. Can’t even take my own fucking advice. You give me the humanity I don’t need or want.” He sighs. “But I can’t turn back now. Not with you here.”
* * *
Lex
I’m notsure what love is because I’ve never felt it. My mother never knew what it was, either. I didn’t feel a thing when I found my mother dead. I almost felt relieved that she couldn’t bring her “friends” over anymore. That I’d stop seeing her railed in front of me.
For my foster parents, love had a price. As long as they kept getting paid, they “loved” me, but only in front of the social workers who checked on me. Jack, an older kid more fucked-up than me, showed me how to survive in the foster system, and it wasn’t by feeling things. He showed me how to turn off every part of myself until I was an empty shell, capable of destruction without thought or feelings. People think more about the dirty dish they put in the sink than I do about murdering someone.
Cold. Callous. Deadly.
That’s who I was and that’s what helped me survive prison.
But Selena is changing that for me. She’s reversing conditioning that was perfected long before she was born. I have trauma older than she is.
I hold her close, listening to each ragged breath she takes. My heart breaks for her. That piece of shit violated her, and I couldn’t jump right in because I didn’t want him to fucking kill her. That’s been my fear with bringing her along. She has this look about her—a sweet innocence. When I see that in her, I want to rip her apart and brutalize her. When other men see it, I recognize that same hunger.
Even though I can control that side of me when it comes to her, others can’t, and she’ll always be at risk of having more of herself stolen away. I can’t bring her with me over the border, yet I have no clue how I’ll force her to stay back. But I have to. She isn’t safe with me, and she wouldn’t be safe around the people I would have to put myself around to survive. I’m irrevocably torn between selfishly wanting to keep her or selflessly letting her go to keep her safe.