The woman had assessed her like a piece of meat and apparently found her lacking. Then Norah watched as she kissed TJ on the mouth.
It was like ice water had been thrown on her. What a fool she’d been.
Her embarrassment was only compounded when he saw her there and turned on the charm. As though she hadn’t seen anything.
She now rounded the far corner of the track, trying desperately to enjoy the sunshine. Sadly, the argument in her head obscured most of the world around her.
It wasn’t even his fault. He’d never lied, never led her on. He’d hauled her out because he valued her opinion, he truly enjoyed her company. But she wanted something more, and he wanted someone else.
She’d seen the girls who clung to guys, waiting while they screwed other women, certain that the man would come around. The guys already knew that girl as someone who would wait on the sidelines. She wasn’t going to be that girl.
TJ, I love you and Norah, you’re a great friend didn’t tip the scales evenly.
He’d called Saturday and she’d ignored it. He’d called Sunday, too, and left a message that he wanted to see her.
He was a persistent little bugger, and no wonder, she’d been a great friend. But she’d have to cut herself off in order to get herself back on even ground.
Norah didn’t know how many rotations around the track she’d gone without a break, only that her lungs burned. Slowing, she bent over and opened up her ribs to breathe.
With a start she realized there was another runner on the track. The back of her brain had already registered that it wasn’t TJ. This man didn’t move like him, didn’t pull her like TJ.
Picking up speed, her thoughts clouded over. She wondered if TJ would show up today. She wasn’t sure if it was his day or not. She’d ignored him all weekend, and he wasn’t keeping a strict every other day schedule anyway.
Maybe he came on the mornings after the nights when he didn’t get some activity in that floating bed of his. Her lips pressed together in a grim line. Like everything else, the floating bed was an illusion. At least she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that the bed really did float, or that she’d been the only one.
Footsteps came up behind her as the other runner lapped her. For a moment her shoulders tensed. She didn’t know this guy from Adam, and she hadn’t gotten a good look at him. Well, it surely wasn’t TJ, TJ couldn’t pass her with that kind of speed yet.
As the guy went by, he gave a small wave, and Norah relaxed.
What the hell was she going to do about TJ?
TJ, TJ, TJ. Agh!
She wanted to go cry on her Daddy’s shoulder, tell him she’d been a fool. She’d kept her pants on, hadn’t done anything as dangerous or life-altering as possibly getting pregnant, but she had fallen further. And crying on her Daddy’s shoulder wasn’t allowed. She’d promised.
While she wasn’t sure if the promise was valid when she wasn’t speaking to TJ, for some reason she’d still feel she’d betrayed him if she did it. And she was speaking to him. Probably. Just enough to tell him that he couldn’t haul her away from other things if there was only a rainbow and no pot of gold at the end.
She couldn’t ignore that he said he’d fallen in love. Blindly, stupidly, she’d prayed he meant her. But it had been well over a week and no declaration had been forthcoming. Norah would have been happy with the flowers. She wasn’t a flowers kind of woman, but it had been a knee-jerk reaction to be rude, before she’d considered the possibility he was speaking of her. Apparently he wasn’t.
Norah glanced at her watch. Ten-thirty-two. He was usually here by ten, ten-fifteen if he was late. TJ wasn’t coming. It pissed her off to realize that she’d been waiting.
Game over.
On the far turn of the track, Norah looked up. Now grouchy that she had decided to leave with half the track left in front of her, she bent over to breathe.
After a few moments she stood and started to walk. Maybe she should crawl, she felt seriously depressed.
Footsteps came up behind her, she wished they were TJ’s but she knew they weren’t. She was berating herself for knowing the man’s footsteps so well, when two large arms came into view on either side of her.
For a moment her brain registered that it wasn’t TJ. Then, when she understood what was happening, it was too late. The arms clamped around her, one holding her own arms pinned to her side, the other tight across her neck. Time froze. Even as she realized it, she felt a vague sense of the surreal mix with cold terror.
She was almost immobilized, her head unable to turn or even snap back and break a nose. Her hands fought to scratch, but her nails were nowhere near any skin other than her own.
Pinwheeling her legs as he lifted her from the ground, she landed blows to his shins and feet. But her sneakers were rubber-soled and she doubted she did much damage as he dragged her off the track. She could see that he was headed toward the back gate, and ice flooded her veins. There were no good reasons to go out that way.
She tried lifting her legs to get her heels to his kneecaps, but she couldn’t seem to cause any damage when she did it.
Kneecaps.
The thought raced through her mind and she acted. Still on the track surface and making it as difficult as possible for him, Norah lifted her legs and hooked her toes behind his knees. Before he could react, she folded, bending double at the waist while pulling her feet forward with force and buckling his legs.
He buckled forward, still wrapped around her, and her head cracked the running surface.
“Bitch!” The word was in her ear, but scream or whisper she couldn’t distinguish. He was up on his feet and moving with her again before she could react.
This time she went limp, becoming dead weight and feeling a good four to five times heavier than a tense person. His arms loosened just a bit as he swore again, and Norah was waiting. She drove the back of her head into his nose.
He let a burbled noise out, but still didn’t release her. His arm around her neck shifted though, and she bit down. Hard.
He let go.
Norah hit the ground sailing, racing for the opposite side of the track, she pumped her legs and wished she’d practiced flat out running more.
Then she remembered to scream. Even though her body was tired from the jogging, and desperate for oxygen, she gulped in a big lungful to use for a shriek the likes of which she’d never made before in her life.
She saw the track coming up at her, and it smacked her full body, knocking the sound away, before she even realized he had her ankle. Rolling onto her back and fighting for possession of her limb, she forced him to use two hands to hold onto it.
When he did, she pulled her other foot back and drove her heel into his solar plexus. He went over backward.
Get up.
Then scream.
She was scrambling up even as he did, but she hadn’t managed to make any noise. She had to make noise.
His hand came out from behind his back, this time holding a hunting blade.
Chapter 44
TJ pulled into the lot, wondering what the hell he was doing there. Norah wasn’t speaking to him, and he really wasn’t sure why. He was certain it was his fault though, and if she’d just tell him what he’d done, then maybe he could fix it.
He opened the door to the Mercedes and stood up, stretching. The lot was deserted, but no one was here this time of day except maybe Norah. So for just a moment, TJ stood and surveyed the empty track below him.
If she’d come, she’d gone.
He’d really thought she’d still be here though. For some reason he was certain she’d come. Then he shook his head. Clearly she’d given up on whatever she’d wanted from him, and he was becoming man enough to admit it hurt.
Turning, he slid back into the car and backed out of the space. In his rearview mirror he caught a glimpse of a car on the far end, parked beneath one of two trees providing small patches of shade in the open lot.
He frowned. That was
Norah’s car.
He didn’t have to check.
TJ puzzled that for a second. Maybe she’d walked over to the high school to get a drink? He didn’t know what she did when he wasn’t here. His body ignored the musings of his brain, and was already out of the car. He’d thrown it into park there in the middle of the lot, and he went back over and frowned down at the track again.
Nothing.
TJ figured he’d park himself in the shade and sit and wait, when a glint of light flashed in the trees beyond the track.
In that instant he registered that the back gate was open, the trees were dark, and someone was there.
In a dead terror he didn’t fully understand, his feet were already moving, instantly at a run. He didn’t feel the stairs—was, in fact, pretty certain that he’d just cleared them in a jump.
Norah!
It screamed in his mind, as his feet took the straightest line to the trees. He ignored the front gate, now all of ten feet out of his way, and went over the fence. His lungs would have burned if he could have felt them, and he hadn’t run so fast ever before in his life.
Slamming through the back gate and sending it rattling, his eyes adjusted to the scene before him in the trees. The dead terror he’d felt before congealed into something worse. Norah was pinned under some man whose head snapped up as the gate rattled.
TJ charged, tackling and hauling him off Norah at the same time. Rolling on top, TJ landed blows, his mind in a red rage and bent on murder. He pinned the man, staring into dark eyes and fighting against what he’d seen, what his brain wasn’t yet admitting.
He felt his fingers close around the man’s neck and begin to choke. Even while he watched the man struggle for air, angry and defiant, TJ thought it was too humane of a death. TJ was larger but he had to fight to subdue his opponent. That was because of the blood, he saw. The man was covered in swaths of red, none of it old enough to be brown yet.
Look out!
He didn’t know if he’d heard it or not, but he saw the knife as it came at his side, and in slow motion he watched it arc at him. He considered taking the blow, letting the knife get buried in his flesh, if he could hold on long enough to be sure the man died. But if this monster took him down, Norah would be unprotected.
TJ jumped to one side, taking a deep nick from the blade and then a hook to the jaw that came from the other side. The man was on his feet, and TJ was on his ass. But he was close, and he took the assailant’s feet out from under him, landing punches and driving knees into him as he fell.
Norah, run!
He didn’t know if he got the sound out. TJ heard ribs crack, and the sick thud of human flesh taking a beating. Some of it was his own. At last he got hold of the man’s arm, smashing the forearm over his knee and finding satisfaction, if not enjoyment, in the crack of bone he heard.
This time the other only pushed away, flinging himself backwards as far as possible from TJ and the murder he was certain shown in his eyes. The man found his feet and turned to flee. TJ started to lunge after him, only then feeling his thoughts do a sharp snap to Norah. She needed him.
As he turned his head, he saw the man hike up his pants with his one good hand, and TJ knew what that meant. The rolling started in the bottom of his torso, and pressed upward, feeling like a steamroller on both sides. He’d felt the sensation of his stomach trying to expel food backwards, but this was like his body was trying to expel his soul.
He fell onto his hands and knees, unable to remain upright, and wondered how blades of grass could continue to grow here when this had happened. His hands left smears of blood as he crawled, unable to breathe and not wanting to think, to where Norah had started to push herself up to sitting.
She, too, was covered in blood. Smears washed her head to toe, and in a few places it ran in fat drops. Her clothing hung from her in shreds leaving her exposed and virtually naked. He felt the rolling deep inside him again, as though his body had failed to kill him the first time and thus was trying again. But he wouldn’t let Norah see that.
His eyes found hers, wide and scared, and he saw her hands reach out to him. He’d been afraid her eyes would go blank, but she was in there, and TJ had only one reaction to that. With no thought he rose on his knees and reached to her, pulling her up, his hands sunk into her hair and he sought to fuse his mouth to hers, the rest of the world be damned.
“Ah!”
He stopped and jerked back, wondering what kind of ass he was to try to kiss her now, but he’d needed it for himself if not for her.
A mewling noise came from her throat.
His hands left her, but hovered near her skin, “What baby, what?”
Her fingers grabbed at his wrists pulling them away, “My head.”
All of her—hands, voice, limbs—moved with tremors and only the merest of strength. But she curled herself against him and took long breaths.
Oxygen heaved in and out of his own chest, in time with hers, and slowly his arms closed around her. He didn’t know how long they stayed that way, but later he figured it wasn’t long.
Warm liquid ran over his fingers and he knew it was blood. Hers. “Norah, you’re bleeding.”
Chapter 45
TJ held her away, wanting nothing more than to pull her close and let this nightmare dissolve away, but he couldn’t let her bleed. Her face was swelling on one side, she was cut so many places he couldn’t tell where the blood was coming from. Luckily there wasn’t that much of it.
Gently, afraid she might break any second, he pulled her back into the circle of his arms and whispered, “Baby, I have to get you to a hospital.”
She nodded, then crooked her lips at him. It wasn’t a smile. There was no happiness here. “You, too.”
That was of no concern.
“Can you stand?” Slowly rising to his own feet, TJ pulled her up with him, ready to catch her if she collapsed, and at no point certain that she, or he, wouldn’t.
As she came unsteadily to her feet, he saw ribbons of red down the front of her, long cuts, and his brain worked again, matching the image of the knife coming at him with the almost neat strips her clothes were left in.
He stumbled, as his brain processed that the bastard had sliced her clothes off of her, with no concern for her skin underneath. His feet held, and Norah looked at him, but as soon as her eyes found his, they went unfocused and she wobbled.
His arms found her again, encircling her, holding her to him, the touch of her in his hands the only thing keeping him upright.
What remained of her shirt slipped off one shoulder, baring her further. He had to get her to a hospital, his cell phone was in his car, and it would be faster to drive than to call an ambulance and wait. “Baby, can you stand? Just for a moment?”
He put her arm around his waist and let her support herself, while he peeled his shirt. He damned well wasn’t carrying her across the track and into the hospital as naked as she was. Bloody and torn in places, his t-shirt was still whole compared to hers. Gently, he eased the remaining scraps of her clothing from where they hung on her, and pulled the shirt over her like he would a small child. Without talking, Norah complied.
He tucked the pieces of her shirt into the back of his waistband, the thought forming in his brain that he was going to take care of Norah, and then he was going to nail that bastard.
Bending slightly, he scooped her up, one arm behind her shoulders and the other tucking the gratefully too-big t-shirt under her. Her weight felt right in his arms, even if nothing about this was right. She shifted for a moment, getting comfortable while he murmured into her hair before he turned to walk back across the track.
“Wait!”
TJ stopped, it was the first clear word she’d uttered, and one he didn’t want to obey. She needed a hospital, soon.
“The knife.” Her voice was soft, and he wondered if the blossoming bruises on her neck explained the cause.
Again he felt his gut clench, and again he forced the thought aside, as it
would do Norah no good now. She pointed behind him, and when he turned he saw the knife, one small spot of silver, not covered in blood, glittering grotesquely in a wayward patch of sun. He set Norah back on her feet, leaning her on a tree for support while he used the remnants of her t-shirt to pick up the weapon without damaging any more evidence than he had to.
But he couldn’t figure what to do with the thing. If he tucked it in the back of his waistband, he might rub at the fingerprints. He couldn’t hold it and hold her, but he was tempted to try. Finally, he decided to fling the thing away, Norah was far more important than any evidence and he had to get her to help.
Her hands came out, forming a cup, and it took half a second for him to register that she would hold it.
TJ didn’t want to hand it to her. Didn’t want her carrying the thing that had been used against her. But he couldn’t deny her, and she wanted to bring the knife so he handed it over.
With pain in his heart like he had never felt before, he scooped her up again, walking while she shifted and settled herself against him. The gate to the track stood open and he passed through it, his feet feeling the familiar flat surface beneath. His hurt heart felt grateful that she let him carry her—that after all this, she trusted him.
He went out the gate at the other side, working the latch himself because Norah was growing slowly catatonic in his arms. She was withdrawing, and it scared the crap out of him.
His car was still sideways in the parking lot. TJ pulled the passenger door open and held her, juggling the seat adjuster and her soft weight until he had the seat all the way reclined and he could lay her down.
Immediately he plucked the wrapped knife from her hands, although she didn’t seem to notice, and he stashed it on the floor of the backseat.
Norah rolled to face the driver’s side, long legs peeking out beneath the hem of his shirt, but her body didn’t relax. She needed help. Help he couldn’t give her. And his fingers flexed, discovering he had no keys.
Love Notes Page 23