by Ace Gray
But he kept kissing me.
And his kisses were so good.
They turned the world gold and sharpened the deep neon of the lights all at once. There was no darkness, only glitter and sweeping rainbow. It was breathtaking.
Just like every move of his hands, every sweep of his tongue. Each crept closer to that sweet spot. His fingers were awfully close to where they’d been last night and I wanted to know if he could make the world tie-dye all over again but in public. His kisses were a little more difficult, they were hitting a spot a bit higher, a spot I was trying hard to keep from him.
When he purred into my mouth and I went weak-kneed, I knew just how awful I was doing at both. My fingers dug into his back and he growled all over again.
“I have to take you outside.”
I closed my eyes and nodded. It was all I could manage.
We were a tangle of limbs and rushed heartbeats as he pushed me backward. All too soon we were swallowed by the real shadow of a dark hallway. He pressed my body to the wall then his muscled body to mine. There was both a safety and abandon with the weight of him on me. I kissed him hard, still tasting the hint of tequila and me on his lips.
“I need you,” I murmured without thinking.
“Oh baby, I know what you need.” Something was different in his voice, but I was too flustered to tell what.
Our bodies bumped down the hall until my body was pressed against the crash bar of an exit door. The small of my back and the nothing small about him, pressed us out into the alley. The dim street light warmed the alley until the cool of the bricks chilled my bare back.
He kissed me and kissed me and kissed me again. My lips were sore and raw, but I didn’t stop, I couldn’t. Not even when the two men stepped out discreetly into the alley to keep watch on us. I was left gasping the moment he let me come up for air.
Brye pressed in close, his lips on my ear. “What I’m about to tell you is going to freak you out,” he murmured before kissing me again. “I need you to listen.”
I tensed in his arms, but he kissed me again, and let his nose trace along my skin in that seductive way he had, breathing me in as if I was better than air itself. I melted a little and when he felt it, he continued.
“I need you to be loud with me, moan, cry out…I need you to say my name, scream it if you feel so inclined.” He kissed me on the corner of my mouth.
“I…” My voice trailed off.
He pressed his lips to me again and my hands followed the line of his suit jacket, hesitant but hungry to take it off.
“I’m not going to fuck you. I want to, but I’m not going to. You’ll still be loud, right?”
I cocked my head in question and my brow furrowed.
“I know this doesn’t make sense, but I need you to trust me.” His hand came to my shoulder and gently pushed me backward in the alley.
“I don’t know how to make those noises.” I blushed and turned away from him a tiny bit.
“Let it out, Filly. Everything you’ve ever felt for me, my body.” He pressed harder, urging me behind a dumpster. “Show me one last time what this could have been.”
My eyes whipped up and I almost questioned him, but he lifted the pad of his thumb to trace my lips and I stilled. I surrendered to him.
“Make the noise,” he commanded softly.
So I did. Even though my heart wasn’t in it. He pulled out his cell phone and with barely more than a glance down, started recording my ridiculous Harry Met Sally vocals. When he killed the recording and started playing it, he pressed a finger to my lips and my sounds cut off. Well, the ones I was making anyhow. My recorded ones played too loudly too close to my ear.
The goons that had followed us out into the alley were full of husky chuckles, but it was the slow and steady click of Brye’s fingers on the touchscreen of his phone that drew my attention. Eventually, he found the right screen and I was close enough to read what he must have written earlier in his notes section.
I’m doing this for you. It’s what I should have done from the beginning.
Run. Don’t look back. Not now. Not ever.
Go to Hawthorne Racecourse.
Hide.
Someone you trust will be there soon.
What? I almost yelled it at him, but he pushed his finger back against my lips. My eyes snapped to his and all the ice in them had melted. A sorrowful smile hung loosely on his lips. His lips that silently mouthed Please. He was doing this so I could leave. So I could be free. It was a head start and the only one I’d likely get.
Fear squeezed on my heart—for him, for me, and at what shape the world would take if we were apart—but then again so did truth. I wasn’t choosing myself over us, I was choosing life over death. And Brye was choosing me, choosing this, over his family.
He was giving me back my right to choose anything at all.
In that moment he became the man I’d always wanted him to be. All his pieces fell into my hands and he felt real and heavy and whole. He felt like mine. But now that I had them, I couldn’t keep them. His heart—his sacrifice—deserved more than that.
I had my choice back and I knew the one I had to make. But in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to spend my choice on the one thing that had really come to matter.
I wanted to choose him.
I saw it glint in her eyes. The protest. The reluctance. She froze and it made my heart go a little apeshit.
For a split second, I contemplated going with her and getting out of this. Whether it was worth it and if I even could. When the answer was no you can’t, not if you want her to have a head start, not if you want her safe, the same sorrow-filled resignation colored my face that did hers.
I twisted us so she was completely hidden behind the dumpster and from the view of my dad’s men. Taking one last, loving, longing look at her, I tucked the hair I’d been responsible for mussing up behind her ear and jerked my chin down into the dark of the alley. Filly closed her eyes and leaned into my palm, letting out one soul-shuddering sigh before her eyes opened and determination replaced all the things she held for me hidden behind that beautiful smile. I recognized her fight from the times she spat at me, the times she kicked and punched and fought with me and I smiled. She would get through this. She would live. And that was worth it.
Go, I mouthed. I thought about adding three other words too, but I just managed a halfhearted smile instead. Pain seized in my chest when she finally did.
She was the bright spot. And whether I had twenty-four hours or twenty-four years left on this planet, she would stay that way. Shimmering silver and sunshine blonde disappearing down the alley without a single look back but staying in my heart all the same.
When she disappeared around the corner, the world lost its sharp edges and all of its color drained out, but it was right again. I was on steady, steeled footing. There would be no vivid blood spatter on snow unless I was doing the battering.
If you love something, set it free…
I sucked in a deep breath, accepting the consequences both good and bad of that universal truth. I couldn’t regret losing her even if it hurt. I swallowed the sting and so much of my pride as I sent the text message I’d typed out in the club and kept hidden on my phone.
The message that was likely my death sentence.
My father would rip me to shreds for this. For all of it. But I knew she was worth it. She’d shown me that I hadn’t ripped out my heart and shattered my soul when Rosalyn died after all. My heart had gone into hiding, waiting for a savior. My soul...well the missing pieces had been scattered to the wind that ran through her restless fingers. She’d picked them up and kept them safe for me.
The sound on my phone cut off, leaving the alley empty except for the echoes of my breath, heavy and hard. The air stuck in my lungs. I had meant to play it out longer, but I’d been lost in my thoughts and let the recording run out.
“Finished without a bang.” One of the goons behind me spoke up.
; “Never known him not to please a woman.”
I stayed frozen listening to their shit for a few heartbeats more, knowing full well it was all I had. I pictured the look on her face when she’d pushed that shot down between her breasts. She’d been so happy, hope had danced in her eyes. It was something I hadn’t seen much of but something I’d become addicted to.
Shoes shuffling on the small gravel and grit of the street made my body tense. I had a few deep breaths to say a prayer to whatever power in the universe that might still listen to a dark, fallen angel like me.
“What’s happening?”
“Brye?”
The moment their footsteps froze I clenched my fists.
“Where in the fuck is she?”
“You tricked us?”
I wheeled on the first one and my fist crunched into his face before he realized. He stumbled into the wall, holding his jaw. The other one cheap shot my kidneys then wrapped his arms around me. I crashed my heel into his instep and he bellowed but didn’t let go. The other asshole recovered and barreled at us both. We crashed backward and the man behind me broke my fall except for where my head snapped back and split against the concrete.
There was the familiar warmth that came with blood seeping from my skin. It was something I’d felt enough to know that the throb alternated with the crack of pain would be achy and make me woozy, both of which I couldn’t be right now.
I sucked in a deep breath and kicked with all my might. The guy catapulted off me and chattered into the dumpster behind us. I threw my elbow back into the gut behind me. He let go just long enough for me to shove up and reel through the alley before the onslaught began again.
Punches landed like polka dots on my body and did what I could to land the same wild jabs back. I kicked and scratch and fought with the abandon of a dead man. Eventually their assault and the thump and thwack against the walls and the dumpster all felt the same. I was numb except for the familiar feeling of blood.
It wasn’t just coming from the back of my head anymore but the re-opened wounds on my back and the fresh brand on my chest. I was warm and amped up, but both had me teetering on the edge. I was going to fade out and surrender to them. To death. Nothing burned that hot without disintegrating completely.
They came at me again and again and I felt myself so much closer to the edge. When one finally had the time to pull a weapon on me the world wobbled. It was the ghost of Filly’s hands that steadied me.
I grabbed his wrist and pulled it toward me, cementing the barrel of the gun to the seeping blood of my chest. Without hesitating, I swung my arm up from beneath us with every ounce of superhuman strength I had left. I crashed into his elbow and felt the fibrous snap a second before I heard it. His bones were headed in the wrong direction and his girlish screech said how very far out of place I’d set them.
There was a glimpse of golden sunshine in that moment—or at least I thought that was what I saw before I realized the color came from the high beams of a car—and it was enough to cling to. To run toward. It was only seconds before a bullet whizzed by, no doubt intended for my shoulder or thigh so my father could plan something infinitely worse.
I ran faster.
All too soon the whomp from lost blood blared in my ears and chopped at my gate. I couldn’t keep this up, not even for her. I turned a corner and found the wide open of a city park. There were a few trees, some baseball diamonds, and an elegant garden just on the opposite side of a hip high metal fence. I used my grip between the spiked points to help hurdle up and over, landing with a soft thump as I rolled onto the manicured green grass.
I stared up at the pinkish hue of the cloud cover above the city wishing that I could have seen the stars. Or sunrise. Something to remind me that real color and wonder still existed in the world.
Instead, the constant whomp, whomp, whomp kept me company until the world muddied and everything went black.
I couldn’t look back as I hurried down the alley or hailed the cab. I couldn’t look back and see Brye because every ounce of confidence I had would waver. I would go back to him. I wanted to. With every little bit of my being.
Even when I stood outside of a cab, after spending the money Brye had pushed into the hidden pocket of my dress, looking up at the empty grandstand of the track, I wanted to look back. To go back. I had a feeling I wouldn’t like what I found.
The thought choked me up, tears clouding my vision of the haunting building in front of me. Fear and hurt mixed up with my gratitude. This was supposed to be my rescue from some unknown hero but, with Brye behind me, it felt wrong. Warped. The racetrack was no castle, and Brye was no white knight and I didn’t really deserve to be rescued. But then again, I’d never wanted the fairy tale.
I wanted a bad boy, a villain, and when I got him, he was so much more, so beautiful and tragic and complex that he’d altered who and what I was. I tried to shove him aside along with the tears falling down my cheek. I squared my shoulders against the haunting building and did the only thing left to do—follow his instructions. The instructions he’d likely paid the highest price for.
I hid.
And to honor him and smooth the terror inside me, each time I got comfortable enough to feel my eyelids sag, I moved again. If the neon bar signs weren’t buzzing in the background, I would have figured the place was abandoned. The stains on the carpets and the chips in the fiberglass seats looked as worn as I felt.
When a booming echo shook the very foundation of the building, I gasped as I flattened to the bar I was hiding behind. There were very deliberate, clipping footfalls—at least two sets—but whoever they belonged to was silent as the grave.
Brye would have called out. I knew it. But deep down I also knew he wasn’t coming for me. And that I needed to move my ass.
I slid my heels off and held them in my hand as I crawled out from behind the bar and toward the wall of glass windows with the view of the track. There was a brightly illuminated EXIT sign a little way down and to the left. Though it was in the direction of the footsteps, I didn’t think I had a choice.
My knees hurt with each sharp fiber of the gritty carpet. When a tall, white column blocked me from view, I rose on my rickety legs. Pins and needles poked at every inch of me as I stretched and I had to bite my lip as I pressed against the column, feeling the cracks of the plaster beneath my fingertips.
I steadied myself with a few deep breaths. I thought about my mom, my dad, Uncle Horse and Conrad, too. There were so many things I wished I’d said to them, so many secrets I wished we’d unearthed. I thought about Brye. About the ugly miraculous gift he turned out to be.
It was his strength that pushed me toward that door, fast as the wind. I crashed into it, feeling the crunch of my body and the hiss of the men behind me. The concrete steps ripped and pulled at the pads of my feet until I slid between the white rails of the track. The soft dirt puffed up around me, staining my ankles and calves with the dry dust that had been baking in the hot summer sun.
When I reached the second rail and sprinted through the infield, I focused on the dilapidated stables past the track. There were at least a dozen, and there would be so many stalls inside. I ran until I burst into one, the dirt more rough with straw strewn about but neither stopped me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught not one or two shadows crossing the field behind me but four. Three hulking ones with a tiny one sandwiched in between. I yanked on a far stall door and slid in. I cowered in the close corner, tucked underneath a feed cage. And I waited. With a hand over my nose and mouth, using everything at my disposal to dampen any sound that came from me.
The footsteps drew closer, now separate and menacing. Tears pooled in the corners of my eyes and the whole world went a little blurry. This was real fear, the kind that changed the shape of my skeleton and tore at my soul.
I was going to die. I knew it.
Those moments with Brye and Connor had been scary, but I knew I had a shield. Now I was out in the open, alo
ne and unprotected, with reality raining down on me.
I was going to die without saying and doing and painting and loving…
“Filly,” a voice rasped. A voice I knew better than my own.
I shot up, my insides careening just as wildly as my wobbly legs. I cracked my shoulder on the feed cage and stumbled into the wooden gate, but there on the other side, the most beautiful blue eyes I’d ever seen were waiting.
My words choked in my throat. On the happiness, on the terror, on the past and the present. On fate itself, but I managed a single, small whisper.
“Mom?”
Relief hit me like a wave and pummeled me back down to the floor. Sobs shook me before I even fully processed what was happening.
They were here and that was all the deepest base of me needed to know.
“Shhhhh, Filly Bean,” my dad murmured in my ear as he wrapped his strong body around me. I’d taken for granted the haven his hugs could be. I knew that now.
“Are you okay?” My mom was right on the other side of me, pressing her flutter kisses to every inch of my head.
I couldn’t do anything but choke on the emotion. Comfort. Solace. Gratitude. Anger. And a longing so deep and so desperate I couldn’t describe the depths. They were here. The whole rat pack of bastard-ass liars that I loved dearly was here. And Brye was not.
My dad picked me up and kept me cradled to his chest and stepped out of the stall. My sobs shook us both.
“What did they do to you?” Uncle Horse asked as he pushed my hair behind my ear. I jerked away from him, feeling the ghost of Brye with the intimate movement. “Did they hurt you?”
“Did they hurt me?” I shot him a look. “Of course they hurt me. And touched me and tried to kill me.” I sniveled and shoved at my dad’s chest. “But they didn’t lie to me.” I pushed against him again and this time he placed me on my tiptoes.
“We didn’t—”