I wanted to just tell her to go. That I was fine on my own, but I didn’t. Honestly, it felt good to catch her eye. To be appreciated. Especially after I’d had to deal with coming in second to a douche bag like Jason.
I did another rep and tuned her out as I let the adrenaline course through my body. My phone rang from across the room, but I ignored it.
“That’s it, baby. Give me another,” Nikki said, her voice deep and throaty.
This time I really did roll my eyes.
My phone rang again as I did another couple of reps. When my arms started to burn and I was finally winded, I fit the bar back into place. Nikki slid her hands down my arms as I did, and I had to stop myself from recoiling from her touch.
“That was amazing,” she said as I sat up and wiped my face with the hem of my shirt.
“Thanks.”
“Would you spot me now?”
I shrugged. I guessed it would only be fair.
As I stood up to trade positions with her, my phone rang again. “Let me go answer that real quick,” I muttered as I walked away. Honestly, I wasn’t mad about the distraction. Nikki’s attention was becoming uncomfortable.
I picked up my phone, my eyes widening as I saw the name flashing across the screen. I glanced at the time and noticed it wasn’t even noon yet.
So, what the fuck was Millie doing calling me right now?
“Millie?” I answered. “What’s going on?”
“They’re inside,” she whispered into the phone.
My heart fell to the bottom of my stomach as I gathered my shit and started running.
“Hey!” Nikki called, but I ignored her.
“Who’s they, Millie? Tell me what’s happening,” I said as I sprinted up the stairs to the ground level.
“I don’t know,” she whimpered. “I woke up to my alarm.”
“Alarm?” I asked, out of breath as I ran out of my building and down the street to where I’d parked my car.
She sniffled, and my chest tightened painfully. “If someone tries to pick the lock on my bedroom door, it triggers a UV alarm. The pain wakes me up, but it’s not enough to do serious damage. I heard them talking outside my door and then the saw started up.”
“Saw?” I asked incredulously as I jumped into my car and fired up the engine. “What saw?”
“I think they’re trying to cut the door open,” she whispered.
My heart stopped, but my foot was still heavy on the gas as I raced toward her place. “Can they get in that way?”
“No. This room is basically impenetrable.”
I blew out a tiny breath of relief, but it was short-lived. Millie was still trapped in her bedroom with who knew how many people trying to break into it. It was also the middle of the day, and if they got that door open, she was in trouble.
“Keep talking to me, Millie,” I pleaded when she’d been quiet for too long. “Tell me what they’re doing now.”
“They’re talking. They realize the saw’s not going to work and they’re discussing plan B.”
“What the fuck is plan B?”
“I don’t know yet,” she whispered.
It wasn’t until then that I noticed how sluggish she sounded. Not perky and upbeat or quick-witted like she usually was. She sounded like she was still half-asleep, and I knew that was the daylight working against her.
So not only was she in danger from the sun’s rays, she was also thinking and talking slower, which meant she was probably moving slower too.
And I was halfway across the fucking island.
I cursed Alexander Hausle as I sped through traffic. He’d said this was over. That she was safe and didn’t need a bodyguard anymore. So, what the fuck was this?
Millie gasped, and I almost ran off the road.
“What? What’s going on? Talk to me!”
“They’ve got a bomb.”
“A what?” I screamed.
“They’re going to blow the door open.”
My entire body went cold as I listened to her whispered words. I was still racing down the street as fast as I could and I was only a few blocks from Millie’s building, but it felt like a whole fucking continent.
And I knew I wasn’t going to make it in time.
“Will it work?” I asked her desperately. “Can the door be blown open?”
“I think so,” she said, her voice shaky.
I punched the steering wheel as hard as I could, hearing something crunch in my hand, but I barely noticed. “I’m close, Millie. I’m real close.”
“You’re not going to make it in time,” she whispered so softly I barely heard her.
“I know. I’m trying. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just hold on.”
“I’m going to go downstairs.”
I think my heart stopped beating for a whole second before restarting. “What the fuck do you mean? You can’t go out there!”
“I have an escape hatch in here. It leads to the apartment below mine. I’m going down there now.”
And now it felt like I could breathe again. “That’s good. Go down there and wait for me. I’ll be there soon.”
“Okay.”
There was so much doubt in her voice, and it clawed at my insides. She didn’t believe that I’d get there in time. But that wasn’t an option.
I swerved onto the wrong side of the road to pass a car not moving fast enough as I raced down the street. “Talk to me, Millie. Where are you?”
“I’m just closing the door behind me so they can’t find the stairs.”
I let out a deep breath as I pulled to a stop in front of her building. “I’m here now. Just go down there and wait for me.”
“Ashton, I–”
A loud explosion drowned out the rest of her words. I heard it outside her building a second before I heard it through her end of the phone.
“Millie!” I screamed as my heart stopped beating again.
There was a loud, thin ringing in my ears that obliterated every other sound. It filled my head and competed with the terror swimming around in there. Finally, the ringing stopped and the first thing I heard was her voice.
“I’m here,” she said.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m downstairs now. I think they got into my room though.”
“That’s okay. They won’t find you downstairs and I’m heading into your building now. I’ll be there in just a couple minutes.”
She was quiet for a long moment, and I was just about to make her talk to me again when her voice came through the speaker. “I smell fire.”
My stomach twisted painfully as I started running again. “That’s probably just from the explosion.”
“No,” she said softly. “I can hear it now too. It’s roaring in my bedroom upstairs.”
Son of a bitch.
The bomb those idiots set off must have caused a fire upstairs in her apartment. And now she was only one floor away from it with no safe way out.
I burst into the stairwell and took the steps three at a time. “I’ll be there in a minute, Millie. Just hold on.” I passed by a fire alarm and took one extra second to pull it. The sound was almost deafening, but I barely noticed.
I just needed to get to Millie.
I ran into the hall one floor beneath her apartment and sprinted toward where she should have been. The doorknob was locked, and I started banging.
“Millie! It’s me! Open up!”
I kept pounding on the door until I heard the locks turning. I twisted the knob until it finally opened, grabbing Millie around the waist and slamming the door behind me.
I set her on her feet and pulled far enough away that I could look at her. She seemed okay physically, but judging by the way her hands shook, I knew she wasn’t okay mentally.
“Are you all right?” I asked anyway.
Her big green eyes met mine as a single drop of blood fell from one of them. “Why is this happening?” she asked, her voice so broken it broke something inside me.
>
I pulled her to my chest, and she melted into my embrace. Leaning down, I rested my face on top of her head and squeezed her tighter. “I don’t know, but I’m here now, okay? I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
Millie wrapped her arms around me so tight it was almost painful, but I didn’t dare make a peep.
But when the smoke was heavy enough that I could smell it too, I knew we needed to get the fuck out of here.
“We have to go,” I said as I pulled away from her.
Millie’s eyes widened. “I can’t go outside. The sun is up.”
“You can’t stay here, the fucking building is on fire.”
She looked away for a moment, her lips pursed to the side. Finally, she turned back to me and nodded. “Okay, we can take my car. It’s in the underground garage. I can ride in the trunk with a blanket over me.”
“Is that enough protection?”
She shrugged, but I didn’t miss the fear in her eyes. “It’s going to have to be.”
“Do you have a thick enough blanket down here?”
She nodded and spun out of my hold. “Grab the keys from the kitchen drawer, I’ll go get the blanket,” she called over her shoulder.
When she was back, I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the door. The apartment was already full of smoke, so I didn’t waste time checking the hallway. I knew those assholes who set the fire were long gone by now.
I hurried into the stairwell, dragging an extremely slow Millie behind me. Finally, I huffed in irritation and lifted her into my arms.
“What are you doing?” she asked breathlessly.
“You were moving too slow.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m trying, but it feels like there are fifty-pound weights on each of my limbs.”
I pulled her closer and shook my head. “Don’t be sorry. It’s okay,” I promised as I flew down the steps and into the parking garage.
I didn’t bother setting her down as she gave me instructions to find her car. I breathed a sigh of relief as we finally made it, and I set her on her feet. Millie swayed to the side, and I had to grab her again before she fell.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“It’s fine. You’re weak from the sun,” I said as I steadied her on her feet.
“No. I’m sorry for earlier. Ashton, listen, it’s not what you–”
“Millie. Stop. We don’t have time for this. Those guys could be waiting for you to run out of the building with everyone else. We need to get somewhere safe and then we can talk about whatever you want to talk about.”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“Now, I don’t have any safe places that are light-proof for you. Do you know where I can take you right now?”
Millie nodded. “There’s a vampire hotel. We can go there.”
She rattled off the address, and I committed it to memory. Millie hit a button on her keys that popped the trunk and stood there looking at it.
“I’m sorry,” I said behind her. “I know this isn’t ideal, but we don’t have a choice.”
She nodded again, slower this time. “It’s okay. It’s just for a few minutes. I’ll be okay.”
I watched her shoulders rise and fall with her rapid breaths as I frowned. “You don’t seem okay.”
She shook her head this time. “I don’t like dark, cramped spaces.”
And she was about to get locked into the trunk of a car. I looked around the garage for another solution but knew there wasn’t one. I could hear the firetrucks in the distance and knew we wouldn’t be able to get back into the building for hours. I wasn’t going to risk that.
We didn’t know where those men were, but I could assume they were somewhere waiting for her. That meant we needed to leave. Now.
“I’m sorry, Millie. But we need to go.”
She nodded as she crawled in the trunk and curled into a ball. I held her gaze as I laid the blanket over her body.
“Not the face, please.”
“But you could burn.”
She closed her eyes and swallowed once. “I’ll take my chances.”
I tucked the blanket under her chin and stepped back to close the trunk when her voice stopped me again. “Can I call you?”
I frowned, her words not adding up.
She wiggled her arm out from underneath the blanket and held up her cell. “That way I can concentrate on something besides this small, dark space I’m trapped in.”
My heart squeezed in my chest and I’d have given anything in that moment to trade places with her. I’d rather have been the vulnerable one. The one whose life was on the line. The one who had to be locked in a trunk like a piece of luggage.
But none of my wishes were going to change anything.
I pulled out my cell and waved it in the air. “Go ahead. I’ll talk to you the whole way there.”
She smiled softly, but there was no missing the stark fear in her eyes as I closed the trunk.
Chapter 13
Millie
“Hello?”
“I’m here, Millie.”
I breathed a small sigh of relief before stopping myself. It already felt like the air was thinner in this trunk. I tried to breathe slowly in through my nose and out through my mouth, but it was choppy and bordering on gasps instead.
“Millie? Talk to me.”
“Yeah,” I said as I squeezed my eyes closed. “I’m here.”
But oh, how I wished I was anywhere else.
“Talk to me,” he said again. “Tell me why you don’t like small spaces.”
My stomach twisted painfully, my hands so sweaty I could barely hold the phone. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.” That sentence had used up all the oxygen in my lungs, and I tentatively took another breath. “Tell me a story. What were you doing when I called you?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I was at the gym, actually.”
I smiled, despite my current situation. “It figures you’re a gym rat.” A body like Ashton’s takes work, and I wondered why I’d never thought about how he maintained it.
He chuckled. “You can blame the military for that.”
I carefully pulled in another breath as we went over a bump and I was jostled back and forth. “I didn’t know you were in the military.”
“Yeah. I did five years with the SEALs.”
We went over another bump, and when I came to a stop near the trunk door, there was a sharp pain pierced my back. I gasped and scurried away.
“Millie! What’s going on?”
I rolled back over and saw there was some sun peeking through where the taillights were. I wrapped the blanket tighter around me as I huddled into the far corner of the trunk. “It’s not lightproof back here.”
He cursed loudly, and I focused on his words. On each syllable as I imagined the way his full lips would look making those sounds. It helped to think about something else besides my current situation.
“What do I do?” he asked, his voice strained.
“There’s nothing we can do. I’m okay right now, just get us to the hotel.” He growled softly, and I heard the engine rev as we jolted forward. “Keep talking to me,” I pleaded.
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything. It doesn’t matter. Just talk, please.”
He cleared his throat. “Um, well, I joined the SEALs because of my dad. He was a navy man too. We spent a lot of time moving around the world with his different assignments. It was an interesting childhood.”
“I’ve never been out of the states,” I whispered.
“Really?”
I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “I’ve only even been out of New York a handful of times.”
“Why? You’ve clearly got the money.”
I smiled. Money I had. I’d renovated my building years ago, and the rent I made on those apartments kept me more than comfortable. No, my issue had always been fear.
“I don’t like being far away f
rom home,” I explained.
He was quiet for a long time and just as I opened my mouth to ask him to talk again, he spoke. “Where would you go if you could?”
“Greece,” I answered immediately. I closed my eyes and envisioned the whitewash walls and blue, blue waters. “One of the islands. Like Santorini.”
“I’ve never been.”
I laughed. “I’ve been promising myself a trip there for decades and I never do it.”
“We should go.”
My eyes whipped open. “Go? To Greece?”
“Why not?”
Oh, I could think of a hundred reasons why not right off the top of my head. But it was more fun to pretend, so I shrugged.
“Maybe someday.”
The dreams of Greece slowly faded as the walls of the trunk began to creep in again. I was trying to keep my breathing even and not use up all the air in the enclosed space, but I was panting, my heart racing so hard it felt like it would beat right out of my chest.
“Millie? What’s going on?”
“It’s so tight back here,” I gasped. “I can’t breathe.” I pulled at the neckline of my shirt, hoping it would help open my airway, but it did nothing.
“Yes, you can.” Ashton’s stern voice just barely broke through the panic. “You’ve got plenty of air and we’re almost there. Just take a slow breath, all the way in.”
“I can’t,” I whimpered, shaking my head back and forth. “I can’t breathe.” I stretched out as far as I could, but when my knees hit a wall, it only made me panic more. “It’s too tight in here. There’s not enough air.”
“Millie,” he snapped.
I closed my eyes as I strained to listen to his voice above the sound of my own heart racing.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Breathe like me. In,” he said slowly before taking a big, exaggerated breath, “And out.” He blew into the phone line and it was like he was right there next to me.
“Breathe, Millie.”
I pulled the air into my straining lungs and held it for a moment.
“Now, let it out.”
I did as he asked, releasing the air slowly, willing my heart to calm down.
“Again,” he said.
I took another breath in and let it out again.
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