Authors: Nicole Williams
I ran.
CHAPTER FOUR
SEEING STARS
I sprinted into the darkness, feeling nothing but my legs pounding the earth beneath me and my arms pumping through the damp air. If I’d run like this at the state conference in high school, I could have annihilated the record. Nothing like a little adrenaline and the fear of losing your life to make you run like an Olympian.
I heard nothing but my erratic breathing and saw nothing but the dull glow of lampposts dotting the campus grounds. How, in a campus this large, could there not be a single person around other than the two I was fleeing?
I surveyed the ground in front of me before checking over my shoulder—neither man had called out after me, nor had I heart their footfalls in pursuit.
I screamed at the same time Troy’s arms cinched around me, whipping me to a stop.
“You’re fast,” he said, no hint of exertion in his voice. “But you’re got to be faster if you want to outrun me.”
He twisted me around in his arms, thrusting me tighter against him. His breath heated the space between us.
“I’ll only ask once, and keep in mind I’m not nearly as nice as him”—he pointed his eyes to the side, where Ben was leaning up against a tree, cross-armed and looking bored. “Where is William?” he growled.
A cough escaped my lungs, no doubt a result of the cold air gulped from my all-out sprinting. I looked him straight on, feeling confidence rising, despite the angry veins that were bulging like roadmaps over his face.
I pointed my eyes at his shirt collar. “I think that tie’s cutting off the circulation to your head.”
I’d barely finished my sentence before I was flying backwards through the air. Before I could wrap my mind around the idea that I’d just been “pitched” like I’d weighed all of a pound, I came in contact with something as hard as it was unforgiving. My head bounced like a beach-ball against the brick wall of the building.
My vision blurred, and then I felt the hot streams of fluid running first down my face, then my neck. More stitches—I’d be more Frankenstein than human if I kept up at this rate. For some insane reason, this made me laugh, and I rested my battered head against the wall behind me. I laughed louder, barely caring about the blurry image of Troy coming at me.
He kneeled beside me, putting his face an inch from mine. His face was twisted into a snarl. “Feeling a bit more cooperative?”
I laughed again, hysterically now. He was going to kill me—this man was really going to kill me—and all the fight I was putting up was a laugh. I’d lost it—officially now.
“She’s laughing,” Troy said back to Ben, still leaning against the tree as if this was some sort of everyday occurrence for him. Get up, take a shower, eat lunch, brutalize a young woman . . .
“Must not have hit her hard enough. I’ll make sure I don’t make the same mistake.” He grabbed my shoulders, fingers drilling into my skin.
I looked him straight on, calming my laughing fit, but I was still grinning. Sane people dealt with life and death situations by screaming, fighting, running, or maybe even fainting . . . I dealt with it by laughing like a lunatic. Sane had left the station long ago.
“Anyone ever diagnosis you with anger issues? There’s a great 12-step group that meets at the senior center in town if you’re interested.”
He slapped me across the cheek, the sting of it more painful than the head wound seeping droplets of blood around me. “You’re a wild one. I like that,” he said, brushing his finger across the same area he’d just slapped. “It’s too bad I’m going to have to kill you.”
I twisted my face away from his fingers, waiting for it to be finished. Waiting for fate to at last catch up with me after a one year stint of outmaneuvering it—well actually, if I was being honest with myself, my whole life I’d been dodging it.
As I was closing my eyes for the last time, my blurred vision caught sight of the tiniest ball of light, glowing xenon blue in color. The light burst into a beam of light, and had I been looking up at the sky, I could have been gazing at a shooting star. The streak of light closed in towards us at an unfathomable speed, the light growing larger, monopolizing my field of vision, until it exploded in front of me.
I heard Troy’s snarl surprise echoing away from me. In his place stood someone else—my materialized shooting star.
William was quivering with rage, squaring himself between me and Ben, as the echoes of something large splintering rippled into the courtyard.
He chanced a look back at me, his face falling as if he was looking at my corpse. His eyes narrowed into slits as he turned them back to Ben. “How dare you.”
Ben raised his hands at William. “Let’s not do anything you’ll regret.”
William started for him, his body rigid. “Trust me, I won’t regret it.”
Ben’s eyes widened, looking the most emotional I’d seen him so far, when Troy made his reappearance in the courtyard.
William stopped abruptly, stepping back and angling himself between Troy and me.
Troy looked too composed, like a volcano about to erupt. He paced towards us, glaring at William through lowered eyes. He stopped a few yards in front of him, running his fingers through his hair and pulling something from the back of his head.
“Tree killer,” he sneered, throwing a half-foot sliver of wood at William’s feet.
My vision was far from twenty-twenty at the present moment, but the sliver looked glossy with dark color . . . as if coated in blood. I’d hit my head hard—hard enough to believe that Troy had just pulled a six-inch piece of wood from the back of his head. Oh yeah, and that William had swooped in via a ray of light to save the day.
Time to chalk up delusional to my ever-increasing list of maladies.
“I think I understand why you took an unannounced sabbatical in the land of the lowly,” Troy said, slicking his hair back into place. “I like my girls spirited too, and where we come from that’s hard to come by. I wouldn’t mind breaking her in if you can’t.”
William started forward, fists at the ready, when Ben stepped forward. “That’s enough, Troy. We were not sent to carry out our usual bidding.”
Troy took a step back, obeying, although it looked like it took every bit of self-control he had to do it. “Sorry,” he said, before mouthing in William’s direction. “Sorry someone’s so sensitive.”
Ben ignored him. “We are here to merely deliver a friendly message,” Ben said, watching William carefully.
“I know the rules,” William said, his jaw tight. “I don’t need any reminders.”
Ben’s eyes circumnavigated the area purposefully. “It appears you do. We won’t press the issue tonight, I think our message is obvious”—he eyed me in explanation—“If I might make a suggestion? Don’t make John send for you again.”
“Well he knows where I am now,” William said, the challenge in his voice unmistakable.
“Yes,” Ben said, his eyes glinting. “He does.”
“Farewell, Mr. Winters,” he said jovially, bowing his head. “Until next time.” Ben turned to leave, gesturing with his head for Troy to do the same.
“Just so you know,” William called out to the retreating pair. “If either of you so much as lay one finger on her again, I will tear you both apart starting with those filthy appendages.”
Ben said no more, disappearing into the trenches of the night, but a chuckle came from Troy’s throat as he turned to leave. One that said,
let the games begin.
William held his sentinel in front of me, in anticipation of Ben and Troy returning, or perhaps just not wanting to look at me. Judging from the blood crusting the pavement around me, I knew I looked like a horror movie victim who’d happened upon a deranged chainsaw aficionado.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a bandage on you, would you?” I said, hoping to get through the wall of man before me.
He shook his head, looking everything but amused.
“It’s a joke,” I said. “You can laugh, you know.”
He didn’t, he stood before me, rigid and looking regretful.
“Or loosen up,” I said under my breath as I leaned forward to tie my shoe, realizing the movement was a bad idea. Every square inch of my body throbbed or felt bruised.
“I heard that,” he said, his voice softer.
“Good,” I said, inspecting the damage from my head on collision with a brick wall. I ran my thumb down the center of my head, wincing.
“Let me see that,” he said, kneeling beside me. His fingers maneuvered mine out of the way, as he scrolled around the gash, exploring and inspecting as if he’d done it innumerable times before.
“I need to get you somewhere so I can get you stitched up,” he said, slipping out of his canvas jacket.
I shook my head with as little movement as possible. “It’s just a scratch.”
He barely rolled his eyes. “It’s just a scratch that requires stitches.”
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t let pre-med students use me as their guinea pig,” I said, trying to ignore his warm breath that fogged the space between us. “That’s what cadavers are for.”
He smiled, his mood finally lifting. “A twelve-year-old girl who can stitch a hem could manage ten measly stitches.”
“Then find me a twelve-year-old-girl.”
“You’re just going to have to make due with me,” he said, scooping me up suddenly. He rested his balled up jacket behind me, pressing it tightly against my head with his shoulder.
I was caught off-guard, too overwhelmed with being wrapped in his arms and the scent of him that was a dizzying concoction of cedar laced with cinnamon. He was halfway across the courtyard before I cleared my head enough to make a response.
“I can walk you know,” I said it because I thought I should, not because I actually wanted to.
“I’m sure you can.” His arms pulled me tighter against him, as if he was fearful I’d be pulled away from him by some invisible force.
“Then why are you going all
Gone With the Wind
on me?” I asked, although Rhett Butler didn’t hold a candle to him. And I certainly wasn’t a Scarlett O’Hare.
“Several reasons. One, we’ll get where we’re going faster,” he said, breaking into a run to prove his point. “Two, there is a possibility in your state you could stumble or lose consciousness and you really don’t need any more damage done to you tonight.”
I glared up at him, not amused at him making fun of my lack of grace.
“And three”—he shrugged—“because I want to.”
I tried not to smile like too much of an idiot. “Well those are your reasons, I guess,” I said. “Although they’re not good ones.”
He slowed back down, although not because he was fatigued or out-of-breath. His breathing remained unchanged, and from my agreeable positioning with my head against his chest, I heard every unhurried beat of his heart. He didn’t say anything else, just rushed forward into the night with me.
Silence didn’t bother me, it was actually where I felt most comfortable—in the things that didn’t need to be spoken—but this was a very pregnant silence that was starting to give me labor pains.
“Okay, so I’m going to address the elephant in the room”—I looked purposefully around us—“so to speak.”
His hint of a smile encouraged me onward.
“What the heck just happened?” I had no other way of summing up my loaded question.
His face was guarded—too guarded. “Big picture or microscope view?”
I managed something of a shrug. “I’m a details girl.”
He grinned. “I guessed that, too.”
I watched him, waiting for his mouth to open in response, and while I wouldn’t have really minded gazing at his mouth all night, I needed answers.
“So?” I asked, drawing the word out.
“So what?” he asked innocently.
I elbowed him in the ribs. “So now is as good a time as any to give me that microscope view.”
“Not now,” he said quietly, looking straight ahead in such a way I knew he was avoiding making eye contact.
“Yes now,” I demanded. “You know what they say, live in the now, there’s no time like the present, et cetera, et cetera.”
He was fighting a smile, that was a good sign. “Now”—he said it like it was a person—“is not the right time.”
“When is the right time?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I know it won’t be when you’re bleeding from the head and in desperate need of a good night’s sleep.” He looked pointedly at the dark hallows under my eyes—caused from sleepless nights trudging through homework that wouldn’t cooperate and thoughts of him that wouldn’t go away.
My eyes narrowed, probably making the circles look more dramatic.
“I will answer any and every question you have for me,” he said, “soon, but I want to give you my full attention as I’m certain your questions will require it, and right now I’m too preoccupied with getting your body back to normal.”
“Who’s John?” I asked, chancing a quick look at his face to see if I was pressing my luck. It remained unchanged.
“I suppose you could call him a kind of godfather,” he replied carefully.