But all their voices faded to the distance.
I just heard their laughter. I saw the mocking looks on their faces. They thought they were above me. They thought I was dirt beneath them because that was how they treated people. They thought they could hurt me.
Never.
Again.
Then I was swinging. I was ready to take them on, all of them, but that one couple in particular. Suddenly, there was shouting, but I still couldn’t make out the words. They were moving away from me. Someone yelled out. Satisfaction surged through me. Good, I wanted them to be scared. I’d been scared for too long.
An arm was around my waist, and I was being picked up. Someone carried me away, and a hand started rubbing down my back. That someone, whoever was holding me, was trying to soothe me as we hurried away from the group at a fast clip. The group was almost running, coming after us.
I felt the tension from whoever was holding me. I reacted to it, going with him and slowly, the anger started to leave me. A buzzing sound dissipated in my head, and I became aware of my surroundings.
Jake was running down the sidewalk with an arm tucked around my waist. He kept an iron grip on me, and his other hand touched the top of my head, covering it every now and then. He ducked around groups and then into a building’s doorway. He dropped me but kept his hands on my waist. I felt them digging into me.
He was saying something to me.
The need to protect myself was still strong, and I stared up at him, unable to fully make out what he was saying. The buzzing was still there. I shook my head. I needed to let him know, but he shouted something and dug into my pockets. My phone fell out, but he pulled out my keys and started looking through all of them. He produced my building key and shoved it into the door. After unlocking it, he swept us both inside.
My phone was on the front stoop.
I couldn’t leave it there. Kian’s number was on there. Ducking from his hold, I darted outside. That was when I heard the shouts from the street.
“Where did they go?”
“That bitch was going to hurt my wife.”
They were in full pursuit. I couldn’t believe that.
Jake hauled me back inside and whirled both of us behind the door, so the group couldn’t see us. Just as he did, they ran past us. He clamped me to him, one arm firmly holding my head to his shoulder and the other on my waist. He wasn’t letting me go. I didn’t fight him. As everything began to register in me, I felt the fight starting to leave me, and I became exhausted.
What had I almost done?
I started to pull back, but he tugged me back against him. “Hold on.”
We heard outside the door, “Where did they go?”
Someone else answered, “Who knows? Bart and Harold are so far down. Even if they find those kids, what are they going to do? It’s not like we can hurt them. I suppose we can report her for what she tried to do. Attempted assault, right?”
“I’d like to scratch that little bitch. She was about to claw my eyes out.”
A woman laughed. “You looked like Casper. Honestly, Renee, I thought you were about to pee your stockings.”
The other woman laughed but hissed at the same time, “Shut it, Helen. That stuck-up girl works at Escape. Harold and I go in there sometimes.”
“Really?” The other woman sounded envious. “Man, oh man, I love that restaurant. We got in one time. My boss reserved the back room for a small holiday party. It was divine.”
“I know. I’m going to report this little shit. She’s going to lose her job, and Harold and I are going to get the star treatment. If they don’t, I’ll sue their establishment.”
I tensed against Jake, but he shook his head.
He mouthed down to me, Don’t.
I didn’t. What I was going to do, I had no idea, but I didn’t do it. I stayed in his arms, and I held my breath, still listening.
“Can you do that?”
“Why not? You saw her. She must’ve come from work. She still had on her employee badge.”
“Oh my God, Renee. If you follow through…well, at least take me with you.”
Both of them cracked up at that joke, and they moved on. We still waited, but we didn’t hear any others from their group for the next few minutes.
Jake slid his hand into mine and whispered into my ear, cupping the back of my head, “Follow me. We can slip into the stairs, and they still won’t see us.”
I nodded and let him pull me past the doorway and into the stairwell. If we had waited for the elevator, they could’ve seen us. We were in plain view of the glass doors, but I lived on the eighth floor, and I didn’t care about the climb.
Jake started to open the door on the second floor, and I shook my head.
“We can use the elevator here,” he said.
“I need the exercise. I have to calm down.”
He paused, studying me, and then shrugged. Letting go of the door, he fell in step behind me. “Okay.”
“You can use the elevator.”
“Nope. Where you go, I go.”
My throat swelled up, and I gripped the stair rail hard. I managed to get out, “Thank you.”
His dark eyes washed over me, warming as they did, and he noted softly, “No problem. Let’s get up there. Your balcony overlooks the street. If they’re still on the street, we can throw water balloons at them.”
I laughed, my chest feeling a little lighter. “Or rotten fruit. I’m sure Erica’s got something rotting that she hasn’t thrown out yet.”
“Or that, too.” Jake laughed from behind me.
We trekked all the way to my floor. Once we got there, neither of us was out of breath. We were silent as I unlocked my door, and we went inside. I reached for the light, but Jake held my hand.
“Let’s see if they’re down there first,” he said.
I nodded. “Good idea.”
When we got out on my balcony, we didn’t see them. Instead, it was the two of us, in the dark, alone, and the rush of our near escape had us both short of breath. Well, maybe that was just me. It probably was just me.
I should leave. I should turn on a light, not remain in the dark with Jake, who had saved me from a group of middle-class thirty-year-old gangster wannabes.
He asked so quietly, “Are you okay?”
My heart plunged at that one. He sounded concerned, and I hadn’t had someone feel like that about me in a long time.
Feeling my throat swell up again, I nodded. “Yeah.”
He raked a hand through his hair, grinning at me, as his eyes turned sad. He leaned against the side of the balcony and slid one hand into his pocket. He looked casual, cool, and slightly worried. “I don’t know what that was, but you might want to call your boss. Get ahead of the freight train, ya know?”
I cleared my throat and rasped out, waving off the concern, “Paul hates that couple. They always cause problems, and I was off the property. They have nothing against me. He won’t fire me.”
“You sure?”
“I am.”
“So…” Jake started as I began saying, “So…”
We stopped and laughed. It was weird. Whether he knew it or not, he’d just caught a glimpse of the real side of me. That man and woman hadn’t registered with me. The only thing I had known was the hurt and the humiliation. Edmund had terrorized me, but he’d laughed at me, just like how they had. I hadn’t endured being the butt of a joke in a long time, so I had lashed out. If Kian had been there, he would have understood.
Well…
I laughed to myself, looking back to the ground.
Maybe Kian wouldn’t have. He understood the humiliation from Edmund. He saw the torture my foster father put me through. Maybe I was romanticizing it, what Snark had warned me against doing. I didn’t know.
What was I doing?
Jake saved me from them, and I was thinking about Kian.
Then he started toward me. He was going to kiss me. I saw the intent in his eyes. I saw how he was lo
oking at my lips.
I was torn. To stay or to hide, to be kissed or not to be kissed. Those were my choices.
This was Jake.
He was here. He helped me run from a pack of washed-up rich pretenders.
He was so close now.
I closed my eyes. It was now or never. I should leave or let it happen. I knew Jake. He was familiar. He wasn’t who my stomach was in knots over the entire night, who I shouldn’t even be seeing that night.
His hand caught mine, and I looked up as he said, “Jo.”
I bit down on my lip. If Erica were here, she would’ve been raging at me, but he was the better choice.
She didn’t know that yet.
His voice was hoarse as he tried to remain in control. “I really want to…” His hand lifted and cupped the back of my head. He tilted my face up, my lips waiting for his. He continued, “I really, really want to kiss you right now.”
He was standing over me, his dark eyes black as they looked down at me. I saw the lust there. I closed my eyes. I was waiting. The decision was made.
Jake was good. Jake was sane. Jake was—
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
And the decision was made. A wall slammed down inside me. I knew who had just texted me.
Erica was at the newspaper. She wouldn’t have texted. If she wanted something, she would’ve called. There was only one person who would’ve texted me, someone whom I’d known was going to text, and I had been waiting for it all day.
I stepped back from Jake’s hold.
The moment was gone. I couldn’t kiss him, not knowing what I would be pulling him into. I pulled my phone out then and read the one-worded message.
Roof.
“What is it?”
“Huh?” I was still looking at my phone.
He was here. He was waiting for me.
Jake gently nudged my hip with his hand. “Jo? You okay?”
Looking at him took work. My neck felt like it was pulling my head through waist-deep wet cement. When I could finally focus on him, his gaze went back to my phone.
“Is something wrong?”
Yes, very wrong.
I tucked the phone against the palm of my hand, so he couldn’t read the screen, and I slid it into my pocket.
“Uh, yeah—no, I mean, no. Nothing’s wrong.”
“You sure?”
“Very.”
The lies were spilling from my lips, but I needed to get Jake out of here. Even knowing he was so close to Kian sent a cold blast through my body.
“Um, I—thank you for walking me back to my place.”
“Walking?” Jake grinned, following me back inside from the balcony.
There was something off about his response to my comment. A buzzing sound was filling my head, so I couldn’t stop and pay attention, but I registered that. I shook my head. I couldn’t concentrate on what happened between us. My blood was coursing through me, picking up speed, as I made my way to the door.
The lights were still off, and there was a different feel to my own apartment. It felt alien, surreal. I knew it was because Kian was above. Fear was mixing with a sense of urgency, and I just wanted Jake gone. That was all I wanted at that very instant.
“Yeah.”
Pulling open the door, I fixed a fake smile on my face. “I, uh…we should do this again someday.”
Jake’s head reared back as he stared down at me, pausing in front of me by the open door. “Do this again? Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” More lies. “Completely.”
“Okay…” He stepped into the hallway, still watching me. “You’re sure, sure?”
“Absolutely.” I started closing the door, still smiling around it. “Thank you, Wanker.”
“Wanker?” His eyebrows shot up.
I shut the door with a click, turning my back against it. I let out a breath of air, then drew another one in even more slowly. I closed my eyes. I needed to calm down. He was up there. And he was waiting. The meeting was finally going to happen.
There was no way I was going to calm down.
I grabbed my key and patted my pocket to make sure my phone was there, and I lingered on my bedroom door. I had a Taser in there. Erica never knew about it, but old habits died hard. I’d kept it just in case, and Kian was a killer.
Do I—I gulped—need it for him?
No.
A voice sounded in my head. It was final and strong.
As soon as I heard it, some clarity started to peek through the storm in me. It was a smidgen, enough to calm some of the jitters in my stomach. The Taser remained hidden in my room, and I stepped out into my hallway before locking my apartment door. Moving to the side hallway and then up the stairs for the roof exit, there were two sides inside me.
One was yelling at me to turn around, leave my building, and call Snark, call the cops, call the cavalry. The other side had a Zen-like calmness to it. I was going where I was supposed to go. Seeing Kian was the right thing. He wouldn’t hurt me. He never had. He had only protected me.
Both sides weren’t quite rational, but I kept climbing up those stairs until I was standing in front of the roof door. It looked locked, but I knew I could go through it.
I’d been up there once when I first checked out the building before moving in. I had come with Erica to look at the apartment. Upon Snark’s urgings to make sure I knew all the ways in and out of the building, I had gone back a second time, alone, and finding the roof door had been on that agenda.
The door was old and heavy. I stepped out and looked around. The roof was empty, except for two worn-down lounge chairs set up by the roof’s edge, overlooking the city, with two big rocks on the bottom to anchor them down from strong winds. Beside the door was another large rock. I didn’t know if it was used to prop the door open—well, that had to be the only reason, so I started to roll it into place. The door was open by a good foot in length, and I stepped forward.
Goose bumps littered my arms, up and down, and I started shivering before I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to hug off the chill.
“Kian?”
I stepped farther out from the door and looked around. The city cast a hue from below, giving the roof’s edge a light that looked like it was hugging the building. It was beautiful. The night was clear with stars blinking from above. I would’ve appreciated the sight more if I wasn’t focused on all recesses of the roof’s shadows.
“Kian?”
He wasn’t here. I stepped even farther away from the door and slowly felt myself rejoining my body. The euphoric high that I was riding on, that was so closely mixed with panic, started to ebb, and I became more grounded.
He wasn’t here. All of this had been for nothing.
My shoulders settled down an inch, and I turned back for the door.