Page 108 of Catching My Dreams

And just like that, the Taylor Swift song started running through Ella’s mind. She found herself humming the tune after most of the crowd had left Cooper Field and she was finally walking into the parking garage where she’d left her SUV.

She’d progressed to singing “Karma” under her breath when she felt a prickle on the back of her neck. Ella spun around. Her wide eyes searched the mostly empty garage for whatever was sending waves of uneasiness through her.

Ella couldn’t see anyone hiding between the few cars left in the space. She didn’t see anyone striding between the pillars that were planted around the area and that were casting far too many shadows.

The lights on the ceiling had seemed bright when she’d walked into the parking garage, but suddenly, they seemed ineffective against the dark and reaching shadows infecting the space.

Ella was alone. None of the other car owners were there, and as far as she could tell, Brett wasn’t there either. But she knew she couldn’t trust her eyes.

Not when it came to him.

She opened the zipper on the side of her gym bag and rummaged for her keys. Still searching, Ella started making her way to her car again. She silently admonished herself for not taking the tight parking space near the entrance—the one she’d passed over for an easier spot closer to the back of the garage.

Skin feeling tight and her legs shaky and weak, Ella rushed to her car. She spat out a loud curse when she hadn’t found her keys by the time she was standing at her car door.

“Shit,” she repeated hoarsely before opening the zipper on the other side of her gym bag.

She let her breath out with a whoosh when she found her keys, but she’d let out the sigh of relief too soon. She should have saved it for when she was inside her car. Or better yet, when she was back at the pool house that she’d been sharing with Riley.

“Ella.”

She jumped and looked up. Her gaze met Brett’s cold eyes in the reflection on the car window. It was like some twisted reenactment of when he’d appeared in her bathroom, and just like then, Ella felt frozen.

Her trembling hands fumbled the keys, and they dropped to the concrete floor with a clink. Her lips parted, a scream forming in her throat, but Brett wrapped an arm around her front and smothered the sound with his hand.

“Shh,” he whispered into her ear. “We don’t want anyone interfering.”

Ella screamed against his palm, her hands lifting to try and jerk it away and her body twisting from side to side to try and get out of his hold.

“I tried so hard, Ella,” he told her, sounding almost disappointed. “I did everything I could to remove the barriers standing between us.”

He sighed, and the hand around her stomach tightened. His fingers slipped under the top half of her cheerleading uniform and scraped against the lower part of her belly. Ella started yelling again, trying to squirm away from his touch, but his grip was firm, unyielding. Her breaths were ragged now, the air exiting her nose audible.

“But even with Noah out of the way, you still refused to see that we were meant to be together.”

Ella stilled, his words sinking in and leaving her mind racing while her body froze. He couldn’t mean…Was he saying…Ella didn’t know if she should let herself have hope.

“You were meant to love me,” Brett continued, and he released the arm wrapped around her stomach. “But now I finally understand what I have to do to make you see the truth.”

He reached down with his free arm, forcing her back to bend painfully. Ella was only in the position for a second before he straightened back up and pressed something cold and sharp against the sliver of uncovered skin between her skirt and shirt. Ella tensed, and she became even more still, if possible.

Brett had a knife pressed against her stomach. He’d always scared her, but this felt different.

Gone was the Brett who tried to convince her that they were meant to be together. Gone was the Brett who tried to gaslight both her and himself.

This Brett was done talking. This Brett was the same one who’d tried to sink a blade into her when she’d told him what he felt for her wasn’t love. This Brett was the one who lashed out when she put cracks in the fantasies he’d built up in his mind. And this Brett was far more dangerous because of it.

“We’ll have an eternity together for you to realize that you love me,” he said. “You just needed more time, is all, and I’m going to give us all the time in the world.”

With those words, Ella knew what he planned to do, and she knew that she needed to get away from him before he could succeed.

She’d once prayed for death so she didn’t have to endure Brett’s unwanted touch and live with the memory of it. But faced with the very real threat of having her life taken from her, she found she wanted to live, wanted to fight. She’d survived him before, and she would survive him again.

The cold steel of the knife left the skin of her stomach, and Ella knew this was her only chance. She had to act before that knife could reach her neck or whatever vulnerable area Brett was planning on sinking it into.

Her fear usually froze her, but her body must have known that wouldn’t work in her favor anymore, and her mind seemed to get the memo, too. The only grip he still had on her was the hand covering her mouth, and what she should do came surprisingly naturally and easily to her.

Ella stomped down on the instep of his foot and then sent her elbow back into his groin once the arms around her had loosened. Brett roared in pain, and she spun out of his hold as soon as his grip was weak enough.

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