Page 101 of Crossfire

He was the best dad. My hero. My protector. My everything.

I swallowed the ache in my throat.

“Later, I learned that my dad found out my friend went home sick and had started walking toward the school to intercept me.But at the moment, all I knew was that something inside of him snapped. I had never seen my dad like that before. It was like he was possessed; his teeth were clenched and his knuckles were getting bloody, but he didn’t stop hitting him. Not even after the guy went limp.”

“If I had gotten my hands on him,” Grayson said, “you can rest assured the guy would’ve suffered a much more brutal death.”

His words seeped into my heart and planted its roots. I should have been repulsed by them, and yet…there it was, blooming in my heart—affection.

“I don’t know how long it lasted,” I forced myself to continue. “But at some point, another man pulled my dad off him. If they hadn’t, I’m pretty sure my dad would have killed the guy.”

Grayson’s chest rose slowly as he clenched his hand into a fist, and in a voice so calm that it was haunting, he asked, “Are you telling me that the man who tried to abduct youlived?”

The last word was spit out in disgust and angry disbelief.

When I said nothing, Grayson clenched his eyes shut.

“Did they catch the guys, Ivy?”

His anger caught me off guard.

“The one my dad had beaten was an unconscious lump of bloody flesh, so yes.”

“What happened to him?” Grayson’s voice teetered between fury and desperation.

“He was charged with a class-two felony for attempted kidnapping and sentenced to three to seven years in prison.”

Grayson’s eyes snapped back to mine, and I swear on my life, all the color had drained from them.

“Three to seven years,” he spat.

I know. People who are a violent threat to children should be locked up forever.

“They never found his accomplice. The guys had been wearing ski masks, so the only description I could give was his body type and the scar on his arm. But police speculated the two might’ve been responsible for a string of girls that had gone missing in the area. Some of them turned up dead; some of them never turned up at all.”

It felt like an eternity passed before he finally broke the silence.

“And that’s why you learned to fight,” Grayson mused.

I twisted my fingers on my lap.

“When you’re almost killed, the world doesn’t feel safe anymore. You realize that all the horror stories and bad guys that you’ve been warned about your whole life are very real and exist right outside your house. Who would want to walk through a jungle, densely populated with mountain lions? Everywhere I turned, I just saw danger.”

I shoved a hand through my hair.

“I took self-defense classes, but I graduated them. I wanted to learn more, so I kept going. Every aspect of fighting made me feel like I could protect myself that much more, you know? I never wanted to feel that small and helpless again.”

Grayson cleared his throat and locked his compassionate gaze onto mine.

“Ivy, you might be small, but you’re the least helpless person I’ve ever met. You mastered your skills so sharply that you’re a force, Ivy. That’s something you should be proud of.”

My cheeks roasted. Somehow, Grayson managed to untangle the web of self-damnation in my chest. And that meant a lot to me.

“Did it help?” he asked. “Learning to fight?”

I shrugged. “It did, in a way.” The martial arts training had given me the strength to venture out into the streets of Chicago once more, but it couldn’t erase the scars that fateful day hadleft on my soul. “But the guy…he still haunts my dreams,” I confessed, my voice hoarse. “There are nights when I wake up screaming, trapped in that moment when his fists were pounding on me or when he was shoving me into that car with an iron grip.” I paused. “In my dreams, sometimes…sometimes, he succeeds, and I’m powerless to stop him.”

Grayson ran a hand over his mouth. “And then I put you in my trunk.”

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