Page 43 of Teaching His Babygirl

“I don’t care if you’ve guarded the president. Darlene is far more precious.”

I hop out of Ransom’s car and head to my own. Time to go get ready for work. It’s a struggle to not go back up to Darlene’s apartment and force her to let me take care of her. Somehow, I manage.

Chapter Twenty-One

Darlene

I’m exhausted eventhough I slept peacefully in Colt’s arms last night. It wasn’t nearly enough to catch up on all the missed sleep from this week. Add all the stress and high anxiety days to the sleepless nights, and you get one tired girl. I’m drained. Completely and totally drained.

School drags. It feels like the day is never-ending, and all I want to do is go home and soak in the tub and pretend that life is normal again. I’m feeling every bit of the stress that I’ve been trying to ignore.

Deciding to be a bit of a rebel, I release my last class of the day early. It only takes me a moment to collect all of my things. The second the final bell for the day rings, I am out the door and heading home.

My phone buzzes in my purse when I’m about halfway home. I pull it out and notice several missed calls and a few texts, all from Colt.

Jasper needs to talk to you.

Don’t leave the school on your own.

Wait for someone to walk with you…

Darlene?

A fission of fear fills me with dread. Half of me wants to turn and run back to the school. The other half wants to run the rest of the way home and to the safety of my apartment.

I left already. Halfway home.I respond.

I scream, and my phone goes flying to the ground when someone grabs me from inside the alley I’m walking past. I fight, but the person is bigger and stronger than me. The smell of body odor and stale cigarette smoke makes me gag, but I fight even harder.

“No one watching the pretty-pretty princess today?” the voice snarls—Levi.

I knew this moment was coming. I mean, this is why I was walking alone to begin with, right? I was staying away from Colt so that I could be the bait. What does Levi mean that no one is watching me? Someone is always watching—fear spikes through me at the idea that I’m alone.

“Let me go!” I scream, flailing my legs and yanking against his hold. No matter what I do, it doesn’t seem to work. I fling my head back and make contact with something… his nose, maybe? Because he screams and shoves me away and against a brick wall.

My hands scrape on the rough surface, but I ignore that small pain and take off towards the sidewalk and help. I only make it three steps before he’s on me again. This time he pins me to the wall, and I see a flash of silver as he pulls a knife from somewhere and holds it to my throat.

“Don’t be a tease. I’ve waited for this for too long already.”

I stand stock-still, not knowing what to do now that there’s a knife to me. All of the self-defense classes I took in college failed to cover knives to throats. Jesus.

What do I do?

What do I do?

I repeat the question to myself, feeling more and more out of control with each passing second. How am I going to get out of this? Where is Ransom? He’s always watching. What if Levi is right and no one is watching? I could be nothing but a bloody body on the ground after all of this—a corpse for someone to find.

Levi leans in and licks the side of my face. I gag, barely holding back my vomit as his fetid breath fills my senses. “Mm almost as good as I thought,” he says manically.

“Please, Levi. You don’t have to do this,” I beg.

“I tried to do it the right way. I asked you out! Would you give me a chance? No! You’d rather spread your whore legs for Colton Fucking James. Mister perfect principal that everyone likes.”

I gasp as the knife pricks my skin with his rising ire.

“Look what you made me do!” he yells in my face. His eyes fall to the place on my neck where I can feel blood trickling from the small cut he just made. There is an unhinged quality to the way he’s staring at my blood, almost like he wants more. It scares me worse than anything else could. He isn’t just obsessed to the point of wanting to keep me or make me his… I’m starting to think he’s obsessed to the point of killing me.

I’m starting to panic now. I can’t get the image of my broken body on the dirty alley ground out of my head. My breaths are coming in short pants, and darkness starts to creep in on the edges of my vision. I realize I’m close to passing out. I can’t do that. I have to focus. I have to figure out how to get out of this.

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