Page 92 of Crossover

Do not commit murder, Grayson. If you do, you’ll have to take out the cashier, too, and that teenager did nothing to deserve it.

“Come on,” Ivy said. “He’s not worth it, Grayson.”

No. He wasn’t worth the air she breathed. This was one of those moments when I realized how abnormal I was as a human being. A normal human being would evaluate the situation and put this into perspective. This guy was just some jerk in a gas station.

Yet, when it came to Ivy, all rationality went out the window. This poor woman had been through so much, and I longed to shield her from everything.

It took a massive amount of willpower to merely exchange a few glares with the guy and let him walk away from me, unharmed. The fucker had the nerve to keep smirking at me, daring me to pummel him as he opened a bag of Doritos and dumped a handful into his mouth.

“What was that about?” I whispered to her once he was out of earshot.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For a second, I thought he might be the guy that tried to kidnap me when I was thirteen.”

My body went rigid, a cold fury seeping into my veins. “What?”

“He’s not,” she assured me quickly, the words tumbling out of her mouth with guilt she shouldn’t have to bear. “The red scar on his forearm isn’t big enough, and it’s not the same Z-shape as the guy who tried to take me. But for a minute, I thought it might be him, and I kind of froze. It happens sometimes. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to cause a scene.”

There was so much to unpack in her words, each one twisting the knife of guilt deeper into my heart. The sheer terror she must have felt, thinking that monster might have found her again—a monster that I would hunt down and decimate when this was over. The reminder that I had failed her, that I hadn’t protected her from being taken in that van—which had obviously contributed to this PTSD-type flashback.

Witnessing her trembling, her skin pale, tore at my soul.

But what made my blood boil right now was the realization that anyone could have seen she was having a panic attack. And that asshole, that pathetic excuse for a human being, didn’t give her the space she so desperately needed. No. He leaned into it and made her suffer more than she needed to.

My fist clenched so tightly, my knuckles turned white, and my nails dug into my skin, nearly drawing blood. All I wanted to do was slam my fist into the creep’s face, wiping that disgusting smirk off his lips permanently. The only thing keeping me grounded was the gentle warmth of Ivy’s hand in my other palm, her fingers intertwined with mine, securing me to the present.

With a herculean effort, I managed to pick out our snacks and made it all the way to the counter to pay for them without shattering his skull.

But then…then Ivy had to use the restroom. This time, I swept it for any dangers before taking my post outside the ladies’ room door. Which was the precise moment Doritos Dirtbag evidently had to piss.

With a mouthful of chips, he smirked as he ambled past me toward the men’s room door.

Don’t do it, Grayson.

He tossed another handful of Doritos—unpaid for, by the way—into that fat mouth and talked over his crunching.

“You know, I think I’ll hang around for a bit,” he said. “See if maybe she wants to have a little chat, just thetwoof us this time.”

He’d been making Ivy uncomfortable to the point of her trembling, and he thought I’d let him put her through that again?

What a moronic way to provoke me. And what a dangerous man to provoke…

I once read a book about something called the law of attraction. Where you magnetize things into your life. And standing here right in this moment, a bolt of clarity hit me; I wonder if spending my days and nights hunting the biggest assholes on earth, in turn, drew more assholes into my life. It was the only explanation I could come up with why Doritos Dirtbag was in front of me.

Either way, as he slurped his fingers, I followed him into the men’s room, cornered him by the urinals, grabbed his collar, and slammed him against the wall. Bones crunched under my fist as I pummeled his face into a bloody mess.

When I was done with him, the guy groaned on the bathroom floor, surrounded by his coveted chips. Snagging his wallet, I held his license between two fingers.

“I know your name,” I said, “and your address. Tell anyone about this, and I’ll hunt you down, cut your balls off, and shove them down your throat until you choke on them.” I hissed, “We clear?”

IVY

I emerged from the ladies’ room, but Grayson was nowhere in sight. For a minute, I was worried that something happened to him. But the gas station attendant wouldn’t look that bored if there had been a big CIA confrontation.

I checked each aisle. No Grayson. I glanced out the glass doors, but our car sat parked in the same location—right next to the pump. No one inside.

Just as my nerves were about to get the best of me, the men’s room door swung open, and Grayson emerged, his steely stare locking on to me.

“We need to leave,” he said, his knuckles bloody.

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