Page 58 of Crossover

“Ivy?”

I grabbed the handle of the restroom’s door. But it wouldn’t budge.

32

IVY

The massive blow to my forehead left me with a side dish of dizziness and disorientation.

The grimy restroom wobbled as I staggered backward, and before I could regain my balance, a burly man with a gut the size of a beer keg grabbed my arms and slammed my head against the wall.

The stars began to fade to black as he spun me and crushed me against his sweaty, tobacco-scented chest, his thick fingers clamped over my mouth, stifling my screams.

Every fighter instructor I ever had would seriously cover their face in shame at my appalling failure.

He shoved his face next to mine, his rancid breath assaulting my nostrils with the stench of cheap booze and decay.

“I like it when they fight back,” he groaned, his vile lips brushing my ear and sending shudders of revulsion through my body.

It was just the shock that my fighting skills needed to come back to life.

I clenched my hands into fists and slammed my elbow into his gut, hoping to knock the wind out of him, but the blob of flesh barely even flinched. I cycled through several self-defensemoves, but my moves were sloppy and slow. Thanks to my dizziness, he deflected them with ease.

This guy’s done this before. He’s a predator.

It was infuriating, how he managed to drag me in the corner, presumably for more room to work.

Or play…

I tried to scream, to alert Grayson, but my cry for help was immediately silenced with a punch to my gut.

“Ivy?”

The sanctuary of Grayson’s voice came from the other side of the bathroom door, which was rattling as he tried to open it.

I could see then what was keeping it shut—a dead bolt. Probably used by the gas station to lock the bathrooms whenever they were out of order, but in this case, it had been latched from theinside.

The walls wobbled, and I hit the ground. A damp, pungent cloth clamped over my face, the acrid stench of chemicals invading my nostrils and scorching my throat.

Lungs burning, I resisted the urge to cough and instead held my breath. Consciously, I forced my chest to rise and fall in a steady rhythm, feigning the shallow breaths of someone succumbing to the noxious fumes. My body went slack, limbs splaying out at awkward angles as I portrayed the perfect image of an unconscious victim.

All the while, a fresh dose of adrenaline rocked through my veins in preparation for round two.

The cloth disappeared. His hands, rough and unyielding, gripped my shoulders, and in one fluid motion, he flipped me onto my back, my body slamming against the cold, unforgiving floor with a thud that seemed to echo through my bones.

Knees hitting the ground on either side of my hips, he loomed over me.

Through the veil of my lashes, I watched his fingers, thick and clumsy, as he fumbled at his zipper. My muscles coiled, every cell of my body charged with the electricity of impending action.

Now.

I exploded.

Fury erupted from the depths of my DNA, propelling my body into a whirlwind of violent motion.

This bastard had picked the wrong girl to mess with.

I punched his windpipe with all the force I could muster, the impact reverberating through my arm. As the man grabbed his throat and gasped for air, I followed up with a swift punch to his temple, knocking him off-balance enough to shove him off me so I could jump up and run for the exit.

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