Page 74 of Every Broken Thing

Moving on autopilot, I navigated the backstage blindly, jumping over bunched up cords and ducking under ropes and cables. I heard him behind me, heavy and cumbersome, and I told myself to just keep running. Just keep going. Oh, and not to trip.

I tripped.

On an old speaker or a piece of set that hadn’t been stored away yet; I didn’t know. All I did know was that my shin was screaming, and I was falling.

My momentum carried me forward, and I crashed into the floor with enough force that all the air whooshed out of my lungs. Gasping on the ground, I struggled to get my feet back under me, but then a heavy weight was pressing me back into the floor.

Boyt panted like an angry bull, and my sanity cracked along the edges.

Not again. Please, not again.

“Why are you running scared?” he asked, almost conversationally, as his knee dug into my spine. “I thought you were a big man, now. Walking around like some big shot after besting me? Oh wait, that was your pretty little boyfriend that saved your scrawny ass, wasn’t it? You didn’t do shit.”

“Fuck off,” I wheezed, pushing against the floor with all my strength. But he was too big. I was trapped again, and panic fuzzed out the edges of my vision.

No, Silas, focus!

Kim’s words replayed through my head, reminding me I wasn’t entirely alone in this area of the school.

“Acker!” I screamed, my cry cutting off as a meaty hand slammed over my mouth. He tasted like sweat and chalky powder, and I acted without thinking. I bit down on his hand. Hard. I didn’t let go until I tasted the copper tang of blood.

Eric bellowed in rage and pain, jerking his hand out of my mouth, and the movement shifted his weight on my back just enough that I was able to wriggle out from under him. Spitting his blood out of my mouth, I limped toward the dressing rooms, fueled by desperation and all-encompassing terror.

I saw the green glow of the exit light haloing the doorway to the corridor with the makeup stations, and hope and relief burst in my chest. But I should have known it was only a mirage. Because Fate enjoyed watching me suffer.

Fingers snagged the back of my shirt, yanking me back into a hard chest. This time, though, I didn’t freeze. This time, I fought like hell.

Because I was angry. I was scared—my God, was I scared—but I was so fucking angry. At the way he tried to take from me again. Like he deserved it. Like it was owed to him. Like I was nothing.

But I wasn’t nothing.

It probably wouldn’t matter in the end. Even if I fought, I wouldn’t win. I had a feeling we both knew that. I’d fight, and he’d win. And he’d take and he’d take and he’d take. But I’d be damned if I just laid there and let him.

My back met his chest. His exhaleoomphedagainst my ear. Rage washed my vision in red, and I fought.

Thrashing and kicking, I struggled against his hold. I scratched and kicked like a wild animal, the taste of his blood still on my tongue. His grip slipped once, twice, three times. But every time I freed myself, he’d grab me again.

“Stop it,” he said, again and again, voice lowering with every repeat. “Stop it.”

But I wasn’t going to stop. I wasn’t going to let him take anything else from me. Not without a war.

There was pain, like he might have hit me a few times, but it was a detached sort of thing. I was blind to everything but the need to survive. Desperation and fury chased it away, fueling my crazed breakdown, until thick fingers circled my throat andsqueezed.

Eric was talking, but I couldn’t hear the words over the rushing in my ears and pounding in my head. One of his thick arms circled me, pinning my arms as he literally lifted me off my feet. I kicked at air as his grip on my throat tightened.

“You just had to go and piss me off, didn’t you?” he seethed in my ear, spittle splattering against my neck. “Look at what you make me do! This is all your fault, you stupid bitch.”

The longer he rambled, the tighter his fingers seemed to squeeze. My toes scrabbled across the floor, searching for purchase as blinding terror threatened to black-out my vision. I could still breathe, I knew that somewhere in the back of my brain. Iwasbreathing, but it felt like I was suffocating. It felt like he was strangling me.

“Should have taken your medicine,” he mumbled, and he didn’t even sound like himself anymore. “Should have learned your lesson. Now I have to teach you again.”

Somehow, through the mind-numbing terror, a tiny voice in the back of my head said,He’s not even talking to me.

“I’ll teach you respect,” he panted as his fingerspressed. “I’ll show you.”

And oh my God, he was going to kill me, wasn’t he? Eric Boyt was going to strangle me to death. He’d lost himself in whatever rage-fueled nightmare he was babbling about, and he was going to murder me in the backstage of my school’s auditorium.

An eerily calm clarity enveloped me, and I stopped struggling, a weak, “Eric!” escaping my lips.

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