Page 74 of Jasper

No answer. Only the roar of the crowd.

I’m barged hard and stumble backward, pushing through the chaos, slipping between shouting strangers until I find a hallway near the bathrooms that’s mostly empty.

I stagger into it, gasping, heart hammering.

And slam into someone.

I freeze. The scent hits me first—cheap beer and stale cigarettes. Then the voice.

“You.”

My blood turns to ice.

It’s him. The man from the parking lot. The one I knocked to the ground. The one I hoped to never see again.

He grabs me before I can turn, his fingers clawing into my arms. “You think you can humiliate me? You think you can just walk away?” he snarls, his breath hot and bitter in my face. “You’re going to pay for what you did, you little bitch.”

I scream, thrashing, trying to pull free. “Let go of me!”

He shakes me hard, and my teeth clack together. I scratch at his arms, kick at his shins, but he doesn’t budge. He yanks me by the hair and drags me toward the back door, kicking it open. Before he pulls me outside, I slip my hand in his pocket and do the only thing I can think of.

I steal.

His wallet.

And then I toss it onto the floor in the hallway.

Cold night air slices across my bare legs. The alley is narrow, cloaked in shadow and silence. The distant noise of the bar fades behind us.

I fight like hell.

I kick. I twist. I scream until my throat burns. “Jasper!”

No answer.

The man drags me deeper into the alley, slamming me into a brick wall. My head hits hard, and for a second, the world tilts.

“You’re gonna learn what happens to girls who fuck with me,” he growls.

I sob, my hands tearing at his, my legs trying to gain footing. Panic floods every nerve in my body, my heart beating so fast it hurts.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t move.

And all I want is my Daddy.

27

JASPER

The bar is sensory overload—thick with noise, pulsing bass, and bodies packed shoulder to shoulder. The lights are low and hazy, flickering across the crowd like a strobe, making it near impossible to tell one from another. The air smells like sweat, cheap beer, and fried food, and everything in me itches to be somewhere quieter. Safer.

But then I see her.

My rainbow.

She’s in the middle of the dance floor, her hands clasped with Ember and Rowie as they spin and twirl in a loose circle. Her hair flies around her shoulders in soft waves, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling with laughter. Her smile, so fucking wide and unguarded, cuts through the chaos like a damn spotlight, and the sound of her laugh reaches me even through the pounding music.

---