Page 59 of Beyond Hate

The thought shouldn’t have made something in my stomach feel tight.

I was silently questioning myself as I stepped into the dressing room and started going through my outfits, and I was still doing it when I heard the door open and close behind me.

“Do you think I should wear pink or blue tonight?” It was a gamble depending on who’d come into the room. I knew Til was fond of pink, but Gem would probably tell me to wear something mesh and…

“You’re going to die.”

I froze. I didn’t recognize the voice, and I was starting to think I really was God’s least favorite person, because it was almost comical that this was happening.

Again.

I was almost numb as I turned around, my fingers closing around one of the makeup brushes I kept in my locker like it would actually do me any good.

“What do you want?” I sounded fragile when I asked, and I hated the way that fragility made me feel. Otto talked about whoI’d been in the past like I was some force to be reckoned with, like I’d been dangerous.

Now I was cowering against my locker and clutching a makeup brush to my chest while some grungy looking guy who was a foot taller than me towered over me.

Useless.

Pathetic.

And I’d left the man who usually saved me handcuffed to the bed.

The man didn’tanswermy question. I guess I wasn’t lucky enough to get some long-winded villain monologue so I could figure out what was going on. Instead, he just stepped toward me.

“Don’t.” I tried to sound tough, but it just pulled a smirk across his face as he backhanded me, the power behind it snapping my head to the side and making my ears ring.

Fuck.

Fuck, why did everyone want to fuckinghurtme? I was apparently a universal punching bag for every man who wanted to act like an asshole.

“I’m here to send a message.” It sounded like the threat I knew it was, even though it took me a few seconds longer than it should have to process what he was saying because of the pain ringing through my jaw.

“I didn’tdoanything.” I wasn’t sure how many times I had to tell people that. It was on the tip of my tongue to beg him not to hurt me, but…

God, I was sotiredof being afraid.

Dirty fingers reached into the pocket of an old coat and I reacted out of instinct more than knowledge of what I was actually doing… My fingers were shaking where they still held the plastic end of the brush, and the scream that tore from the man as he dropped what he’d grabbed for left me shaking.

I’d heardOttoforce people to make those sounds.

But with the end of the brush sticking out of the guy’s side, and my trembling hands twisting it, I was the one causing the sounds now.

“London?”

Til’s voice coming from a distance finally made me suck in enough air to scream, and that more than the plastic brush sticking out of his side seemed to startle the man into motion. He scrambled back, his hand yanking the plastic out and throwing it to the ground before he took off at a run.

If I’d been better at all of this, I might have tried to stop him. As it was, he darted into the back of the locker room, and the sound of a door opening and slamming shut told me he knew the location well enough to know that there was an employee entrance and exit back there.

Fuck, had he been watching me too?

But no… he said he was here to send a message. The white paper on the floor… what he’d been reaching for when I attacked him. The familiar dark writing was the same as the letter that had been pinned to my apartment door. I was staring at it like it might bite me when the door flew open and I was met with Gem’s bright hazel eyes and Til’s concerned expression.

“London? London… Are you okay?” Gem’s question was soft, but I couldn’t quite find my voice. I reached forward instead of answering, picking up the note, wet with a small streak of blood. Almost like I was on a cloud, I picked up the makeup brush too. The clear plastic was coated in red… and when Otto pushed into the room a few minutes later while Til was on the phone with the police, I was still holding it.

It hadn’t taken him long to get out of the cuffs, had it? The thought brought a humorless laugh bubbling up from my chest, and I realized my eyes were burning with tears as I looked up at him.

“He got blood on my makeup brush,” I offered, lifting the plastic as if showing it to him would explain what had happened.

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