Page 22 of Jayson
Ten minutes. That’s all he gave me—long enough to rinse off the mud, but I’m running against the clock if I hope to make a clean escape.
I’m already stripping even before the door latch clicks behind him. My nightshirt peels away in a brittle crackle of dried dirt. Mud sticks to my thighs, suctioning like wet bandages.Two minutes,I tell myself, exposing my raw skin to the scalding water.
I lather hard enough to raise welts, scraping mud from my hair, blood from my cuticle beds, panic from my pores. The showerhead hisses, spitting iron-flecked water that steams the mirror opaque. When the worst of it swirls down the drain, I pivot, leave the water roaring to buy myself a little white noise.
Towel. Clothes—obviously his clothes. The T-shirt is several sizes too big; the sweatpants knot around my hips. They smell of cedar and warmth. I dress fast, heart punching knuckles into my ribs.
Window.
It’s a square of dusty glass set high in the exterior wall, framed by fading paint. I drag the vanity stool beneath it,clamber up, fingertips prying at corroded latches. The wood groans—loud enough that I freeze, breath caged in my throat. I don’t hear any footsteps outside.
The latch snaps. The pane cracks open, grudging, exhaling a ribbon of fresh air laced with pine and rain-thick dawn. I shove it wider until it sticks at a forty-five degree angle. The gap is narrow, but so am I.Five minutes.Maybe less.
My ankle throbs in protest as I haul myself onto the sill. Outside, the estate’s back lawn slopes into black forest—trees dense enough to swallow me if I can reach them. The drop is a little over two meters; soft earth below, with no obvious rocks. I’m desperate enough to make it.
I swing one leg through. Cold air knifes under the borrowed T-shirt, raising gooseflesh. I hook my fingers on the outer ledge, ready to shove the rest of my body through?—
—and that’s when pipes rattle down the hall, louder than before. The shower has stopped; silence pours in its place, sudden and lethal.
Time’s up.
Either I drop now and pray the ankle holds, or I wait for Jayson to tear the door off its hinges.
I grit my teeth, shift my weight forward, and let gravity decide which part of me breaks first.
The ground rushes up—dark blur, sickening jolt. Pain blooms white-hot in my ankle as I hit, roll, bite my own cry in half. No time. I claw to my feet and limp across the lawn, wet grass smacking my calves, borrowed sweatpants dragging in the dirt. Behind me the bathroom window slams—metal on frame—followed by a single word, low and venomous:
“Keira!”
I don’t look back.
The first line of pines swallows me whole. Branches rake my arms; needles cling to my hair. Every step is a riot of agony, anklescreaming, lungs shredding. I keep going—because stopping means answering for my father’s last breath, answering to the man who put a bullet in him like it was nothing. No matter what my father was, I don’t trust the man who riddled his body with bullets.
Thirty yards. Forty. The house is a bruise of gray through the trees now. I veer downhill, praying the slope will buy me speed. It buys me pain instead—my ankle buckles and I pitch forward, skidding on moss-slick earth. Rocks chew my palms. I crawl, shove upright, and stagger on.
Somewhere behind me, boots hammer soil. Closer than I dared imagine. Faster.
“Keira,stop!”
His voice barrels through the forest, thunder and iron—terrifying, magnetic. My body begs to obey just to make it end. I snarl at the impulse and push harder, my vision tunneling.
Another twenty yards and the treeline breaks onto an old service road, half-overgrown and running east toward God-knows-where. I limp onto gravel, stones biting through the socks I had the foresight to put on before I jumped through that window. My breath is a rasp, my heart a grenade.
A hand closes on my hood—yanks. Air knifes from my lungs as I’m spun, slammed back against a trunk hard enough to rattle leaves. Bark scrapes my spine; his forearm pins my collarbone.
Jayson.
Hair messy, chest heaving, eyes lit with something savage and shattered all at once.
“You jumped.” His voice is smoke and disbelief. “Onthatankle?”
I spit a laugh that tastes like blood. “Better than waiting for you to break it for me.”
His jaw ticks as sweat drips from his chin onto my cheek. “You could’ve died.”
“I still might,” I rasp.
He stares—a long, brutal silence where the forest seems to hush. Then he fists the fabric at my shoulder, rage shaking in his grip.
