Page 65 of Break for Me

“You need to slow down, Jersey.”

I heard the words but I wasn’t listening. She squeezed that hand. I noticed her reach out for the display screen on the dash but I was watching the road more than what she was doing. The next thing I knew, Memphis was talking through the speakers in the car to tell me where to turn and when.

Some unknown-to-me amount of time later, we were out of the city and driving through nothing but hills on an empty road.

“I need you to pull over,” Memphis said. “Stop the car.”

“No.”

“Jersey Boy.”

I stopped the car right in the middle of the road.

“Let her check you for wounds,” Memphis said.

“What?”

“Did you get shot?” She asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s my point. Get out of the car, Jersey. Let her look at you.”

I couldn’t begin to guess what kind of power Memphis possessed over me, but I just fucking listened. I was standing in the middle of the road a minute later, staring blankly at the twisted metal of the bullet holes in Seph’s doors. Trista appeared in front of me a second later. She walked around the back of me and then stopped again in front of me, looking up and down my entire body. She leaned back into the car for just a second.

“I think he’s okay, Memphis,” she said.

“Lose the gun and change the license plate before you get moving again, Jersey Boy. They’re already looking for you. Get out of the state quickly, but don’t drive like a dumbass and draw attention. Get yourself back under control before you go anywhere, or let her drive.”

I scoffed at that. “Right.”

“Jersey, what was that?” Trista asked when she’d worked up the nerve to look back at me.

I laughed, like the madman I’d become.

Best guess?

Deeply rooted, all-consuming psychological trauma.

forty-seven

TRISTA

The way that I wanted him to touch me after that was beyond the realm of any reasonable explanation. I’d spent years running and being afraid. I’d been up against death more than once. Adrenaline was my jam. Always had been. But this was something new. I couldn’t say I’d ever seen anyone walk toward gunfire like he was so fucking sure of himself that there wasn’t a soul on this planet who could touch him, like a shot straight to the chest wouldn’t even phase him. It probably wasn’t the kind of thing that gave normal women a desperate desire to be ravaged by a madman who’d kidnapped them right there in the hills of Kentucky.

I stepped closer to him again and slid both my hands inside his jacket and started to run them from the top of his pants up to his chest. He smirked and grabbed both my wrists.

“I’m fine. I didn’t get hit,” he said. “Are you okay?”

He kept his hold on my wrists while he looked down the front of my body.

“What was that?” I asked again.

“He shot Seph.”

He let go of my wrists and opened the back door of the car. He pulled out a rag and used it to wipe off of every piece of the gun that he’d used. He took it apart until it was broken down to several pieces to wipe it down further and he threw each piece in a different direction. I waited very impatiently while he pulled out another license plate from one of the duffel bags and swapped it with the one currently on the car.

“Triss?”

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