Page 34 of Break for Me

“I’m tired and very cranky, little girl. Don’t do this right now. Come here.”

“No.”

I was pretty sure I heard my jaw crack with how hard I was clenching my teeth. I rolled my neck from side to side.

“Alright then. We’ll do it your way,” I said and walked around to where she stood. She started to back away as I got closer.

“Jersey.”

“Don’t you dare fucking run,” I said. And as I fucking said the words, she was turning around to fucking run. She squealed when I caught her by the hair just a few steps later and jerked her back against my body.

“What did I just fucking say to you?” I growled directly into her ear.

“Let me go, Jersey.”

I laughed. “I think you know we’re well beyond that, Fancy Face.”

“Stop. Calling. Me. That. We’re not friends. I won’t be devastated. I’ll never do anything other than hate you.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” I said while I started to drag her back toward the trunk. I couldn’t tell if I was more amused or pissed off that she decided that this was a good time to put up a fight. Her struggling only enraged me, either way. And when her ridiculous flailing landed an elbow straight to my nose, I rammed my leg into the backs of her knees. She yelped again when her knees landed in the gravel. I twisted the hair that I was still holding until it was wrapped around my fist and I pulled her entire head back so that she was looking straight up at me while I stood behind her. She’d managed to get her hands behind her head to dig her nails into my fist and my arm to try to get me to loosen my hold, but I. Was. Pissed. Now.

“I swear to God, Jersey. I will start screaming until everyone across this fucking state knows that I’m here.”

I laughed and shifted until I was standing in front of her so I could lean down to put my face right into hers.

“Go ahead,” I taunted. “Just make sure you open that hateful, acidic, little mouth as wide as you can while you scream, Fancy Face.”

I felt a tiny sting of guilt again when her bottom lip shook ever so slightly about what I was insinuating, but I reminded myself just as fast that she was one of the best I’d ever seen at manipulating the emotions of people around her to obtain a specified outcome.

“I didn’t fucking think so,” I said when she didn’t respond at all. “Get up. And get in the trunk.”

I pulled her to her feet by her hair just as much as she stood by herself. And not even a full fucking second after she was fucking upright again, she was banging those angry little fists against my chest. I wasn’t overly fond of the idea of actually hitting her, as much as I fucking wanted to. She was small enough that wrapping her in a bear hug and just moving both of our bodies toward the back of Persephone was effective enough. She couldn’t get any force into the blows that she continued trying to deliver that way. She couldn’t break out of my hold. Every noise that came out of her mouth was muffled by my chest.

“In you go, baby girl,” I said and hoisted her whole body off the ground to toss her into the trunk another time. I was surprised that she just laid still once I had her in there. I was such a shit that I couldn’t help myself. I leaned down over her face again.

“And I thought we were getting along so well. What changed? Was it because I kissed you? Now you’re mad at yourself for how much you enjoyed it?”

I had to raise my entire upper half back out of the trunk when she lunged up and fucking snapped her teeth in my face. Then a laugh exploded out of me.

“Did you just try to fucking bite me? Fuck. This could have been amazing if I’d met you under any other circumstance.”

Then I slammed the hatch in her face and went to check us in and get the room cleared.

twenty-six

TRISTA

I was not spending another day with this motherfucker. I was escaping tonight.

I didn’t have a fucking clue how it was going to happen, but I was going to beat him to death with my bare hands and then I was leaving. I laid in that stupid trunk quietly while I assumed he was going through the room with a fine toothed comb to make sure I couldn’t kill him with anything in it. His stupid, smug face reappearing to take me to the room with him ignited another fucking unwelcome feeling. I still kept quiet this time and even took his hand when he offered it to help me climb out of the trunk.

“All the spunk drain right out of you in the last half hour?” He asked. “If that’s all it takes, I’ll go back to sticking you in there for the daytime drives too. We’ll call it timeout.”

I stopped moving again right outside the entrance of the hotel and that asshole placed the entire front of his body against the backside of mine. Solid. Warm. Somehow still smelling like cinnamon.

“Keep moving, little girl,” he whispered in my ear.

“Fuck you, Jersey.”

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