Page 72 of Break for Me

“No!” Trista screamed. “He won’t hurt you. Please! Help me! Call the cops!”

I aimed the gun at the ground behind this woman’s car and fired a single shot. Both women screamed, but that was all it took for the other to close herself back in the car and squeal the tires on her way out of that parking lot. I let go of Trista as soon as the other car was out of sight and put the gun back in its holster.

“Get in the fucking car.”

“Just leave me here,” she countered.

“We’re not negotiating.”

She took a step backward.

“I swear to fucking God if you run right now.”

“Just leave. Drive away.”

“If you don’t want to spend the next two hours in the trunk, get. In. The. Car.”

I took a step toward her. She took another backward. I paused when her fingers swept quickly across both her cheeks.

“Don’t do that,” I said.

“What?”

“The fake crying, the begging. Don’t. I’m not playing that game.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

She was swinging both fists at my chest when I closed the distance between us that time. I locked both arms around her and started to drag her back around Seph.

“I’m not getting back in that car, Jersey.”

She was still squirming, still struggling, still swinging. Screaming.

But the fucking sniffle that escaped her when I opened the passenger door cemented my damned feet right into the ground. I pushed her back against the fender of the car and leaned forward to cage her there when I put both hands on the hood on either side of her. Her hands were locked in a death grip on the front of my shirt and as soon as she realized that I was just standing there rather than forcing her to move, she leaned her head forward against my chest. The broken sob that came out of her shook her entire body.

It wasn’t fake.

Son of a motherfucking god damned bitch.

My arms were wrapped around her before I could stop myself.

“Just kill me. Please, Jersey.”

The words were muffled and broken by her crying, but I still fucking heard them.

“I can’t.”

Contract or not. Rules or not. I couldn’t kill her. I wouldn’t.

I could feel her right hand release my shirt and she tried to shift it toward the gun. I squeezed her harder against me so she wouldn’t be able to move at all.

“No, baby.”

My heart tried to pound its way out of my rib cage when she raised her head to look up at me. Her cheeks were red and soaked. Her eyes glistened in the little light that there was with all the tears that still threatened to fall.

“What difference does it make to you?” She asked and paused to try to control the sobs. “Let me do it now, so I don’t have to suffer just for the sake of satisfying someone’s desire to torture me. If there was ever even a tiny piece of you that could’ve cared about me, save me from having to face those people again.”

Memphis.

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