Page 117 of Heresy

Heavy steps pound behind me, and I know he’s wiped the sand away, stood from the ground and is now chasing me. I run faster. Push my legs harder. My arms like pistons at my sides.

Faster.

It doesn’t matter, though. He’s closing the distance. His heavy steps are getting louder.

Just when it sounds like he’s close enough to reach out and grab me, another lesson I learned in life comes back to me.

It’s a last-ditch attempt, but I turn to face him, my hands grabbing onto his extended arm when he rushes up on me.

Yanking as hard as I can, I use his own momentum against him, and he falls face first into the grass, giving me another chance.

“Son of a bitch,” he yells, but I don’t stop. Not with the tree line so close that I can taste freedom.

Hoping I won’t have to go far to find someplace to hide, I’m making a desperate bid for the woods.

Heavy steps sound behind me again, and I know he’s back up on his feet and chasing me.

“Brinley, fucking stop!”

I don’t. The adrenaline now has me drowning. My heart is beating fast, my lungs expanding fully to take in air. I’m not panicking. I’m just giving into instinct.

Panic attacks are a mechanism of the body’s fight or flight response. I can’t fight for shit against someone like Shane, so flight it is.

Although given how quickly he’s catching up again, even my attempt at that is thwarted. I think about turning to him again, use some of those defense lessons I learned. But by the time I can formulate a plan for how to use them, it’s too late.

His body slams into mine, his arms wrap around my chest and we both go tumbling down.

A football player couldn’t have tackled me better, except in this instance, Shane manages to turn our bodies as we fall so that his back takes the brunt of the impact, his arms trapping me to him.

It’s only a split second before he rolls us over, pinning me down, his eyes watering and red from where bits of sand are still in them.

“What are you doing? Where in the hell did you think you could go?”

Tears drip from the outer corners of my eyes because the adrenaline is still pumping, but I have no way of expelling it.

“Escaping. What did it look like? Don’t you realize what you’ve done?”

For the first time, Shane is angry, his lips stretching into a scowl, his eyes narrowing on me with rage.

“I could have hurt you. Don’t you realize that?”

“You are hurting me,” I volley back.

His head tilts. “Am I? What hurts?”

My heart.

My mind.

My dignity.

I don’t have a chance to list any of those answers. He’s too upset, too heated.

“Do you have any idea who I am?”

“No. That’s precisely the problem, Shane. I have no idea who the hell you are, and this crap where you’re pretending to want to talk to me and care anything about me is a bullshit act. I see right through it.”

His expression tightens more, a total loss of control right on the edge. He barely has hold of it.

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