“I’m okay,” I whisper and shove him away from me. To protect him. To protect us.
“Let’s go, McKinley,” Fiend demands.
Chevy stretches out his arm again. “No.”
Fiend nods, the men are in motion and Chevy backs up, pinning me to the wall again. Fiend reaches to his back and all the air rushes out of my body. There’s a gun in his hand and he’s pointing it at us—at Chevy.
“Move or I’ll shoot you,” Fiends says like he’s bored. “That leaves her alone with us. Your choice.”
My pulse pounds violently in my veins. Chevy promised to protect me, but I don’t want him dead. “Go with them.”
“No.”
“Go with them, Chevy,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I’m not leaving you alone.”
And I need him alive. If he cooperates, they’ll let him live. It’s obvious they have a message for Chevy to give and I’m just the person they’re using to control him.
The guy to the left lunges at Chevy. He raises his arm to fight, leaving an opening, and I watch as Fiend keeps the gun trained on Chevy, but aims it lower, to Chevy’s leg. Maybe Fiend’s going to injure Chevy, ruining his chances of walking, playing football, and if that doesn’t bring him to submission, Fiend will then torture me to make Chevy break.
I’m stronger than this. Bigger than this. If this is how it’s going to be, I’ll go down fighting. I’ll be the wild and crazy girl my father loved. My throat burns at the thought of him. At the thought of leaving behind my mother, my brother. Not sure how the two of them will exist without me there to push them along.
The club will take care of them. The club might never let them learn how to survive on their own, how to be their own person, so my mother and brother will never thrive, but they’ll eat, they’ll sleep and I hope to God the club will learn their lesson from what happens to me and Chevy and they’ll protect the people I love the most.
Chevy’s throwing punches and they’re throwing punches back. He’s losing, he’s bleeding and he grunts in pain. Chevy hits a man so hard that he falls limp to the ground, but then two other guys tackle him and Chevy’s head hits the concrete. His head rolls forward with the impact and there is red streaming from his skull.
The blood drains from my face, but I push my feet forward, toward Fiend. Hoping somehow I’m faster. Hoping somehow I can turn the tables.
Fiend’s eyes widen as he realizes I’m heading for him, and he turns the gun—in my direction. Chevy screams my name and right when my eyes close, as I understand I’m not going to be fast enough, there’s a loud bang and I suck in a breath.
Then oddly I let out that breath in the silence. My heart beats in my ears. Again and again and again and I inhale, the air feeling cold in my lungs. I reopen my eyes and look down at my body. Expecting to see blood, waiting for the pain, but there’s nothing.
“What the hell is going on?” a raspy voice demands. An older man with gray hair, a real-life Mack truck with legs, barrels into the room. He heads toward another new man with a scar on his face who has Fiend pushed up against the wall. His hands around Fiend’s throat like he’s willing to crush the life out of my enemy.
The gun is out of Fiend’s hand and the man with the scar offers it to the older man.
The old man points the gun in Fiend’s direction like it’s a finger and not a loaded weapon. “Did you just shoot a gun at her? Are you insane? She’s Frat’s girl.”
My feet become strangely planted while my head floats as if it’s curiously light. As I turn my head to find Chevy, the entire room spins. Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?
“Let him go,” the old man says.
I throw my arm out, searching for a wall to stay upright and instead discover a warm hand. A solid arm around my waist and then there are beautiful dark eyes. “I got you.”
My hand goes to Chevy’s face and I gingerly touch his eye that’s swelling, the bruises forming on his face, the blood flowing near the corner of his lip. “I’m sorry.”
This is my fault. Maybe we gave up too easy at the car. Maybe we should have run into the woods. Maybe I should have yelled at Chevy when he stopped his motorcycle to help. I should have pushed him away then. I should have known that I’m cursed and that I’m only capable of hurting everyone I love.
“Get him out of here,” says the old man.
The guy with the scar lets Fiend go and the two men who were fighting Chevy grab Fiend and drag him away. I blink several times and lean into Chevy’s body as my mind has fractured.
“What’s going on?” I whisper to Chevy, but he only shakes his head. His fingers tap twice to my side and I straighten. Two fingers tapping. It’s a childhood code. He’s telling me we’re in danger, and considering the past few hours, it scares the hell out of me that we’ve somehow fallen into a deeper hole.
The old man hands the gun back to the guy with a scar on his face, then scans me and Chevy as if he’s perplexed. His blue eyes tell me he sees all, knows all—a god to many in his world. “I’m going to apologize, but I know it won’t sound like much. I’m—”
“Emily’s grandfather,” Chevy cuts him off. “You’re the president of the Riot.”
Realization causes me to curl my fingers into Chevy’s shirt. This is the man whose daughter, Meg, left him to be with Eli when she fell in love with Eli over eighteen years ago. The man who has tortured the Terror since the day Meg left. Then when Eli’s life in the club proved too much for Meg, she left Eli for good as well, taking their daughter, Emily, with her. This past summer, Emily and Eli reconnected, and Emily and my best friend Oz fell in love. Those newly cemented relationships burn the Riot up and they’re holding a grudge.