Page 81 of Run Away With Me

For a split second, I froze.

I’d never had anyone stab me through the hand, but I knew pain. I knew what it was like to feel powerless and helpless, like Chris was right now, and of all the things I’d thought I was going to feel toward him tonight, empathy wasn’t one of them.

I forced myself to shake it off.

‘Don’t even,’ I said, my words trembling a little. ‘Don’t fucking even.’

Chris finally found his voice and his howl of pain was primal, cutting through the air, loud enough that someone else was going to hear him. I stepped back, slammed the door closed and grabbed Brooke’s hand.

‘We need to run,’ I said seriously, as emotion and adrenaline and my fight-or-flight instinct knotted together and punched me in the gut.

She nodded.

I didn’t let go of her hand as we sprinted around the side of the motel, past the service entrance, in the opposite direction to where the blonde lady had gone. We clearly weren’t supposed to be back here, but it was the quickest way to get to the staff parking lot and the only route that wasn’t likely to take us past anyone else.

‘Jessie,’ Brooke said, but I shook my head, still pulling her along.

‘Not now. We have to get out of here.’

We got to the car, and the SUV on the passenger side was gone. Brooke opened her door to get in, and I threw myself up and over the side into the driver’s seat.

It took me three attempts to get my trembling hand to put the key into the ignition, and when the Mustang roared to life, I passed Brooke the gun.

‘Can you make this safe, please?’

She nodded.

I couldn’t watch her do it. I had to put as much space between us and the motel as humanly possible.

14

Bat Out of Hell– Meat Loaf

I drove on autopilot to the only place I knew how to get to in goddamn St. Louis, which was the Walmart down the road from the motel. Realistically, I should’ve been trying to get farther away – far, far away – but I was shaking and Brooke was too, and I just needed to stop for a second and make sure she was okay before we kept going.

I pulled into a space near the back of the parking lot, and as soon as I killed the engine, Brooke was hauling herself out of the car.

‘Brooke!’

I scrambled after her before I realized she wasn’t running away – she was just pacing back and forth. I held up both my hands, approaching her cautiously.

‘Brooke?’ I asked again.

‘Oh my God,’ she said, her voice and her whole body trembling. ‘Oh my God, Jessie.’

I held my arms out, and she threw herself into them. I wrapped her up tight and squeezed, wanting her to knowshe was safe now. Brooke clawed at my back, then her hands stilled, pressed hard against my shirt.

‘You’re okay,’ I said, soothing and soft.

For a moment, for asecond, I got to be the one to hold her, to be the one who said everything was going to be all right, and that meant everything. All I’d wanted was to get her back, and now she was here, with me, and my body was too small to hold all the emotion threatening to spill out of me.

She pulled back a little, enough that I could see that the usual dark-brown circle of her irises had completely disappeared and her pupils were blown wide. She had definitely been drugged. And, to be honest, she didn’t smell great. Her hair was a little greasy, and I guessed she’d been living and sleeping in the same set of clothes.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered again.

Her hands came up to gently cup my jaw, and then … she kissed me.

Suddenly, I knew what all those romance novels meant when they talked about fireworks, about electricity, like a million buzzing emotions that I’d never experienced before.