Page 101 of The Hardest Fall

Shoving at his shoulders until I had him against the wall under the high windows, I reached for his throat. He managed to kick my legs once, his fingers grasping my shirt.

“How does that feel, you son of a bitch,” I whispered, slowly tightening my grip. “Does it feel good?”

He made a pathetic attempt at pushing my face, but he was much smaller than me and I slapped his bloody hand away with no trouble.

So focused on the guy, I didn’t notice Zoe hitting my arm until she was begging and shouting at me to let go.

“Dylan, Dylan, please. You’ll get into trouble, please stop. Dylan, let him go.”

I pushed the guy away in disgust and he groaned, coughing and wheezing, his face a dark red. “My head is pounding. I can’t think, I can’t think,” he said as he moaned, coughing between words. He held his head in his palms and kept mumbling on the ground.

Disgusted, I let Zoe pull me away.

Kayla was back and we had more than a few onlookers, mostly students who had filtered into the library. The desk lady was at the door, a phone clutched in her hand as she spoke to someone hurriedly. Campus police would arrive any second now. Gritting my teeth, I turned to Zoe and cupped her face, trying my best to control my breathing. She looked so scared as her eyes welled with tears, and she already had dried tears on her face. How late had I been? What else had he done?

Fuck.

My hands were trembling. “Are you okay?” I asked, my voice coming out harsher than I’d intended. “Did he do anything else?”

She shook her head and blinked, causing the tears to finally slip out. Looking down at her, I wanted to take it all back and wake up early before she could take a step outside the apartment’s door.

When I looked back, the guy was on the ground, hitting the back of his hand against the wall.

He just kept muttering the same thing over and over again: “Kayla, what did you do? What did you do?”

Kayla sat down in one of the chairs and starting sobbing uncontrollably.

Zoe’s eyes flashed with anger.

“He raped her, Dylan,” she whispered, bringing her attention back to me. “We need to do something. He raped her.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Dylan

It took hours for the cops to let us go. They took Kayla to the hospital, and Zoe begged me to take her to her friend. How could I say no to her ever again?

It was seven PM when we finally walked through the apartment door. Kayla had been taken to the hospital where Jared’s mom was a nurse, and once we’d gotten there, Zoe had called Jared. As shocked as he’d been, he was at our side in no time. When it was time to leave the hospital, I couldn’t convince Zoe to let Kayla leave with Jared and his mom; it took a private conversation with Jared’s mom to make that happen.

Like two strangers, we hadn’t spoken a single word to each other on the ride back to the apartment. Ever since we’d made it out of the library, Zoe had been holding it together with a very thin thread that I was pretty sure was about to snap at any second.

“Zoe…” I started when I closed the door and leaned against it. We were finally alone, and she was already moving away from me.

She stopped, and her eyes drifted my way.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

I sighed as I watched her shuffle toward the bathroom. The door opened and closed then a few seconds later, I heard the rushing sound of the water.

Feeling tired in my bones, I threw my keys toward the living room, not caring where they landed. I gave her an entire minute, not because I thought she would ever call out to me, but because I needed to make sure she was okay and a minute was as long as I could make myself wait.

Skipping a knock, I opened the door and closed it without a sound. The mirror had already fogged up from the steam, but that wasn’t what had my attention. I had already heard Zoe’s sobs the second I’d pushed open the door, before I’d even stepped in. Dragging the shower curtain open, I stared down at her curled up body sitting under the stream of water. She was wracked by sobs so badly that for a second I considered taking her back to the hospital just so they could give her something to calm her down, but that would’ve meant staying away from her and letting other people touch her, and I didn’t think I could do that, not that day.

Reaching over my head, I yanked off my shirt, decided to keep my sweatpants on, and stepped in next to her. Crouching down, I put my hands under her arms and lifted her up. Thinking it was going to be hard to force her to accept my help, I was ready to argue with her, but I should’ve considered the fact that she might actually want me there.