Carter Reed

Soft hands touched my shoulder. “Emma.”


I heard Amanda’s voice, one of the few that I trusted. She knelt beside me and gathered me to her. “Come on. Lift up.” Her finger slid underneath my chin, and she raised my head. I gasped for breath, but I couldn’t breathe. My entire body wrenched forward, and I started to pound my chest. The panic swirled in my chest. It was suffocating me. Oh god. The gun.

Slap!

My head snapped to the left, but I never felt the sting from her hand. It was enough to pull me back so I could breathe again. I looked back as I felt my pulse slowing down and grasped Amanda’s elbows. “Thank you.”

She brushed back some of her blonde hair and smiled. It was a gentle smile, but I didn’t care that it was from pity. I grabbed her and held on with all my might. She had no idea, she couldn’t have, but she was there. I drew in a ragged breath.

“Amanda.” Ben stopped in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. He had a white apron tied around his waist and he was shirtless. The jeans he wore underneath were wrinkled and ripped at the knees. They looked like he had slept in them, but then I saw the tear streaks on his chest and realized that he had slept in them. He had held Mallory during the night.

She waved a hand to him. “We’re fine. We’ll be there in a second, okay?”

He narrowed his black eyes.

I frowned as I saw how his black hair was messed, like a hand had run through it over and over. I saw the red nail marks on his chest and I shot to my feet. “Are you kidding me?”

“Emma.” Amanda shot to her feet beside me. She tried to block me, but I pushed aside all 98 pounds of her.

“You slept with her?! You had sex with her last night?”

He frowned and scratched at his chest. My eyes narrowed as I saw more scratches, long and red. They ran the entire length of his skinny torso. They stuck out against his pale skin. A different sickness came over me. It gurgled up from deep inside and threatened to spew out, but I couldn’t move. I could only look in revulsion.

He sighed as his hand lifted to his hair. It fisted around a clump of his black strands and pulled at them before he took another deep breath. His shoulders slumped then and the hand dropped to his side. “What do you want, Emma? She didn’t want to feel him anymore. She wanted to feel me. She wanted another man’s touch.”

“Did it work?” I spat out. I already knew it hadn’t.

His head fell down. The towel he held in his other hand slipped to the ground. Then he lifted bleak eyes to me. “She’s been crying ever since.”

“Ben!”

“Oh, come on, Amanda.” His arms went wide. “You weren’t here. I was the only one. I didn’t know what to do. Mallory was a complete mess the entire night and this one,” his hand pointed at me, “was a zombie too. This was the first sign she was alive since that night. I thought I needed to take her to the hospital too.”

My heart stopped. “You didn’t.”

“No.” His eyes flashed with disgust. “But I should’ve. You should’ve. She shouldn’t be here. Both of you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be hiding—”

“They’re going to kill us!”

“Who?” he yelled back at me. His hands were in fists, and he raised them both in the air. “Who, Emma? Who could possibly be this dangerous that instead of going to the hospital, you come here—”

“The mob, you idiot!” I lunged for him, but Amanda wrapped her tiny arms around me. Her feet dug in and I was swung back to the couches. I fell over them, but scrambled back to my feet. My hair fell to cover my face. I threw it back and heaved at him. My eyes were wild. Red-hot fury coursed through me, but it was when he stepped back that I realized what I must’ve looked like. Crazy.

I drew in a deep breath and tried to calm myself.

Shit—it was hard.

“Where is she?”

“Sleeping.” He folded his arms over his chest, and his chin tucked down. “And she’s going to stay that way. She needs to sleep, Em. She has to start healing, and she’s going to need all the rest she can get.”

I raked my hands through my dark hair. I wanted to pull it out. I wanted that pain to sear through me. Any suffering would do, anything strong enough to rip out the pain from inside of me. Then I cried out. A gasp/half-gurgle ripped from me as I sunk to my knees. God, could I be more dramatic, but holy hell. I was going to hell. They were going to kill me.

“Emma.” Amanda was at my side again. She urged me back to my feet, and we both moved to curl on the couch. I wasn’t a touchy-feely person, but I clung to her in that moment. I needed all the strength she was giving me.

The chaos was bouncing inside of me, ricocheting around at a rapid pace. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t center myself in order to force all those emotions away.