Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance) - By Dan Rix Page 0,76

burnt skin reeked in his nostrils.

“Hurry!” Amber mouthed.

Aaron floored it and popped the clutch. His car lurched, recoiled, and heaved them forward. The engine stalled.

He had started too fast.

“Lock your door,” he yelled, staring into Amber’s fear-soaked eyes. She just stared back, frozen.

“Lock it!”

She finally obeyed—just as the latch clicked. Outside, Clive grunted and vaulted over the hood, gorilla-like. He stomped across the metal to the driver’s side door—which didn’t latch.

Clive jerked the handle and it flew open, taking him by surprise. He staggered backwards, still gripping the handle as the steel bent under his weight. The hinges groaned.

A frozen gust whipped Aaron’s eyes, and he yanked back on the door. But Clive had already looped his arm inside the car, preventing it from closing. His tendons swelled like tree trunks.

The door’s hinges reeled on threads.

Clive’s face plastered against the window, and for a split second, their eyes burned into each other. Then Aaron dropped his shoulder and sank his full weight into the door, broke it free completely, and tackled Clive to the asphalt. He hardly felt the crunch in his spine.

Aaron rose, and a black fog closed around him. The back of his brain burned under his skull, and every stroke of his heart fueled the roar. He bent his fingers around the car door, raised it, and cocked it behind his head. Might as well have been cardboard.

He swung the door like a baseball bat, as hard as he could. Clive jumped to his feet, but not fast enough. The sharp edge gauged into his chest. The result was a fleshy sound, like cutting steak with a blunt knife. The impact flipped Clive’s body, and he landed with a slap.

Clive tried to crawl away, but Aaron followed and swung the door again, made it whistle—buried the steel into Clive’s shoulder and knocked him clear off the asphalt.

Fury pounded through him. It scorched his veins. He couldn’t stand the idea of Clive possessing any part of Amber. He swung again—thwack—and again—thwack—he swung until saliva foamed on his lips. Thwack. Until Clive’s blood ran in purple rivulets

Thwack—Clive’s body convulsed and went limp.

Aaron lowered the car door. He coughed for breath, and mucous frothed in his throat. The sea’s salt tore into his lungs. He glanced behind him, at Amber.

And the door slipped from his fingers, toppling with a clang. She was keeled over and wincing in pain, shivering—because every blow into Clive had been a blow into her.

She was still Clive’s half.

Aaron stumbled forward and skidded to his knees. “No—”

“Aaron, you have to go,” she moaned. “Before he finds you.”

Aaron was only half-aware of the groans behind him, the wheezing, the sound of a body scraping across pavement.

“I can’t leave you here,” he said.

“Just go!” she said.

But it was too late. Clive wheezed into Aaron’s ear, his breath damp with blood. His finger landed on the back of Aaron’s scalp.

When he pulled it away, an entire ocean poured out the back of Aaron’s skull. Aaron crumpled to the ground. Stars spiraled above him.

Clive leaned over him, blotting out the sky. “You can’t win, Harper,” he said, shredded skin flapping on his lip. He gurgled blood and spat to the side. “I deserve her. You don’t.”

He limped around to the Mazda’s passenger seat and smashed in the window, and he lifted Amber out of her seat. She no longer had the strength to resist. Aaron had taken that from her.

Then the very last drop of his consciousness slipped away.

***

Daylight dribbled between Aaron’s eyelids and lured them apart. He stared at a ceiling, at flakes of plaster. His ceiling. He was in his bedroom, tucked into his own bed. Outside, the morning sun glittered through lime-green sycamores, glossy with dew. He watched their shadows thrust across his floor, wash up his walls, then recede like surf.

Aaron fingered the back of his skull. He had been somewhere. Not asleep, somewhere else. An abyss.

He heard voices from the other room. His mom and dad—and a third voice.

Aaron closed his eyes again, and his heart gave a sickening lurch. Amber.

She was someone else’s half; her back was already scarred, yet she had risked everything for him. Just to see him. And all he’d managed to do was drain what little strength she had left.

Now Clive had her.

Aaron traced the cracks on his ceiling, and his lungs caved in a little more with each breath. Clive would never let her go. He would never give her back what had been cut out of her, the