Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,18

His body clean. He was sleeping easy.

Peeing into a tube.

“You’re not so tough,” I whispered, because it was funny. Because he was a murderous son of a bitch.

But at the moment he was my murderous son of a bitch.

In the bathroom I peed and then drank mouthfuls of cold water straight from the tap. Then I peeled off my sweaty and smelly clothes. The shower seemed like too much work so I just splashed water from the sink in the general direction of my body and called it clean enough.

From my garbage bag I pulled out a pair of underwear and a black tank top. A pair of handcuffs. My fake DEA badge, my fake FBI badge, and my fake University of North Carolina faculty badge. And—praise God—a toothbrush.

I scrubbed my teeth and felt nearly seven thousand times better.

The air-conditioning thunked on and blew across the back of my neck, sending chills over my body.

I needed to call Fern—I owed her an explanation but I didn’t have it in me just yet.

I was nauseous with exhaustion. I picked up my garbage bag and contemplated returning to the love seat, which was really tiny. And uncomfortable.

My neck hurt from the nap I had already taken there.

Fuck the love seat.

I returned to the living room, grabbed the blanket, wrapped it around my body, and went back into the bedroom.

I needed to stretch out, so I did on the edge of the queen bed. With my garbage bag of belongings beside me, my blanket that smelled just slightly of Aunt Fern wrapped around me, I closed my eyes, willing that falling sensation that meant sleep.

But instead my brain kicked on.

What are you doing? The thoughts crept in, pushing me up onto the hamster wheel that could keep me up all night. What are you going to do now? What are you going to say to Fern? To Max? You don’t have any money. Do you think he has money? He owes you…sort of. What—

Don’t. Stop. Sleep.

And I did.

—

I woke up to a hot breath on my face and a terrible pressure across my throat.

“What the fuck happened?” Max asked, his blue eyes inches from mine. His forearm across my throat.

I opened my mouth to tell him to let me up. To tell him that I couldn’t breathe, but I couldn’t even get a breath to say that.

I bucked my body, pushed at his arm, but he slipped his body over mine. Controlling my hips with his. Fuck he was heavy. Big.

“Can’t…” I gasped. “Breathe…”

“Where is Rabbit?” Max whispered, his eyes darting up toward the door and then around the room like we were surrounded by his enemies. Like any moment they could storm in.

“Are you working with him?” he asked.

Fuck this. There were stars behind my eyes, so I ducked my head and bit him. Not with all my strength, but enough of it.

He hissed and jerked and I shoved him away, rolling to the side of the bed and falling on the floor.

“Max!” I got to my feet but kept my distance from the bed.

“Where’s my gun,” he muttered, sitting up in the bed, even though it clearly cost him. He was holding his ribs, like he could cup the pain in his hands. And under the bruises, his face was a snarling wince.

I held my hand out like I was a lion tamer with a chair and a whip, instead of a stripper in my underwear. “Max?”

“Where’s my fucking gun!” he yelled, and then as if that roar had drained the last of his reserves, he flopped back on the bed. “What happened to me? Why…why am I here?”

“Poor life choices, probably. A lack of proper role models?”

His head rolled and he faced me, his blue eyes burning in a flushed, bruised face.

I grabbed the edge of my black plastic luggage and dragged it across the light-blue carpet to my feet.

With one eye on him, I pulled out the handcuffs waiting for my moment.

“What did you do to me?” His face wrinkled, and then he winced as all the bruises pulled and tugged. He tried to get up again, no doubt to beat me to death or something equally biker, but he couldn’t even lift his head.

“Shhhh. You’ve been hurt. You’re safe.”

“God.” His eyes drifted shut. “Tired.”

He was out again, his tall, pale body still on the bed.

As fast as I could, I got one handcuff around his wrist and the other around one of the metal spindles of the old