wasn’t going to take the socks. They would lessen my purchase on the floor. I couldn’t afford to slide my way around corners or over floors. I did steal one of the strings from his shoes and pulled my hair up and off my shoulders and face. I tucked the tail of it down the oversized shirt.
Doing a couple leg bends to hopefully loosen the muscles in my thighs, I waited for someone to come check this room for the lost patient. I laid down on the empty bed and closed my eyes. My abandoned hospital gown stuffed under my pillow.
The door opened. I cracked my eyelids to see who it was. Felt my belly relax when it was just a nurse. She slid through the room like a wraith. Shut the door behind her when she found nothing out of the ordinary.
I waited, the time ticking by in my abused head like a countdown to a bomb. Once I reached sixty, I eased from the bed. Shaking off the lethargy and the need to just close my eyes, I slapped myself in the face lightly.
The muscles of my thighs burned and protested with the movement as I moved the curtain next to the door. Please let me get away. Please. Please. Please.
I opened the door, hoped no one noticed my bare feet. I moved out into the hallway like I was supposed to be there. Shut the door softly behind me. I strode with aching, burning purpose towards the elevators. At the last turn, I almost vomited from stress.
Shit, shit, shit.
He was there. His arms folded over his muscular chest, his glare an unwelcome reminder imprinted on my brain. He looked up at me. He turned, his crystal blue eyes bright and terrifying under the bright fluorescent lights. His sharply styled brown hair lay just so against his head.
He moved in my direction.
The breath backed up in my throat as he headed towards me. At the last moment, he nodded and moved around me. “Excuse me.”
Thank the goddess he hadn’t recognized me. I nodded and kept moving. The emergency stairs were on the far side of the elevators. I couldn’t risk getting stuck in the moving car if he were still searching for me.
I pushed through the heavy steel door, the cement flooring of the stairwell a hard, welcome jolt to my system. At least I could still feel my toes.
I started down the stairs, one torturous step at a time. Sweat broke out on my forehead as I rounded the first landing and continued on down. I could feel my feet, but only because the cold kept reminding me they were there.
With a death grip on the railing, I eased down the next flight. A door slammed open a couple floors up. I huddled next to the wall, my heart trying to beat its way from my chest.
“Willow?” he called.
I stuffed a fist in my mouth to keep from screaming. Slid to the floor in a pile as my legs finally gave out. I prayed like I’d never prayed before.
The door right next to me smashed open, the door ricocheting off the wall and almost bouncing shut in one smooth movement. A man stepped through.
Tall as the Amatucci brothers, he was as light as a spring day. He looked like he could wrestle bears or lions barehanded. His muscles strained the sleeves of his dress shirt. His thighs bulged against the fabric of his pants.
Blonde hair that fell forward over his forehead, it looked thick and cool to the touch. His grass green eyes were as hard as emeralds as they widened when he caught me close to tears in the stairwell.
His mouth pulled up in a growl when he looked at me.
I shrank back from the blatant anger on his face.
“Willow? Is that you?” my nightmare called again from up above.
The man opened his mouth.
Oh sweet goddess. No. Please no. I had to put my life in this angry stranger’s hands and pray he didn’t give me away.
Forcing myself to look up into his hard, shuttered eyes, I shook my head quickly. Put a finger over my mouth. No longer cold, I was burning up. The tunnel of my vision grew darker. I pushed it aside. I couldn’t let this stranger send me back to hell.
The blonde-haired man studied me for moments on end. I counted every single heartbeat while he made his decision. All I could hear was the pounding in my head.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
“No.” His