my forehead against it, trying to steady my frenzied breaths as I replayed what I just did.
I was an idiot. A total fucking idiot.
Why did I have to push him? Why the hell would I do that now, when I just saw him kill a guy in cold blood? It was like I was just asking Rogue to off me. But for some reason, I just couldn’t keep taking the hits and doing nothing. I was sick of letting them punish me without fighting back. And you know what? It felt fucking good to drive away from him. It felt good to finally win one.
But it was a good thing I’d be on a plane Monday. All I had to do was hide out until then. Two days. I could make it two days. I didn’t really think he’d kill me. He would have already if he’d really wanted to. Once he realized I hadn’t gone to the cops, he’d calm down.
I hoped.
I picked my head up to look around the street, just to make sure I hadn’t been followed. This was the college part of town, with dorms and apartments littered over the city. So even though it was late, there were still people walking around and I knew Clay would be up since it was a Friday night. I then grabbed an old napkin on the floor of the car and started wiping at the dried blood coating my neck, from when Rogue grabbed me. Red flakes fell from my skin, and once I was sure there wasn’t more I could do, I threw the napkin on the floorboard.
Opening the car door, I made my way toward the student apartments. I punched the code into the gate and it slid open, then passed some people at the pool that were drinking and smoking. I got a few sarcastic catcalls at my oversized sweats that smelled of Luis Salvador, but I ignored them as I made my way up the stairs to knock on apartment 3B.
It took a bit longer than usual for him to answer, but since I could hear music coming through the door, I knocked again.
“Yeah, hold your fuckin’ balls in your sac! I’m comin!”
A second later, I heard the lock flip and then Clay threw open the door. His mouth was open and ready to yell, but when he saw it was me, he stopped himself.
“Scarlett fuckin’ Livingston. What the hell are you doing here at this hour?”
“Can I come in?”
Clay stepped out of the way to let me pass, and I walked inside his apartment. It was a total college-guy bachelor pad, but Clay liked to think of himself as eclectic. Which was just a fancy way of saying he hung a lot of nude photographs on his walls and grew weed out of his guest bedroom.
I perched myself on the barstool at his countertop and Clay wasted no time opening his fridge and grabbing a couple of beers. He passed me one, and I took it gratefully. When I popped the lid on the edge of his steel counter and downed a third of it in one go, I found Clay staring at me incredulously. “Who are you, and what the hell have you done with Scarlett?”
“Ha ha,” I said dryly.
“No. Really. I’ve offered you about a hundred beers. Not once have you ever taken one.”
I shrugged and started peeling the label off the cold bottle. “Everyone is entitled to change.”
Clay toasted silently to that before taking a swig himself. He watched me, his nearly black eyes pausing on the very masculine and ill-fitting clothes that I was wearing. His dark skin was smooth over his taut muscles, and he rubbed a hand over his short black hair as he studied me. When he leaned over, seeing that I was barefoot, he cocked a brow. “You in some kind of trouble?”
I laughed bitterly, but caught myself before I could say something stupid. “No. Just...needed to get out of the house. My mama was driving me crazy.” It was true often enough that it didn’t feel like a lie.
Clay nodded slowly and then reached into his cupboard and pulled out a bag of chips. Dumping them on the counter, we started munching on them between sips of beer.
Clay was a Sophomore at Savannah State. I’d met him last year, when my mama had dragged me to some art exhibition. Clay was there to buy, since it featured nudes. He said it was his one