thumb, letting it hover over the touch screen. When he lowers it, I suck in a breath. Rather than the green answer button, he strikes the red one to dismiss the call instead.
Relief escapes me in a sharp exhale. Branden will just call back, irritated that I didn’t answer, but already bored, the man drops my phone into my bag and shoves it aside.
With little effort, he reclaims my journal and flips it open to a different page. I recognize the various scribbled lines—my latest piece, the rough draft of an essay assignment. The single essay that may or may not decide if I continue school next semester.
“You write about lying a lot, rabbit,” he remarks while scanning my words. “Maybe you really are a fucking reporter? Lies spilled like bated breaths. Suffocation inevitable. Drowning…” Smirking, he looks up, forcing eye contact. “What’s a bunny got to hide from?”
“Why do you care?” I rasp. Internally, I’m more shocked that he could make that kind of assumption from a few words scattered throughout.
He chuckles, seemingly amused by my reaction. “Deceiver. Falsifier.” He’s rattling off my various scribbled titles by heart. “You must have plenty of secrets to tell, rabbit.”
“And you must be really bored to pick on some random girl over a journal.”
“So she bites as well as speaks.” He raises an eyebrow, another wry smile playing over his mouth. “I’m curious, rabbit…” he tells me, leaving the implication dangling so that I’m forced to ask.
“Why?”
He sits back, stroking his chin. “Why you have those sad, fucking bunny eyes.” A newer emotion makes his eyes narrow further—annoyance. “A normal person would have run by now, rabbit. They would have made good on their threat to call the police. Otherwise, they’d be crying. Begging. You haven’t done a fucking one of those things—” His teeth flash, his gaze piercing. “Why is that?”
I clench my jaw shut, but a reply slips out regardless. “I guess you just like terrorizing people—”
“And you haven’t answered my question.” He sits forward again, bracing both of his hands on his knees. Then he lunges.
I don’t even have the chance to react before he’s beside me, his arm thrown over my shoulder, his breath on my throat. Then ice. Cold. Sharpness…
I recognize the feeling, and I go rigid, picturing the size of the blade he must have tracing along the very edge of my windpipe. Nothing too large. A pocket knife? He holds it there teasingly, daring me to pull away.
But I don’t.
I can’t. All I can do is flex my fingers, grasping at the air. It’s all I can ever do.
Suffocate.
But I’m used to my tormentor demanding silence—not this.
“Read.” My book lands open on my lap, the page a scribbled poem. I’d written it months ago, and the pain I’d felt then still leaps off the page, bled into every swirl of ink.
Haunted by darkness, shrouded in guilt. In deception, salvation found…
“No.” Speaking makes the blade press in. Scrape. But more words escape unbidden, impossible to keep in. “Get off me—”
“Read.” His impatience disturbs me more than any threat, mainly by what it reveals. He doesn’t want to scare me. He’s having too much fun provoking me. “In deception, salvation found,” he recites for me, his tone pompous with mock bravado. “From golden bars. Deceptive beauty—”
“Stop.”
He doesn’t.
“From chains formed of secrets linked by fear. Freedom’s price paid with the blood of another.” He chuckles, tapping the knife against my throat. Once, twice. Never hard enough to cut, just enough to sting.
“You’re not afraid of me,” he murmurs near my ear, his voice impossible to ignore. “Not one fucking bit. You’ve seen a much worse monster. I want to meet that monster. I want to know what makes a little rabbit like you so damn hard she doesn’t flinch when a man presses a knife to her throat. I want—” He breaks off, shifting his gaze to the crowd. At the mouth of the section, a slim woman is talking to one of the bouncers. She’s young, her dark hair kept at bay with a glittery butterfly-shaped hairclip, her outfit a modest shirt and jeans that make her seem more out of place than I do. A snippet of what she says reaches us, mutilated by the pounding bass.
“…need to speak to Rafe. It’s important.”
“Shit.” Rafe’s eyes narrow, and he shoves me aside, rising to his feet. “Looks like we’ll have to cut this short, bunny.”
He walks past me, heading for the section’s entrance—but in his grasp is