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Throw your purse one direction?
Keys another?
Then run a third?
No. That’s only if they’re trying to get you in your car.
I’m not near my car.
Should I just skip formalities and run?
How am I supposed to run faster than someone taller than me while holding Oxford?
Is my puppy going to be okay?
Icy terror pours into my bloodstream, freezing me uselessly in place.
“Please,” I whisper when the man gets within a foot of me.
“It’s okay,” he croons, hand lifting. “Want to talk about it?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “No.”
The next thing I hear is cursing, then an awful, awful crack.
“Don’t—” A swear; a familiar voice; more dreadful, painful noises. “—touch her.”
Another man, probably the driver, calls, “Hey, what’s going on out there?”
The man in front of me screams.
I squint my eyes open to find a tall, broad back separating me from the dangerous man, who is now sputtering curses on his knees. My arms are empty. I lift my gaze up to a mop of sandy brown hair and gape.
Doliver.
“Get the—” Swear. “—out of my sight, or I will kill you.”
The man scrambles, clutching his wrist when Doliver—Doliver—lets go.
Doliver looks over his shoulder, at me—lethal, enchanting beauty in his every inch—and my knees give out. His eyes widen as he catches me. “Hey, hey,” he soothes, gently guiding me down to the pavement. His smile shakes as he combs my bangs to the side and cups my cheek. “It’s all right. You’re all right, sunshine.”
The chemistry in my brain changes the longer I stare.
We are four hours from Mountain Vale. Two hours from home.
There’s no way he should be here.
This is more than a coincidence.
All at once, Doliver’s brown eyes look too familiar; the pattern of white and tan slathered across his skin is too reminiscent of… “Oxford?” I whisper.
He winces, closes his eyes, and lets his head droop. “Yes?”
“How…?”
His mouth opens, closes. He swallows. “It’s…complicated.”
“No.” I clutch his wrist and find the fraying edge of a dream in the fog swarming through my head. Willow. A man. A man with red, red eyes. Strange things happening, all around me, from the first moment I saw…
