Page 271 of Cross Checked
I saw her outside in my head.
My jersey. Her smile. Her hand in mine. The way she looked at me that morning in the kitchen when I said I loved her like the words had cracked something terrifying and beautiful open between us. The way she had survived him. The way she was still surviving him. The way she would blame herself if I didn’t walk out of this hallway.
No.
My hand clamped around Luke’s wrist so hard something shifted beneath my grip as he tried to pull the knife free, but no way was I letting him.
Pain tore through me as I moved, but I used it. Used the fact that he was close. Used the fact that he thought the blade had already decided the fight was over. I drove my forehead into his face, brutal and fast, and his grip loosened for half a second.
Half a second was enough.
I slammed his wrist against the wall once.
Twice.
The knife clattered loose, skidding across the concrete toward the opposite side of the corridor.
Luke lunged for it, and so did I.
We hit the floor hard.
My shoulder took most of the fall, but my side screamed anyway, the kind of pain that made my vision flash dark around the edges. Luke’s elbow caught me in the mouth. I tasted blood. My hand found his throat long enough to shove him back, but he was slippery with my blood now. He fought me with all his rage and survival and years of getting away with things finally crashing into the one moment he couldn’t talk himself out of.
He scrambled toward the knife, fingers scraping concrete.
I caught his ankle and dragged him back.
He kicked me in the ribs, the same spot he’d stabbed me in, and air vanished. A horrible pressure bloomed through my chest, tight and wet and wrong. I tried to inhale and felt the breath catch halfway, like my body had forgotten how lungs worked. The hallway tilted. My grip slipped.
Luke crawled another foot.
No.
I forced myself forward, every movement tearing something open inside me, and wrapped an arm around his waist from behind. We rolled hard into the wall near the service door. He slammed the back of his head into my face, and stars burst behind my eyes.
Then his fingers closed around the knife again.
I saw it happen.
Saw the choice form in his body before he turned.
He wasn’t done. He would never be done. Not with me. Not with Bliss. Not with anyone who had the misfortune of knowing his truth.
Luke twisted with the blade clutched tight, aiming low this time, wild and desperate. I caught his forearm before it could sink into me again, but the angle was bad. My strength wasn’t right. Blood loss had made my hands sluggish, my muscles untrustworthy. The knife shook between us, silverflashing inches from my stomach while he drove his weight down, teeth bared, face gone monstrous with effort.
“You are nothing,” he hissed.
I pushed back with everything I had left. “No,” I said, my voice filled with hate and filth and every fucking thing wrong with him. “You ignored every no she cried, and now I’m going to carve it in your fucking chest.”
His eyes flickered, but I didn’t care.
I moved, not cleanly and not heroically.
It was ugly, desperate, survival carved down to bone. I shifted my hips, used the wall behind me, and turned his momentum sideways. His wrist bent with mine around it. The blade changed direction between us as we slammed into the concrete again, and for one second, the entire fight became pressure.
His weight.
My grip.
