Page 52 of Last Man Standing

He made me feel safe today. He rescued me when I needed it, and despite the hatred I feel for my body’s tendency to freeze up, I still found a pocket of appreciation for his actions.

Because he didn’t just save me. He didn’t just get those men away from me.

He obliterated them with a kind of violence that should scare me…

But doesn’t.

He left them with scars, I’m certain, and disfigurement, probably, they’ll never escape.

Every morning when I wake and look in the mirror, I see myself. My face. My body. I feel my scars, but on the outside, I still look like me.

Those two men will look in the mirror each morning, too, and because of Sebastion, they’ll remember what happens when they hurt women.

Maybe that’ll be enough to ensure they never try that shit again.

He made me feel safe, and when he shared his candy, he made me forget I was angry with myself.

But here I am now, twisted into a terrified ball, stripped of my power, crying because I’m scared, and the man I considered my hero this morning has become my abuser in the dark.

“Five more minutes.” His snarling voice makes me jump. It makes me whimper. And when his hand stops on my knee, it makes me scream.

He tears it away again and brings us around a gentle bend.

“Scarlett?”

“Just drive.” I crush the hoodie against my eyes and soften the pressure around my mouth so I can breathe around my sobbing cries. “Don’t talk to me.” I hug my legs and cower against the door. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“This is it.”

The truck comes to a rolling stop exactly however long it took me to count seven hundred beats of my heart. The fast beats, as well as the slow. The panicked beats, and those wrapped in grief. Sebastion cuts the engine and shifts in his seat, though I can’t see, because I remain exactly how I’ve been for seven hundred heartbeats.

The click of our hot engine plays through the nighttime silence. The consistent pace of my breaths, in and out, join the clicking. Sebastion’s unspoken anger joins the first two.

“You can drop the hoodie now, Princess.”

I cling to it harder. Fuck him.

He sighs. “Scarlett…”

“I don’t want to be here.” I tighten my fingers around the fabric and fight his steely grip when he attempts to tug it down, but he’s stronger than me and his strength wins out against mine. Instead, I squeeze my eyes shut. “I haven’t looked.” I press the heels of my palms to my closed eyes. “So now I want you to turn us the hell around, get me out of here, and drop me off somewhere else.”

“No.”

“A hotel will do. We passed a town about an hour back.”

“I said no.”

“And I said I didn’t want to be here!” I feel his hand near the buckle of my seatbelt, so I kick out and land a solid strike on his… I don’t even know. His chest, maybe. “It’s clear you don’t want me to know where the hell we are, and I’ve made it clear I don’t want to be here.”

“Scarlett!”

“I haven’t looked, and I no longer require your services. Boot.” I growl in response to his hand wrapping around my wrist, then I yank it back and stupidly smack myself in the face. “Stop touching me,” I snarl, “Or I’ll put a blade in your fucking eye socket! Start the truck, turn us around, take me back to that town. I’d walk on my own, but that would require looking, and looking upsets you people.”

Fury rolls from his muscular body in potent waves. This is the angry guy I met weeks ago. The intolerant asshole who never cared to be kind to the woman drowning in her own crisis.

I allowed myself to forget that man… for a moment. But now he’s back.

“If you don’t start this truck, I’m gonna have to walk. Neither of us wants that.”