Page 6 of Shadowed With Fear

“Hey, sweetheart. You think you could deepthroat cocks the way you were doing that cupcake,” he laughed in my face, reaching to grab the lower side of my hip. I spun on my heel, arm swinging, as my hand connected with the expanse of his cheek. It began to sting immediately, but the only reaction he gave was with the slight turn of his head, and instant narrowing of his eyes.

I ran.

* * *

“That’s how I ended up outside, where I got drenched. I don’t know. Part of me feels it might have been deliberate, or that guy was genuinely just stupid trying to carry six drinks. But that was when I texted B, and now you’re here.” I turned to look at him with a deep breath.

Grayson was seething. He looked murderous. The slate blue of his eyes had hardened to icy steel. I was afraid his teeth were cracking under the pressure of his clenched jaw.

“We’re going back.”

“What?”

“We’re going back so I can kill those fucking pricks.”

“You’re overreacting. You’re not doing anything, except taking me home.”

The lights of our hometown started to shine in the distance. The glowing neon lights of Bobby’s Diner and the sterilized white gleam of the laundromat shone like a beacon of safety.

“I’m turning around, and you’re going to show me whose throats I’m going to rip out, D.”

“You’re insane.”

“I’m insane? Cause you walk around causing problems all the damn time,” he snapped at me. “Now, I have to clean up the mess.”

“Problems? What fucking problems?”

His glare seared through me.

“Like what? Like I was asking for those guys to treat me like a piece of fucking meat? I didn’t ask for it, and I’m not fucking asking for you to do shit about it.” I screamed. My rage was surmounting his own once the realization shot across his face. His eyes softened slightly, but his anger was still buried deep in the way his body was tensed.

His silence was all the response I had needed.

“Pull over, Grayson.”

Nothing.

“Let me out.”

His heavy breath responded.

“Pull the fucking car over. Now! Let. Me. Out!” I started to pull in the locked door handle. He slammed hard on the breaks. The echoed click of the doors unlocking was the only noise along the empty street.

“Don’t talk to me. Just leave me alone.” I slammed the door as I took off down the side of McKinney Avenue toward the park. There’s a shortcut through the baseball field and across the railroad tracks to Liz’s house. I would just stay there tonight knowing there was a good chance Grayson would just crash in Brahm’s room.

Each step in my heeled boots on the concrete reverberated through the alley. The clicks and thuds echoing off the brick walls and metal buildings. A rock bounded feet ahead of me. With every brush of my toe against its jagged edge, it careened into another cycle of turning over and over and over.

I felt like this rock sometimes. Lying completely dormant through the torrential elements of the world outside of me, awaiting a moment when a force would drive me to react, to feel, to do anything. I lived each day in a perpetual loop. But “live” is almost too strong a word for what I truly did. I was present each day in a perpetual loop. To say I was living would mean my heart would be pounding, blood would be rushing, and I would feel emotions beyond the scope of what those dipshits at the party evoked.

Experiencing that wasn’t living either. It was hiding. Hiding from anger, shame, humiliation, resentment, loneliness. I just wanted to live again.

As I rounded the corner to the park, I realized I wasn’t ready to just call it a night. It was the perfect autumn night with the stars glittering in the sky. My feet brushed through the damp grass toward the merry-go-round. The cold metal bit into the exposed skin of my shoulder, arms, and back of my thighs when I laid in the middle, spinning it slowly.

There was a soft creaking sound, metal on metal, scraping with each rotation. Trees rustled. The wind whistled. The peace I had felt at the party returned in waves of ebbing tension.

Grayson was such an asshole. I understand if he was angry with the way those guys and that girl had acted, but his behavior wasn’t necessarily the pinnacle of well-mannered.

Insinuating that I was asking for people to make comments on my body and to sexualize me for my size, or hell, just being a woman in general, was disgusting. I scoffed to myself, shaking my head.