Page 46 of To Hate Adam Connor

She was about to get in another punch when I caught her hand before it could land.

“Whooaa, easy there.”

It was a stupid move on my part. Never get in the way of Lucy Meyer. Ever. She stepped on my foot.

With her heel.

Very hard.

“Jesus, woman!” I yelled, momentarily dropping her arm.

“You little piece of shit!” she screamed at Jake before landing another punch on his shoulder.

“You crazy bitch,” Jake hissed back, letting go of his nose so he could capture her wrist. Lucy stopped with her tirade, and he started twisting her hand. At a loss for words, I wrapped my hand around Jake’s throat as I tried to keep Lucy away with the other.

“Drop it,” I said to him as calmly as I could manage. What had I gotten myself into?

Jake’s eyes hardened, and he twisted her wrist farther, causing her to gasp and twist her body to lessen the pain. I tightened my hand around his throat and pushed his head back into the wall until his face started to turn red and he was having trouble breathing. “I won’t repeat it, Callum. Let her go!”

He shoved her hand away and a second later, Lucy was on him again, screaming obscenities, cursing him all to hell. I let Jake go and turned my back to him as he kept coughing.

“Stop it,” I said to Lucy and got a light punch on my shoulder for all my troubles.

Jesus.

Did the woman listen to me? Of course not. I doubted she ever listened to anyone.

“I’m gonna kill him,” she kept yelling while trying to hit Jake by reaching around me.

I glanced at the end of the hall to see if I could spot Jason, but there was no one near us, not even the couple who had been in a kissing frenzy just a few minutes before.

Her eyes were focused on Jake. “Who do you think you are!” she screamed again, pushing and pulling at me to get to him. “You little bastard! How dare you!”

“You either get her out of my face or we’re gonna have a problem here, Connor,” Jake croaked from behind me, his voice fucked up. Maybe I’d squeezed a little harder than necessary—not that I felt sorry for the guy.

“Shut the fuck up,” I growled at him and finally caught Lucy’s flailing arms.

“Let me go, Connor,” she screamed and lifted her foot again. She must’ve been exhausted because she was starting to move much slower, and I knew her game, so I managed to move my foot away before she could find her target. I twisted her body as gently as I could and held her back against my chest, trapping her arms.

How nobody had heard the whole mess, I had no idea.

I braced my chin on her shoulder and whispered to her, “Calm down, Lucy. Calm down.” She smelled of pink roses and a subtle hint of citrus, soft and sharp at the same time. I shook my head to clear my mind.

After a slight hesitation, she started squirming against me. “Don’t tell me to calm down, goddammit! I’m gonna kill him. Let go of me.”

“No. I need you to calm down for me, Lucy. Can you do that? Please, sweetheart. Calm down and tell me what’s going on here.”

Her chest falling and rising rapidly, she curled her hands around my arm. I was expecting her to try something on me, or simply push me away, but she surprised me by just holding on to me. “I told you…” she said slowly “…not to call me sweetheart.”

“If you promise to calm down, I’ll never call you sweetheart again. Will that make you happy?”

She took a deep breath with difficulty and nodded. Her hands were still gripping my arms, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate me pointing that out.

Jake chose that moment to slither away from the wall and walk away from us. He faced us and kept walking backward. When he shot Lucy a quick salute and grin…Lucy went rigid in my arms for a second then let out a frustrated scream and tried to go after him.

I sighed and lifted her legs off the ground. “That’s it. We’re leaving.” Carrying a kicking and screaming Lucy, I walked outside.

The moment I let her go, she tried to run past me and back inside again. I cut her off before she could manage that.

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