Page 95 of Until You Found Me

“Logan!” Tessa yells, twisting like a fish on a line, some of the haze clearing enough to show her that she’s being dragged toward the cliff.

He intends to toss her right off the edge and finish what he started.

She fights, but he is stronger. Looks for the gun, but it’s lost somewhere in the frozen grass and she has no hope of finding it now. The low wail of the ocean grows closer, andshe grabs onto a tree root, her fingernails snapping like they did on the frame of the bathroom door.

“Put me down!” She cries out, latching onto the door frame before he can take her back into the bathroom and feeling her fingernails rip when he forces her away.

Fighting him only makes it worse, but survival instinct when faced with certain death overrides that conditioned response and she scratches and kicks until he drops her. After that, the details of the struggle are lost to her. It’s shown only in flashes that link up with a hit.

Nick lands a punch to her gut and she doubles over, coming face to face with his ankle, where she sinks her teeth into it for a bite.

He grabs her by the neck as she fumbles down the hall and toward the door. The chill from the air conditioning licks at her arms before she’s tackled to the ground and his hands circle her neck to squeeze the life away.

She knees him in the balls and that earns her a short reprieve, but the crash of a table lamp into her head is the final straw. All she sees then is her own blood pooling beside her on the floor, fanning out in a slow trickle as her eyes close.

“Oh shit, oh fuck, not like this. Shit, not like this. Wake up, Tessa wake up!”

She’s shaken a few times at the shoulders, coming in and out but ultimately fading again.

“I’m gonna go to jail. This wasn’t supposed to…fuck…. I didn’t…I can’t go to jail…”

She hardly notices when Logan slams into Nick like a bull, knocking him off his feet and landing them both near the cliff’s edge. They scuffle in what feels like slow motion, and Logan briefly gets the upper hand. He overpowers Nick and the crack of her ex-husband’s teeth splitting after a punch isthe best sound she’s heard in a long time.

On any other day, it might be an easy win. Logan is bigger and stronger but today, only hours after dialysis, he is hardly a match for anyone and his advantage is short-lived.

Nick lands a knee close enough to his kidneys that it incapacitates him, and reaches for his go-to option, strangulation.

Tessa shoves her hands into the snow, feeling for anything of use and connecting triumphantly with a rock. Nick is preoccupied with attempted murder and doesn’t notice her come up behind him to slam the makeshift weapon into his skull with a sickening thump.

Initially, there’s no response, but then the struggle stops and he releases Logan. He turns to face her with a bewildered frown as if he can’t process the fact she hurt him at all. His knees wobble and he reaches up to feel the back of his head, pulling away a palm covered in blood. “You hit me.”

That’s all he sputters out before his eyes roll back and he falls over the edge, tumbling toward the rocks below, toward the fate he deserves.

He’s spread out in pieces when she looks, smeared across the rocks in a gruesome mess.

For a moment, the world stops spinning and everything grinds to a halt.

The waves beyond the cliff slow and go silent.

The snow crumbles one flake at a time under her weight as she stumbles backward.

Quiet envelopes her in its embrace and the scene before her disappears and reappears again and again between gradual blinks.

“You oka…Tessa…at me, please…”

Someone’s talking to her and his frantic tone,at least what she can hear of it rumbling below the silence, matches the expression that’s manifested in her field of view. He is so worried, and she’s confused about why. Any useful thoughts she might have conjured up are fried at the ends and completely out of reach, leaving her stuck in molasses while Logan frets over her.

His fingers ghost the tender curve of her neck that still throbs, and his gaze lingers on the blood dripping from her battered nose.

“…okay? Can you…Tessa look at…. are you—”

She is trapped and smothered in shock, unable to escape even with his help, until her brain latches onto something and provides her an avenue for slightly misplaced tunnel vision.

“The dog,” she says.

“I know.”

And then, all at once, she isn’t calm anymore. The waves pick up and crash against the cliff. The wind beats at her skin, and her frozen fingers ache as much as her nose. It all pelts her at once, and she reels from the impact. “Logan, the dog, oh my god, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry. He was trying to save me and he’s gone. Don’t hate me. Please don’t hate me, I’m sorry.”

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