Page 45 of Phobia
I tried to kick and punch at the man that held me, swinging wildly as if I had a chance of escaping.
The stranger laughed at all of my attempts. He must have been twice my size. His meaty fingers dug deeper into my skin, never flinching from my pathetic attacks, until I realized with a sickening horror that they weren’t on my jaw anymore. I’d been too distracted by my attempts to free myself to realize he’d managed to wrap both hands around my throat and was squeezing mercilessly.
My mask slipped and I caught a glimpse of his face. Dark, ugly, domineering, with a big scar on his cheek. It was seared into my memory for the rest of my life—however long or short that might have been. A combination of tears and black-and-white speckles blurred across my vision. My lungs burned from a lack of oxygen. I tried to scream for help, but all I managed was a pitiful squeak.
This end of the road was dark. No street lights. Normally Larkin and I loved it, loved the obscurity the darkness gave us, but tonight? I wished he’d met me at my house instead—there was a streetlight in my front yard. This stranger wouldn’t have dared to step foot in such a brightly lit space. Larkin could have been waiting for me in the circle of yellow light, versus me, waiting for him on the cracked, uneven sidewalk while he ran back inside to get his bag for our last year of trick-or-treating.
The flickering jack-o’lanterns on his grandma’s front porch watched as I crumpled to the ground, the man’s oversized hands strangling the life out of me. Their orange grins seemed to relish my fate. A fitting spectacle for the darkest, most haunted night of the year—the murder of a thirteen-year-old boy in quiet suburbia by a total stranger.
An inhuman yell rang out in the distance, sounding above the fading heartbeat in my own ears.
Larkin’s face was the first thing I saw—then and now. Like a light in the darkness, I latched onto it and refused to look away even though the sight was terrifying. Pure wrath darkened every line on his face, twisting it into a mask of savagery. His perfect white teeth were bared in a snarl and his dark eyes, usually so soft and warm, were as hard as onyx.
Now, just like when we were kids, I watched everything in slow motion, through a fog, as Larkin grabbed Cody by the back of his shirt and swung him around, throwing him into his desk. The larger man landed hard, knocking over the lamp and scattering desk supplies everywhere.
But that wasn’t enough.
Larkin threw himself after his opponent and landed on top of him, straddling Cody’s chest on his knees. His fist flew, again and again, punching the same bloody spot on Cody’s face until it swelled and ceased to be recognizable as anything human.
Finally, Larkin yanked him up one last time, whispered in his ear, and slammed him into the floor so hard a framed picture of the two of us teetered and fell, the glass smashing on the floor.
Larkin appeared in front of me again, just as he had that night, breathing hard, covered in specks of blood that weren’t his own. “Are you ok? Did he hurt you?”
Unable to find my voice, I shook my head.
“Let’s get out of here.” He slung a heavy arm around my shoulders and guided me out the door. Clinging to his shirt, I leaned against him, hoping some of his usual body heat would chase away the numbness.
Larkin’s frat brothers eyed us with a mixture of curiosity and concern as we descended the stairs, but no one asked what happened or where Cody was. Maybe fist fights were common in their dwelling. It didn’t really matter. By the time we reached the front door, the fear in my body had been replaced with pure humiliation. It only got worse once the murmured questions started, while others speculated what had happened.
Maybe he wanted it? And Larkin got pissed.
Cody’s a fucking asshole. No one wants that.
Larkin’s a fucking psycho when it comes to that dude.
Fucking fags.
I stole a glance backward, trying to determine who said the last one, but it was almost impossible with twenty-something guys standing around in little clusters. Larkin must not have heard since he calmly opened the door and stepped outside instead of turning around and beating one or all of them to a bloody pulp.
“Lark—”
“I’m taking you home,” Larkin said, marching me straight to his SUV and opening the passenger door.
I slid into the front seat and turned toward him, a slew of questions and apologies on the tip of my tongue, but he closed the door in my face, literally and figuratively.
Chapter 6
“What was that about back there?” I asked, dabbing carefully at Larkin’s bruised knuckles with a cotton ball. I’d already cleaned the blood off his face and now it was time to deal with his hand since the ice pack finally brought the swelling down.
We hadn’t spoken the whole way back to my apartment, though Larkin had managed to keep a hand on me almost the entire time—on the back of my neck, mostly, like he was afraid I might suddenly vanish if he let go.
He glanced up, sullen and deadly serious. “He shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.”
“You could have killed him,” I murmured.
“Would that be such a bad thing?”
I paused, trying to decide if he was joking or not. From the hard line of his mouth to the way his eyes had narrowed, I could tell he wasn’t. “Is he a piece of shit? Yeah, Lark. Definitely. Does that mean he deserves to die?” I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”
