Page 8 of In the Danger Zone
Lots of love
Samantha Benson
I held the card to my chest for a second. Maybe it was weird to keep it as a memento, but sometimes I needed a reminder of Sam’s sweet words. I let them replay in my head over and over, trying to force myself to let them sink in. It wasn’t always so easy.
Setting the card back down on my desk, I grabbed my bag from the floor and made my way out of my dorm. There was no one to say goodbye to. A good thing about having such protective parents was that they worried that my roommate was going to be some psycho like the kids I went to school with. They had no issue letting me use some of my scholarship funding for my own dorm room.
My hands were firm on the straps of my backpack, feeling the strays of the sun hit my skin as I moved outside.
I was on high alert as I began my journey to the other side of campus. My eyes darted left and right, hoping that I wouldn’t see Asher. I couldn’t deal with him again. Not this early in the morning. Not after I had gotten my hopes up that I could have a fresh start.
That party had crushed that dream. Thankfully Leena wasn’t mad at me for leaving her that night. I thought about her, about how she had actually seemed worried about me. She had given me a call the night of the party – after I had seen him and literally ran out of that house – since she couldn’t find me. I told her I had felt a bad headache coming on and just wanted to get some sleep. Leena had insisted on coming to check on me, but I told her to stay and enjoy the party. Thankfully, she bought my lie.
I moved faster as the memories of Friday clouded my mind. Asher’s face was right there in my head. I was being paranoid, but I had every right to be.
It was only when I got to the building for my first class of the day that I finally let out a small sigh of relief. Just a small one. I felt less exposed when I was inside.
But after turning a few corners into an empty hallway, seemingly and suddenly very lost, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Whoever was touching me made me shudder, and that was because the heavy hand felt disgustingly familiar.
My breathing stopped then and there. It felt like it stopped, anyway. My heart too.
The hand pushed me back fast and hard, right to the wall. I gasped, my legs shaking as I was spun around sharply.
I was face to face with Asher again. Oh, God. I tried to move back the way I came from, but Asher was too quick for me.
He wasn’t supposed to be in my life and I wasn’t supposed to be in his. Asher was meant to be a thing of the past, just a dark figure who – hopefully – got smaller and smaller as the years went by. One day, that figure wouldn’t even exist. I’d be the strong one, the one with some power.
That was the dream.
It felt long gone as Asher’s blue eyes darkened, his grip on my shoulder tightening.
“Did you follow me here?” he asked, his voice as harsh as ever.
I said nothing. All I could think of was the last time we were together. Me on the grass. Him standing above me. His foot colliding with my stomach over and over. And then the final kick to the head that sent me straight to the hospital.
“Answer the fucking question,” Asher snapped.
I jumped. My eyes shut as fear took over. “N-No. I… I d-didn’t know you were h-here, I d-didn’t—”
“You’ve still got that pathetic, little stutter, huh?” Asher chuckled. “Thought when I kicked you in the head that day I might have unscrambled your brain a little. Apparently not.”
It would have been nice if my stutter had went away, but no. It was still very much present and it was even worse when I was nervous. And Asher always made me so, so nervous. It was his best skill.
“You got a crush on me or something?” he sneered. “Huh? Did you find out that I was coming to this school and decide to stalk me or something?”
I could have laughed. Ishouldhave laughed. That was the most idiotic thing I had ever heard in my life. Asher was the last person I would ever follow. He was the person I ran away from.
“I swear I didn’t k-know you were c-coming here.” I attempted to reason with him, trying desperately to get even the tiniest bit of control of my stutter. “T-Trust m-me, if I knew you were gonna b-be studying here, I w-would have stayed f-far away.”
“You should have fucking done that. Or maybe you’re forgetting what happened the last time we were together. Should I remind you?” He stepped even closer. He looked ready to pounce as he slammed his hands to the wall, his palms either side of my head, trapping me. “You brought that shit on yourself, you know that? Youmademe do that to you.”
“N-No one told you to hurt m-me,” I whispered. “You m-made that d-decision all on your own. You hurt m-me all on your o-own.”
“Yeah, and you should have kept your mouth shut about what I did to you. Then I wouldn’t have had to punish you.”
“I told you w-what happened. M-Mr. Greene s-saw the bruises, and he was worried, and he m-made m-me tell t-the principal, and t-then you—”
“And then I beat the shit outta you. Yeah. Iremember. Because you deserved it.”
