Page 27 of Watch Me Burn

“What the fuck are you doing?!” I snarled. Will stood up in surprise, acting as if he’d done nothing wrong.

“I was just trying to comfort you—”

I let my hand fly right across his cheek. “Don’t EVER touch me or call me again, you fucking pervert!”

I slammed enough dollar notes on the table to cover my bill and snatched my laptop to storm out of the store. But that fucking creep followed me outside. I could hear his slimy heels pattering against the parking lot concrete behind me.

“Hey . . . hey!” he called breathily. Once I got to the door of my car, he was hot on my trail.

“What the hell do you want?!” I scowled. He was blocking my way with that same shameless glint in his eyes, regarding me as if I were a worthless object.

He looked around to make sure nobody was around, which there fucking wasn’t in this empty parking lot, then he smirked. “You don’t need to be such a prude, Anna. Let me show you what a bad boy can do.” Forcing me against my car, he brought his hand up my thighs again. I gasped to scream for help, when a fast silhouette whisked into sight and sent Will straight to the floor.

“Ethan!” I yelled, too shocked to make sense of what was happening right now.

Chapter 13

Ethan

“Don’t fucking touch her!” I yelled as I punched Will into a bloody pulp. I couldn’t stand this disgusting fucker—the first thing I saw when I got to this parking lot was him pressing Anna up against her car like she was nothing, probably thinking his expensive suit meant he could treat women however he wanted.

But my girl wasn’t this dipshit’s object to play around with. I wouldn’t let him ride his hand up her skirt, I wouldn’t let him walk out of here without remembering what the fuck he just did.

“STOP, ETHAN!” I heard a voice wail. Nothing could stop me as I kept punching and punching, feeling the cartilage split against my knuckles as Will’s nose disfigured into a broken mess. This was what the fucker deserved. I relished the blood that spritzed out of him and thirsted to bring more and more tissue out as I continued to hit harder.

That’s when a warm body threw herself onto my back—not any body, but Anna’s.

“Stop,” she whimpered softly. And that was when all sense came rushing back to me—I looked down at the bloody, twitching mess that lay underneath me, the rage that’d pushed me to brawling like I was a beast in the wild. My survival instincts from prison had completely taken over my body. I couldn’t even recall each punch of mine that’d thrusted into this man’s face.

“Run,” Anna said while peering over my shoulder. She saw the bloodied man. She saw what my knuckles did, what happened when my trauma took over my better reason.

The man was frozen in fear, sobbing, but he was fully conscious. And a lingering flame of fury itched me to beat him more so that he would never force himself onto a woman again.

“How can I leave you here alone?!” I shot back at Anna. This fucker was dangerous. I—I was trying to protect her.

“Will had enough. I’ll handle the situation from here on—trust me. Right now, you need to RUN!” she barked less than she begged. There was no patience in her eyes—her gaze darted across the parking lot anxiously, like the cops could appear at any moment and have us both jailed.

Pressing my lips tight, I ran to my car and shut the door. I looked off to where Anna was crouching above Will in the distance. She seemed to be saying something, but I couldn’t make out the words.

I needed to leave. And to never look back, I couldn’t be around Anna anymore.

I had to lay low and forget her once and for all.

My hands shook as they gripped my car’s wheel harder and harder.

“When will this traffic fucking end?” I snarled to no one in particular. It was well into the night, but the roads were in an awful gridlock. I’d probably only make it back home past midnight.

Home. The halfway house . . .

I should’ve been realistic. Anna and I lived in completely opposite realities. She was on her way to grasping the best of what corporate America had to offer. I was at the brunt of society’s resentment. We weren’t meant to be. Another man, probably with a million times the net worth I’d ever hoard, would stroke her soft skin. Rouse her to moans while I was rotting away in a cell again.

I was nothing.

My eyes stung. I couldn’t believe I was wallowing in self-pity here like a baby. This was my damn life. It was time for me to get used to it.

Huffing, I swerved into an empty road and cut into the longest route to my halfway house. Since it went around the populated core of the city, I’d be reaching the place within a lot longer time span than would be needed if I simply went the normal way.

But I was in no rush to get there. Maybe I was a pussy, or maybe I just wanted to breathe the chilled air of midnight one last time before being thrusted into some musty shoebox with a half dozen other men again.

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