Page 99 of Fighting Fate
27
The stairs get darker past the toilets. The rooftop bar is shut, so no one is around when I get to the double glass doors that lead to the terrace. I can feel the cold coming through the glass while I wait for Rory to find me. It’s going to take him a while. Everyone is so eager to talk to him tonight that we’ve barely had a moment together since we arrived.
While I’m waiting, I adjust the halter neck of my dress so that it’s not so tight. The beading on the straps is grating chunks out of my neck, and besides, it’s not like my boobs have grown all that much. I’m just about done when I hear the heavy footsteps.
At first, they seem odd. Rory’s wearing hard-soled shoes, and the sound is off, but no one else would come up here now.
Stop being paranoid, I tell myself as I inhale a deep breath and shake out the heebie-jeebies. Even so, I turn around and take a few steps down to peer around the corner, but before I make it, I find the tall, dark figure lingering in the dark corner.
My skin prickles instantly as I try to edge by. A long arm stops me. In the shadow, it’s hard to make anything out, but my heart is ramming into my ribs with my blood screaming in my ears. The perfume…I’d know it anywhere.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to get you, darling…”
Darling.I shudder at the endearment, backtracking up the steps.
“You shouldn’t be here, Peter.” The statement comes out a barely audible breath as my back hits the glass doors.
My head is yelling—it’s a mistake. I’m at a dead end with no escape. Panic overwhelms me. Even with the diluted light coming through the doors, I can barely see past my wet lashes. All I can hear is the muted thud of footsteps coming closer as I desperately try to remember what Taylor taught me in that one self-defence lesson. But it’s all gone.
I’m drawing blanks while I search around me for something, anything, that can help me. There’s nothing. All I can do is scream.
“Shhh…” A large hand slaps over my mouth. I’m suffocating on my panicked sobs as he tells me, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
But he will. His grip is so tight on my jaw that his nails threaten to pierce my skin. Then his body presses into mine, and I’m trying so hard to push him off me. My hands are hopelessly clawing at his neck and face, and I’m screaming and screaming as loud as I can into his hand. None of it works.
“Stop…shhhh…” Peter hisses into my ear. He’s pressed into me so hard that my belly is hurting, and it’s making me feel sick. “You’re going to listen to me now.”
No. No. No, no…no.With every shake of my head, I try to wedge my knee between his, but it’s like he knows what I’m trying to do, and he kicks my feet apart.
“Yes, darling. Yes, you will listen,” he lulls in a low voice.
My eyes are darting between his while I try to think of another way to get away. With his thumb pressed against my nostrils, it’s almost impossible to breathe through my nose, and my head is becoming hazy. Tears burn down my face as I hope and pray that Rory will come find me soon.
Any second now. I try to calm myself. Any second…
“You know I won’t hurt you.” Peter lets out a musing breath at the same time as he grinds into me. The hand he was bracing himself with against the door reaches between us into the pocket of his hoodie. I freeze the instant he pulls it out and flicks open the switchblade in his grasp. “Not unless you make me. Are you going to make me?”
I urgently shake my head as he lowers the knife to my belly. Everything fades to black, and all I can see is the scan of my little boy stabbed through with a kitchen knife.
“Are you going to listen?” he asks, pressing the blade harder into me. When I nod, he tells me, “No screaming. No funny shit.”
I’m still nodding as he removes his hand from my mouth, and I suck in a breath. Another and another through my sobs and sputters.
“Good girl.” The whispered coo cuts through me as he takes a step back and gives me space. Not enough to run, but enough that he’s not touching me anymore and I can edge myself to the side, closer to the fire alarm. “I tried to make you see sense. You don’t belong with him…he doesn’t love you like I do…you know that, don’t you?”
I nod again and again and again, edging a little closer to the alarm. Peter trails with me, but the more he talks, the more he moves back.
“I tried to make you see sense. You just wouldn’t have it! Why?” Rage echoes around us, making me shrink back. “Answer me! Why?” When I say nothing, he holds the point of the blade to the top of my belly, twisting it with a disgusted sneer on his face. “Talk!”
“O-o-okay,” I stutter back, my hands flattening to the glass as I press myself into the corner of where the doors meet the brick wall.
The fire extinguisher is beside me, and the alarm is above it. I won’t be able to crack the glass and set it off without him hurting me, or worse, the baby. He’s still too close, and the knife is sharp enough that when I move, it cuts through the beading.
“I’ll talk and listen…anything you wan—”
“Good.”