Page 156 of Hunt for You

Suddenly, something wrapped around my middle, clamping around me so hard I lost my breath, then started pulling me slowly out of his arms.

I gasped and grabbed for him, clawing—and he cursed and tried to grip me too, but I was being dragged backwards, away from him. And it was breaking my heart.

“Bridget! Please! Don’t—”

“It’s not me!” I sobbed. “It’s not me! Hold on, Sam! Please! Don’t let go!”

He opened his mouth, his eyes wide and terrified, hands clawing, every muscle rigid and flexed, like he was fighting something, trying to reach me.

I was the first to lose my grip, his sleeve tearing under my nails, then finally slipping out of my clenched fingers completely. But it was only a second before his man-hands were torn off my arms too.

He screamed my name like he’d been stabbed as I was jerked away and up—like I was being taken into the clouds.

He sucked away from me, his eyes wide, expression tormented, lips twisted into a scream of defiance, hands clawed and reaching.

“NO, BRIDGET. COME BACK!”

I woke up with a start, disoriented, crying, and suffocating.

I was sucking at the air, trying to get my lungs to inflate, blinking blinking blinking, until finally I was breathing.

My vision blurred in a new wave of tears, and I reached out to steady myself and realized I was on the couch, with the lights on.

Alone.

No Sam. No Cain. No Ronald. No one. Just me. Alone.

I dropped my face into my hands and sobbed.

Then I lifted my chin and screamed a curse at the ceiling because that looming weight was a symbol of the cage I lived in. And there was no fucking way out.

You couldn’t escape a cage that was inside yourself.

You couldn’t escape a horror that lived in your mind relentlessly.

You couldn’t do anything.

I had tried facing my demons when I was younger. I had tried outrunning them. There were no paths left but to accept that this was the way life would always be.

I blinked away the tears, wiping my nose on my sleeve and let myself fall back, let the couch catch me, let my head sink back on the cushions.

I sighed heavily. I couldn’t stop any of this. I was going to die.Everyonedied.

The only thing I could choose waswhatkilled me.

And when.

That was… if I’d been able to convince Cain to actually show up.

God, if only he’d been willing to change the rules. At least then, we could have run away together…

And that was when I saw it. The alternative.

And the black window looking out on my doom cracked open to let in the tiniest sliver of hope.

My heartraced.I licked my lips.

It would never work.