About making sure I never left him again.
Shit, if I was going to die, why did it have to be at the hands of someone like Hudson? And why did it have to be now, when the world was finally starting to make sense?
When I’d finally found…
“Otto.” I muttered his name even though I knew it was a mistake. He wasn’t actually something I could summon with the word alone, and hearing it just seemed to incense Hudson further.
The next blow took me across the face again, and the feel of my cheek shredding against my teeth was chased by the taste of blood flooding my mouth.
Hudson wasn’t just going to teach me a lesson.
He was going to kill me.
And for the first time, I knew I had to fight.
I wasn’t even fighting for me, and that was the strangest part. If it had been for me, I would have done this a long time ago. If it had been for me, I probably would have hit him when I ran out of the apartment the night that Otto found me.
But it wasn’t for me.
The thought twisted in my stomach. Dark knowledge that I really was completely ruined… but it didn’t matter. Otto could ruin me, but he wouldn’t be able to do that if Hudson beat me to a pulp on the floor. I took a shaking breath and kicked out as hard as I could, feeling my stomach roll in displeasure at the loud cracking sound when my foot connected with Hudson’s knee. My vision was blurry from the blows he’d landed, and some small part of me told me I needed to get a weapon. I needed to finish the job.
I didn’t think I could finish the job.
I wasn’t sure I was even going to be able to run.
“London, don’t fucking move. I’m going to—” I scrambled back as fast as I could on my hands and knees, and felt an odd sense of satisfaction in knowing that Hudson couldn’t push himself to standing. His knee looked all wrong.
Maybe years of dancing and the lean muscles on my legs had finally paid off.
I darted forward before I had a chance to think, snatching his wallet off the counter. He’d stolen more than enough money from me. I took his keys too—not because I planned on taking his car, but because I wanted to make sure he couldn’t follow me.
Hell, there was every chance he’d been the one who left the note on the door to distract me. Thathe’dbeen the one who tried to hit me while I was standing there on the street.
I didn’t have answers, and I wasn’t going to give him a chance to come up with any.
“Fuck you, Hudson.” I swayed where I stood, aware that there was blood pooling from my brow and obscuring my vision. “I never want to see you again. Leave mealone.” I made a point to open the door and throw his keys down the hall so he could see that I’d done it. With the way his knee was angled, it would probably take him a while to find them. I fished in his wallet, pulling out the cash he had, then dropped the rest of it to the ground.
By the time I turned and stumbled out of the apartment, my heart was racing and my vision was coming and going in spots. I was hurt.
I was probably hurt worse than I realized, and it was adrenaline alone that carried me forward and kept me on my feet. I had to figure out where I was going to go.
I had to figure out what I was going to do.
Even as I thought it, it wasn’t hard to realize that there was really only one answer. I was just glad Otto told me where he was staying, so I didn’t have to stumble around until he found me. I was glad I lived so close to work.
I was barely able to pull myself up the stairs to the blue house by the time I made it there, and my fingers were numb when I knocked on the door.
What if he wasn’t here? What if he was out?
What if…
The door opened, and I didn’t realize there were tears in my eyes until the vision of him in front of me started swimming. It didn’t matter, though. One look at his face told me I was going to see the side of Otto that scared me—the side of him that had tortured people in front of me with a smile on his face.
I just… couldn’t bring myself to care.
“London, what happened?”
I took a step forward, and the second his hand wrapped around my waist, all the adrenaline, all the fight that had gotten me here, seemed to leave my body. It was ridiculous, but that touch…
