Dylan(21)
Sweat trickles down my back as I skid around a corner and see another set of double doors. Hurrying over to them, I try the handle, but can’t turn it.
Locked.
Oh God. “Help me!” I yell, terror an icy fist around my heart. I bang on the closed door. My hands shake. “Anyone!”
The handle suddenly turns, the door opens, and I spill out, crashing on someone. Someone tall and broad who grabs me in his arms. I clutch at him, burying my face in a muscled chest, inhaling his scent of leather and pine that’s somehow familiar.
“Help me,” I mumble. “Please, help me.”
Why is his scent so familiar?
“Is everything…?” He falls silent, and then says, his voice rising in shock, “Tessa?”
I look up and barely have the time to register it’s Dylan holding me, Dylan talking to me—what the hell is Dylan doing here?—when the doors swing open once again.
“Tessa, come back here,” Sean shouts, his voice jolting me like electric current. “Bitch.”
“Who are you?” Dylan’s voice is calm. My whole body shudders. His arms tighten around me, holding me close. Safe. “Is everything all right?”
How can he even ask that? I can’t move, he’s holding me so tightly—and I don’t want to, either. I don’t want to turn and see Sean ever again.
“Everything’s just fine,” Sean mutters. “Except that’s my girlfriend you’re hugging, asshole. Let her go.”
Dylan stills. He lets out a breath. “It doesn’t look to me like she wants me to. Tessa, do you want me to let go?”
Laughter rises in my throat like gorge. If I let it out, it’ll be hysterical. “No,” I say and force myself to repeat it, louder. “No. Don’t let go.”
“She’s my girlfriend,” Sean repeats.
“No, I’m not,” I whisper, and I’m still struggling for breath. The adrenaline rush is fading, and it leaves my body a trembling mess. “Never was.”
“Who do you think you are?” Sean grinds out the words. “You’ll do as I say.”
“Step back, sir,” Dylan says quietly, “or I’ll radio the security inside the building to come take you away.”
“Take me away? You have no fucking idea who I am, do you? Well, let me tell you. I’m Sean Anholt, and you’ll soon wish you never touched my girlfriend or gotten in my damn way.”
“She says she’s not your girlfriend, Mr. Anholt.” If Dylan has realized whose son Sean is, his voice doesn’t betray any fear. It’s flat and cold.
“Are you kidding me, guard?”
Dylan says nothing. Silence spreads, tense and full of unspoken words. Will he step away and leave me to Sean? My parents did it. Why shouldn’t he?
But his hold on me doesn’t change. I look up at his face. He has the bluest eyes I have ever seen, and they’re so bright tonight.
“So this is how it’s going to be, is it? Be careful, guard. Oh, but you have a name, don’t you?” Sean’s voice drags, and I can hear the smirk in it. “D. Hayes. I can make you wish you never showed up here tonight.”
He’s threatening Dylan. The realization slowly dawns on me, and when it does, I think my heart stops for a moment.
I push on Dylan’s chest, and after hesitating a moment, he relaxes his hold so I can turn around. Face Sean.
“You won’t harm him,” I say into Sean’s sneering face. “He just happened to be here. He has nothing to do with this. With you.”
“Oh, he has everything to do with this, and me.” Sean grins, obviously enjoying himself. “He got in my way, and he touched you.”
Oh God. “Stop. Stop it. Why are you so hell-bent on having me? You can have any woman you want, you said so yourself.”
“You got that right.” He rocks back on his heels. “So you must be wondering why I’d want a pitiful excuse of a woman like you.”
The words are like salt rubbing into a wound, and I wince. They’d hurt anyway, but spoken in front of Dylan… They burn.
Dylan makes a sound low in his throat, like a growl, so I start talking before he says anything else to draw Sean’s attention back to himself.
“I do wonder. So why don’t you tell me, so we can settle this once and for all.”
He snorts as if I’ve said something really ridiculous, and maybe I do sound ridiculous. I’ve never been confident in his presence—but Dylan is right behind me, and that makes me feel stronger.
“Maybe I just enjoy seeing the fear in your eyes,” Sean says softly. “How you go pale and shaky, how one memory can dig its claws in and not let you go. Don’t you see you’ll always be mine?”