What it tastes like to sacrifice everything so someone else gets to live.
So I dance with a smile on my face and keep going until the night is lost on me, only pausing to have another drink, continuing my dance with this stranger until I’m drunk on Liam’s jealousy.
And I don’t care either when this man dancing with me switches it up and calls in one of his friends to dance together. Hips sway back and forth in a rhythmic motion, my arm around one guy’s neck while the other grinds behind me.
Liam’s anger is like a volcano about to burst, but I don’t care anymore.
I’m a woman now. I can celebrate however the hell I want to.
“Hey, c’mon, let’s go outside. I wanna show you something,” one of the men says in a German accent.
I blindly agree, wondering where the night will take me, and I go outside with them. They drag me behind the building while I’m struggling to keep up with their quick pace. “Where are we going? Is it somewhere fun?”
“Oh yeah, it’s fun,” the guy says.
Suddenly, one of them pins me to the wall.
“Hey!” I shove him away. “What is this?”
“I thought you wanted to have a little bit of fun,” the guy says.
I look around, but the other one blocks my only way out of this alley.
Fuck.
“Let me out of here,” I growl, but the guy keeps pushing me farther and farther into the alley until there’s no way back.
Panic begins to bubble to the surface.
“C’mon, American girl,” he says with a thick accent. “We can have a little fun.”
“American girl?” I scoff. I was born there, but I grew up in the Netherlands. “I’m Dutch, asshole.”
He laughs. “Sure, and I am the queen of England.”
Suddenly, he grabs my face to kiss me.
I bite his lip and shove him away. “Wow. No.”
“What’s the problem?” he says. “You bit me.”
BANG!
The loud noise makes me shriek.
A gun just went off. The bullet ricochets against the wall, narrowly avoiding the guy’s leg.
“What the—?” he mutters.
A tall shadow looms behind the guy keeping watch, his dark hair hidden behind a pulled-up hoodie. I can barely see who it is in this dark alley in the middle of the night. Until the moonlight hits his piercing blue eyes, and my heart almost wants to cry out for him.
Liam.
Chapter 28
Jasmine
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