Bad Wolf (Wild Men 4)

Tangled in my covers, I plunge through darkness, through flashing images and sounds. Something’s about to happen, I know it. My pulse thumps heavily in my ears.

Now, it’s already happening.

A crash.

A collision.

Impact.

I slam into something. My spine rattles. My body jerks.

The car rolls and skids, metal crunching and folding. My head hurts. I’m too cold, then too warm. There’s a fire burning. I can smell it, singeing cloth and flesh.

It hurts. My leg hurts.

I’m so fucking scared I can’t breathe.

When I scream, nobody answers. I’m alone.

Everyone’s dead.

Chapter Five

Gigi

Sydney and me, we haven’t talked in days. We’re avoiding each other. Well, she’s been avoiding me, because she knows I’ll press her to tell me about the drug incident at the club, and since then I’ve been avoiding her, too, because I’m pissed off at her.

Acting like a three-year-old pitching a fit and I know it.

Yeah, well, I still can’t believe she’s been hiding things like that from me. That she’d place herself in danger for a boy, and that’s if that’s what’s been going on.

A big if. She didn’t tell me I was right when I asked.

Hissy fits aside, the truth is I’m hurt. Knowing she kept this from me and I had to discover it by chance… That she left me alone in the club to go and buy drugs, Jesus…

How can I trust what she tells me after this? How do we go back to where we were two weeks ago?

The fact I didn’t tell her the guy I met that night at the club was Jarett is irrelevant. Totally unimportant info. Or that his brother practically assaulted me before Jarett stopped him and dragged me away.

Yeah. I just don’t want to open up that can of worms.

The memory of Sebastian’s grip on me, the emptiness in his eyes, still has me waking up in a cold sweat, his face morphing into the face of the two guys who’d cornered me in Destiny all those years ago, sneering and mocking as they drank in my fear and humiliation.

Then again, why should I tell her when she’s been keeping so much from me?

Back to three-year-old territory.

Normally I’m perfectly adult. I can adult just fine. But not when it comes to Sydney. I think it’s a girl thing.

Don’t ask.

Not meeting with Sydney also means I don’t have a ride home after college classes, so I hoof it to the bus stop to wait with the other poor souls.

On my way, I pass by a fast food joint, its big yellow sign telling the world that the best pizza in town is right there. My stomach grumbles at the smell.

Then I notice a guy standing by the door, and I miss a step.

It’s Jarett. It’s definitely him. Seeing him in broad daylight there’s no way I could be wrong. I’d know that face and those broad shoulders anywhere.