ALL THE RAGE (writer: T.M. Frazier)(41)

That’s when I noticed something about Rage that made me stop struggling. Something that sent chills down my spine and directly into my f*cking soul.

She was looking right at me… only she wasn’t. Her eyes weren’t focused. They were shifted up in her sockets like they were about to roll back in her head.

And she was smiling.

Not the fake smile I’d seen her use before. And not the sweet smile like when I made her laugh. This was something else entirely.

It was scary as f*ck.

Every hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Rage,” I said, trying to get her attention as Oben kicked my feet out from under me, sending me falling to my knees in the sand. That was it. This ended now. I didn’t know what was going on with her, but I knew I had to get to her before Griff had a chance to hurt her because if he did I was going to murder the motherf*cker. With a roar from deep in my chest, I summoned all my strength and determination and successfully shook off Griff’s two cronies. Delivering hard, cheek bone crushing punches to each one of them that would have made my coach proud.

I left them moaning in the sand and hadn’t made it two steps when Rage spun around in Griff’s grip so she was facing him. With a shrill scream that had a huge circle of onlookers gathering around to see what all the commotion was about, she launched herself at him. Climbing him like he was a tree, she flipped herself around him so that she was on his back, her arms around his throat. She was squeezing. Tighter and tighter until Griff dropped to his knees in the sand. His eyes went from white to red and bloodshot, bulging as he struggled and gasped for air.

I watched in both wonderment and horror as Rage squeezed the life from Griff. Onlookers started to shout. One grabbed a cell phone and muttered something about calling the sheriff. “Rage!” I shouted, trying to get her attention. She growled and squeezed harder, a grunt escaping Griff’s mouth along with the last bit of air in his lungs. “Rage!” I called to her again, coming to stand next to her. I placed a hand on her shoulder. Her focus floundered, just for a second. She removed one of her arms from around his neck and grabbed my wrist, twisting it painfully. “Rage, it’s me. You gotta let go. We gotta go before this get’s bad.” She was looking up at me, but her eyes were still unfocused, almost as if she was looking past me. I set my other hand on top of hers, the one twisting my wrist, and tried again. “Baby, it’s me. It’s Nolan. We have to go. Baby, can you hear me in there?” I whispered as calmly as I could with the pain radiating up through my arm.

When she didn’t respond, her focus solely on draining the life out of Griff, I did the only thing that crossed my mind in order to stop her from killing him in front of thirty witnesses.

I leaned in and pressed my lips to hers.

I stayed there, my mouth on hers until I felt the flutter of Rage’s eyelashes against the bridge of my nose. That’s when I pulled back.

Rage blinked several times in a row until a light of recognition flashed in her eyes. She dropped my wrist. “That’s it, baby. Let go, we gotta go now.” She looked to where she still had Griff in a headlock and peered around me to the crowd who was now watching in amazement as they held up cell phones and were no doubt videoing every second. She was coming back from wherever she’d gone to, but slowly. Too slowly. I wracked my brain for something to say to her to pull her all the way back, and quickly. “Do you want to go back to the cottage and go for a swim in the pool?” I asked. Rage finally released Griff, sliding off his back, down to the sand. Griff dropped to his side with a long throaty moan, thankfully still alive although a part of me was still angry enough to wish she’d finished the jon. Oben and Ward crawled to his side like the pathetic hangers-on they were.

“Your pool is filthy,” Rage deadpanned before leaning forward and collapsing in my arms. I scooped her up and carried her past the onlookers and the whispers. I shifted her gently in my arms so I could fit us back through the alleyway between the cottages and back onto the sidewalk lining the main road.

“Yes, it is, baby. Yes, it is,” I whispered to a barely conscious Rage.

I’d never seen anything like the girl in my arms.

Beautiful. Strong. Fierce and Fiery.

A force greater than any storm and twice as destructive.

In some ways, she was naive. Innocent even. In other ways, she was the devil himself.

I’d never wanted anyone more.

I didn’t know how deep her secrets ran, but I had a feeling that if they were as deep as my own, there was a different kind of storm coming. One I hoped we could weather.

Together.

Somewhere between when she showed up at the cottage and the attempted murder, I’d started to think of her as not just someone who was staying at my house. Not just someone I wanted to f*ck either.

I started to think of her as mine.

I carried her back to the cottage. Along the way, I decided it was damn time we stopped skirting around our truths. It was time to share some secrets.

Both of us.

Rage

Never before had I crashed so hard after an episode. My eyes were closed, my breaths even. Anyone who saw me would just think I was sleeping, but I wasn’t. I felt every footstep underneath me, every flex of Nolan’s biceps as he carried me back to the cottage and laid me down on the couch.

The blue digital clock on the stove read two thirty a.m. by the time I was strong enough to embrace consciousness again.