Like Gravity(69)

I had two options: either feel my way back toward the door and try to open it – which I wasn’t even sure was possible, given the fact that I hadn’t seen a doorknob on the outside – or follow along the wall I was leaning against until it led me to the street in front of Styx. The alley was probably only a hundred feet long – it would have taken me no more than a few seconds to find my way out under normal circumstances.

Now, however, with only my hands and ears to guide me, my feet strapped into a pair of Lexi’s highest heeled sandals, and fear coursing through my veins, I knew it would take me much longer to reach the street. Especially if I was bumping into dumpsters and wading through refuse the entire way.

I cursed my own stupidity. I’d broken every rule in the Girls Who Don’t Want to Get Murdered at College handbook by going outside alone and not bringing Lexi or even my cellphone with me on this asinine escapade.

I decided my chances of prying open the heavy door were better than attempting to navigate a garbage-filled cobblestone alley in five-inch stilettos. With my luck, I’d probably end up tripping over a hobo or falling headfirst into a dumpster.

Taking a tentative step forward into the darkness, I kept one hand planted against the wall behind me, the brick surface rough beneath my palm. Despite the faint light cast by the stars above, the alley remained too dark to make out any shapes at all. Initially, I’d been optimistic that my eyes would adjust to the shadows, but after nearly a full minute had passed with little change, my hopes had dwindled.

Without my sight, my other senses were all on high alert; I could smell the cloying stench emanating from the dumpsters and, if a mouse had scurried anywhere within a half-mile radius, I was sure I’d have heard it. So with each passing minute that the alley remained utterly quiet, I grew more confident that I was alone.

I felt some of the tension uncoil from my shoulders. Though I was still uneasy about the situation, I was beginning to think that the door slamming closed was the work of a jealous fangirl, rather than some kind of creeper-rapist-monster-zombie.

More assuredly, I took another step forward into the darkness, taking me farther from the wall at my back and leaving only the fingertips of my left hand on the bricks. I was reluctant to relinquish that final tactile connection to the world, irrationally worried that, if I did, I might find myself lost in the darkness.

The alley was relatively narrow; standing directly in the center, I thought I might be able to reach both walls with my arms extended out to either side. Anxious to reach the doorway and get back to the safety of the club, I swung my right hand out into the darkness, hoping that my fingertips would strike the cool metal of the door, or the hard concrete of the steps.

They didn’t.

Instead, they came into contact with something infinitely scarier.

Something that made my heart seize in my chest and my lungs constrict with a sudden loss of air. Something that froze the blood to ice in my veins.

Because that thing my fingers had grazed?

It was a man’s chest.





Chapter Fourteen


Fight or Flight



I screamed.

It was a shriek of desperation – a shrill, ear-piercing wail born of sheer terror. It was helplessness personified, echoing forlornly off the walls of the alley. And even as the scream left my mouth I knew, deep in my bones, that it was futile; no one would ever be able to hear it over the thumping music inside the club.

My last thought, before his hands clamped down on my shoulders in an unbreakable vise-grip, was that I was no better than the dumb sorority girls I’d constantly mocked. I’d played right into his hands.

Whoever he was.

People always talk about our innate human fight-or-flight instinct. Supposedly, some people just have it – that will to live, to escape, to carry on in spite of the fear. And others simply don’t. They lack that burning desire to survive above all else.

It’s said that these moments in our lives, those split seconds in which we must decide whether to stand and fight or turn-tail and flee, define us as who we really are.

I’d always thought that was a crock of bullshit.

Of course, possessing the will to live is important – vital even. It can make the difference between life and death, between taking one more breath or succumbing to a quick end.

But so can a pair of five-inch stiletto heels.

Afterward, I’d often wondered, with a sense of morbid curiosity, whether things would have gone differently had I been wearing different shoes; had the ground had been paved, rather than cobbled; had the light cast by my favorite constellations above had been just a little bit brighter, so I might’ve seen him standing there in the dark with me. Biding his time. Waiting for me to make my move toward the door.

Would it have changed things? I guessed I’d never really know.

The scream died in my throat, turning to a gasp of pain as his grip cut harshly into my bicep muscles and he lifted me onto my tiptoes. Struggling against him, I used all the strength in my arms to try to free myself. I could feel my muscles weakening, my energy waning the longer we grappled. His breath puffed warm on my face – short, quick bursts of air that betrayed his excitement.

He was enjoying this.

He started to move then, steering me backwards with the ease of a master puppeteer pulling the strings of a hapless marionette. I had no control over my body as he closed in, trapped between the brick wall at my back and the monster pressed harshly against my front.