Crash and Burn (1)

i'm not your enemy

**HI, I'M STILL HERE, HOW ARE YOU GUYS? 🧡 I'm feeling super nostalgic today, can y'all leave a comment on your favorite line that you remember? Because if it survived the slaughter, it's a miracle. I cut SO MUCH of this chapter 😂😭

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I SHOVED HIM HARD, and Soren tripped to straighten and steady. Everything lapsed—a slip, a second of uncertainty, a violent countdown—before I pitched forward to slam him against the wall, ripping a knife from my back pocket. No one was going to help me.

"Soren." Squeeze. Swish. "Calloway." Planting a palm against his chest, tapping the tip of a blade between each finger, its silvery stab. "I like it."

He didn't move.

"I'm not stupid, though," I muttered, glaring up at him. His wary frown. Fuck. Panic gripped my limbs. My stomach soured. I was right. "You're... you're working for them." His gaze followed my knife lazily. "For him, huh?"

I slowed as I tracked my knife off his collar, up, up, up, tracing his carotid artery, a long, light pencil stroke, Anatomy 101. Soren didn't seem bothered. His suffocating silence and suspicious submissiveness, gnawing at my resolve as I pressed deeper. It took nothing, a flick of the wrist, and it was over.

He was going to kill me.

Breathe.

The soft spatter of rainfall, filling the spaces between us. If it came down to it, I knew I'd kill him, but if I could run, I'd rather run. His unnerving stillness as I trailed the knife along his neck slowly. The slight twitch of his lips. So, Calloway was used to intimate threats. "Talk."

"You're not stupid."

"No, I'm not," I clipped out impatiently. I said it. "So, you are working for them?"

Breathe.

"I was." Two years ago, if I believed him. "Why do you think I'm running, princess?"

"Why are you calling me that, Calloway?"

"Because you," he drawled, leaning closer, "look like a princess that fell straight from her ivory tower and into the pits of Hell."

"Fuck you."

Soren offered a rueful smile, lowering his gaze and raising his hands in mock surrender. My breathing hitched. Firm against his chest, I found his empty palms. It was bemused willingness, a mirthless gesture to point out that if he wanted to, Soren Calloway could've hurt me. Fuck. I knew that. When I backed into him blindly.

Breathe.

When I followed him up a fire escape blindly. When I climbed through a window blindly.

In. Out.

When I—

"Don't think about it too hard, Lacey."

His eyes, a dusty golden-green, flashing darker, sync-speed, as if capturing snapshots of every single weakness.

Breathe.

The vice grip around my lungs loosened.

The knife in my sweaty palm.

In. Out.

His foot snaked between my ankles, and Soren pushed, too quickly, and I went sprawling, tripping, dropping my knife. His hands, catching my shoulders. My back hit a wall, a broken cough tearing from my lungs, and I froze when I found myself pinned, chest-to-chest with him. Anatomy 101.