HAPPY | ✔

JOYCE: 19.0 OFF THE RAILS

*Admittedly, as the name suggests, this one does go a bit "off the rails". However, you can rest assured that I have not completely lost my mind. *

🎶NAKED - James Arthur🎶

I'm not going to wait until you're done,
Pretending you don't need anyone.
I'm standing here naked (naked, naked).

"Get in."

"No."

My declination was insufficient. He was unmoved, unthwarted.

Even now, it amazes me to think of the sight we made, standing there on the sidewalk, mere individuals with the animosity of opposing armies.

"I won't ask again."

"You aren't asking now."

I expected a smirk of some sort, exasperation at my gibe. His stare was calculating, level. I was unsettled. This felt different. He felt different. Colder.

He pressed his fingers to the skin beneath his eyes, the Balenciaga handbags hanging from his lower lids. He was tired of this, possibly of me. I was angry and difficult and petty. It wasn't in me to get horizontal on the pavement and let him trot on by, even if he had good intentions. This small family was mine to protect, mine to defend.

"I think," I began slowly, softly, wary of the hurt I had already bestowed, "you should g-"

"I don't care what you think!" His hand came down so fast and so hard on the car's roof, I was sure it left a dent. "All you do is think! And all I do is feel and give and love you and hope to God that you'll turn off your brain long enough to let your heart do the same!"

His composure didn't simply chip or crack- it imploded and exploded all at once. And I fell victim to the catastrophe.

Such speed I had only seen him employ once before, in the event that'd commenced this horrid sequence of falling dominoes. He'd gotten up in Luke's face and swung at such a break-neck speed it'd taken my dizzy head seconds to comprehend it. It was the same here. He met me face to face less than a moment before I was grabbed by the hips and heaved over his shoulder.

Resistance didn't even occur to me. His shoulder-blade met my stomach and all I understood was the breath that had been knocked from my body. Yet, his maneuvering was so quick, so efficient, that before the blood could even think to rush to my brain, I was already right-side-up.

I was flung into the passenger seat. The door clicked closed and he was half way around the hood by the time I'd gathered my senses. I scrambled for the handle. I managed to unlock it twice, but it was an obvious move he anticipated. He foiled my every attempt, locking the doors with his key nanoseconds after I released them.

I pounced for my door as soon as he opened his, but the fücker slid into his seat with the swiftness of a Formula one racecar driver, snaring me by the elbow before a single foot could hit the pavement. He pulled the door home with a slam, pinning me to the leather upholstery as he reached across my body to secure the seatbelt.

In a flash of hysteria I tried to bite him- in the face. He drew back and stared at me as if I was the crazy one. As if he wasn't the one that had snatched someone off the fücking sidewalk.

"Are you insane! Surely you've lost the fücking plot!"

He blinked away his astonishment before starting the car and peeling away from the curb.

"Kidnapping is a felony!" I screamed above the blare of the roaring engine.

He shifted gears and I was literally thrown back into the seat.