Chapter 194

Joseph was definitely following me, and he was closing in.

Panicking, I ducked into the student union. Even at night, it would have lots of people around. Joseph wouldn’t dare hurt me in front of other people.

“Cynthia!” he called.

I stilled. Better to deal with him here, now, under the fluorescent lights of the common room.

He gripped me by the arm and yanked me around to face him.

His eyes burned with hatred. Had it always been there? Had I just never noticed?

“Were you running from me?” he asked.

“I’m just trying to get home.”

“Your dorm is the other direction.” His eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see. Still clinging onto Asher, huh? I would have thought he’d be tired of a leech like you by now.”

“Leave me alone, Joseph.” I tried to shake his grip loose, but he only held on tighter. My stomach churned. His grip reminded me of Lamar.

“Not until I talk to you.”

“About?”

He looked around us, to our fellow students laughing and eating at the many tables arranged in the union.

His voice low, he hissed, “A certain bit of information that may have come into your possession. About a certain website.”

An unsettling fear swirled in my chest, even as I tried to play it cool. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb. I know what Lamar told you, and I can guess what you’ve seen.”

I lifted my chin as high as I could, defiant even in my fear.

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget all about it,” he said.

I shook my head. “What you’ve done is too terrible to ignore, Joseph. You can’t keep harassing all those girls and –”

His grip tightened, bruising. I winced.

“Are you forgetting all that I know, Cynthia? Don’t you understand how this was a kindness compared to what I could have done to you.”

I didn’t understand that at all. He sounded unhinged. “How is sexual assault a kindness?”

He smirked. “Would you rather be locked away in a research facility for the rest of your life?”

My stomach dropped.

At the sight of my pale face, his smirk added teeth.

“All it would take,” he said, “is one single phone call. A tip.” He cleared his throat. “Oh, hey, investigators. You’ll never believe this, but I saw my friend Cynthia do the strangest thing.”

“You wouldn’t…” I said the words but I wasn’t confident in them.

“Wouldn’t I? It would solve most of my problems. You’d be out of the way.”

“It won’t work, anyway,” I said, remembering myself. I wouldn’t let this man continue to break me, like he had done so many times before. “Not without proof.”

“Maybe. But you might want it to work if you knew my back-up plan.”

I swallowed down my fear. My calm was difficult to maintain, but I held out.

What would Asher do? How would he act?

I tried to school my expression.

Joseph’s smirk dropped. His entire expression darkened. He leaned in too close, I flinched back.

“Do you have any idea how much easier it would be for me to just have you and the baby killed?”

The words sent ice through my veins. I froze, eyes wide, disbelieving what I just heard.

“If you were gone, I’d be free of this whole mess.”

He’d said it. This follow-up proved that.

Joseph had threatened the life of me and my baby.

“Forget about my secret club, and maybe I’ll forget about that plan too.”

I didn’t want to forget it. I wanted to help protect those other girls and bring Joseph to justice.

But… would he really have me killed?

Why not? Wasn’t that the natural escalation of his previous acts? He’d already revealed he had no reservations with hurting me.

Why wouldn’t he just get rid of me?

Terror spread through me, curling its dark, inescapable tendrils around my every nerve and limb. I shook like I was freezing. My pounded out of control.

Behind Joseph, a figure began to take shape from nothingness.

I recognized Lamar’s smile.

No. No, not here!

Too many people! Too many witnesses!

Joseph seemed satisfied by my reaction and loosened his hold.

I wasted no time. I turned and ran.

“Lilith!” I called in my mind.

“Find refuge quickly,” Lilith replied. “I can’t protect the baby for long…”

Lilith was still weak from the last time we’d over-exerted ourselves.

I wanted to run all the way to Asher’s dorm, but I couldn’t go that far.

I thought about running to the bathroom but there were girls coming in and out of it. If my projection of Lamar was going to manifest, I needed a place to be alone.

I hurried into the stairwell.

The upstairs of the student union held offices. No one would be up there this time of the evening, so no one would use these stairs.

Even so, I rushed to the back of the stairwell and hid beneath the stairs themselves in a tiny alcove.

With shaking hands, I dug my phone out of my purse and dialed Asher.

When I looked up from my phone, the apparition of Lamar was sitting on the ground two feet from me, watching me.

I had barely been able to say a word to Asher, but somehow he had surmised my location from the few utterances I had managed.

He stayed on the phone with me. I heard him breathing heavily as he ran.

He opened the door to the stairwell, and rushed straight through the projection of Lamar to find me where I hid.

I jumped from my hiding space and into his arms. My phone fell from my hands and onto the floor. I didn’t care about it. I didn’t care about anything other than Asher and the comfort he exuded.

This man was my safety.

He was my home.

Asher would never bruise me. He would never attack me, or threaten to kill me.

He held me closely, but gently.

He combed his fingers through my hair. He placed a soft kiss to the top of my head.

“You’re safe,” he said, and the words sank into me. I believed them at once, because Asher had been the one to say them.

I swiftly cut the tether creating the projection of Lamar, and he vanished from beside us.

“What happened?” Asher whispered, when my tremors stopped.

I sniffed. “Joseph.”

I couldn’t tell him yet about the terrible things Joseph had threatened. It was hard enough right now to even say the name.

Asher stiffened against me, though his hold remained tender.

“He was here?”

“He… followed me.”

Asher growled. The sound, borne from his protectiveness to me, helped pull me the rest of the way from my fear.

“I’m okay now,” I said, patting his shoulder.

I wasn’t totally okay, and we both knew that. But he let me pretend.

He lowered his arms and stepped back from me.

“Thank you,” I said. He had kept true to his word and found me at once with only a hint of me being in danger.

“I only wish I had got here sooner.”

He was so kind to me. It was difficult, but I gave him a tiny smile.

His entire expression softened.

But then he gasped.

Gripping at his chest, he buckled over in pain.

“Asher?!”

He cried out wordlessly as he dropped to his knees.

I had never seen him like this. I glanced over him but I couldn’t see any wounds. What could possibly be causing him so much agony?

I held onto his shoulders, holding him upright.

He writhed in my arms.

“Help!” I called out, regretting my hiding place now.

If no one used this stairwell, no one would find us.

No one would hear.

No one would help him.

“Please!”