“What?” I screamed, still jumping.

“Oh, nothing!” She said and turned her attention back to Freddy.

I continued to watch her.

Something caught her attention in the corner. She furrowed her brows but she seemed to get over it quickly, turning her thoughts inward before snapping her head back to the corner. Her body seized before it begun to shake, making me stop.

“Harper?” I yelled in her ear. “What’s wrong, love?”

“Go!” She said, turning toward me, pushing me, terror in her eyes. “Go! To the door! Go!”

I picked her body up and ran for the door, not caring who I hit.

Once outside, I got my earlier wish but under very different circumstances as she climbed my body, sobbing hysterically, wrapping her legs around me.

“Take me home,” she begged, her hands curled around my collar.

I tried to peel her off of me but she would have none of it, so I started walking with her wrapped around me. I didn’t care what people thought of us as they stared, bewildered.

“What happened, Harper?”

“John,” she whispered in my ear.

I stopped briefly before picking up my pace, practically running. No! There’s no way he could have found us! It had to be a coincidence, I thought.

“How?” She cried into my neck. “How did he find me?”

“I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “I have no idea. Maybe it was a coincidence.”

“Nothing he does is a coincidence,” she whispered, afraid that if she spoke any higher, it’d make it more true.

We were pretty far away from the club now and her body had calmed down a bit so I set her back on the sidewalk. I looked around us, trying to decipher whether he was near or not. People littered the darkly lit sidewalks, talking, laughing, flirting but I could see no sign of John. The coast was clear so I decided we could hide in a nearby alley. Now, you’re asking yourself, is it really safe to hide in a dark alley at one in the morning in New York City? Yes, it is, if John Bell was the one chasing you. Those were chances you’d be willing to take.

Thankfully, we wouldn’t share the alley with anyone else so I quietly hid us behind a dumpster just in case John had followed. I pressed her body against the brick building behind her, sheltering her body with mine, ready to ask what he was wearing but I stopped when we heard someone shuffling softly through the alley. An eerie quiet cascaded around us, only the soft padding of feet was barely audible. I put my finger to my lips, signaling for her to be quiet. She nodded but I could feel her body tremble beneath mine.

“Harper,” John sang. Tears began to spill down her cheeks. I slowly shook my head from side to side. “I know you’re around here somewhere. I can practically smell you,” he continued menacingly. “It’s taken me six months to find you, Harper and I’ve waited two years.” He paused, breathing hard. “You owe me,” he gritted harshly. “Just come out so I can look at that beautiful face of yours. I promise I won’t punish you too hard for going off with that asshole.”

He was inching the wall opposite the dumpster. He knew we were there. It was the only place to hide in the entire alley. ‘Run’ I mouthed to her followed by ‘Police’, remembering the mounted policemen outside the club and hoping she did as well. She shook her head, knowing I was staying to keep him from following her. I had no time to think of that. I gritted my teeth before pushing the dumpster his direction. She hesitated but I yelled for her to run and she miraculously obeyed me.

John immediately started chase as I threw my body into his and we went crashing into the brick. He was bigger than I was, had at least twenty pounds on me and was roughly four inches taller, too. I was at a size disadvantage but for some reason my strength was holding him, my desire to protect Harper stronger than his want to harm her. I just hoped it would stay him long enough for Harper to get help.

John wrapped his fingers around my throat and it wasn’t long before I could feel blood vessels in my eyes begin to burst. He was choking the life out of me and I knew I had to remove my body from his if I wanted to stay conscious. I let off a bit and he shoved me with a shoulder, hard into the chest, pushing me until my back and head slammed into the brick wall on the other side. I scrambled to push back but was weak from the lack of oxygen.

He wound his arm back, going in for a punch but I dodged it at the last second, making his hand hit the hard brick behind me. He wailed in pain and the rage built tenfold in his eyes. I could read the absolute evil this man possessed. It radiated off of him. I wanted nothing more than to get away, to avoid the taint. He grabbed my shirt at the shoulders with both hands, coiled his head back and brought it full force to mine, butting me and making me feel weak in the knees.

I surprised him by not passing out, making him chuckle. “What’s your name?” He asked.

I shook my spinning head and the added dizziness made me want to vomit. “I’ll never tell,” I said, swallowing. I wondered what was taking Harper so long. I was beginning to worry.

He smiled, reached into the back pocket of my jeans and removed my wallet before I could fully force myself on him to prevent it. I staggered toward him, dazed from the head butt and was too slow, forced to watch as he yanked my license from my wallet, taking away the only piece of protection we both had. Our anonymity. I fell to my knees, resting a shoulder against the wall, panting heavily, trying to keep the nausea down.

“Callum Tate,” he purred. “I was so patient and now I’m one step closer to finding her.”

He was wrong. The address on that license was also hers but I wouldn’t be the one correcting him. The thought that he now knew our last name made me want to vomit for an entirely different reason. I shifted a knee up to have something to push on as I stood. I was beginning to gain control of myself again.

Once I was fully up, no longer needing to lean against the wall, I said, “John, you will never find her. Never.”

“But I already have. I promised her I’d come for her. She’s such a stupid girl. She never believes me.” He sighed as if exasperated. “She makes it so difficult for herself.”

“How?” Was all I could manage.

He knew I meant ‘how did you find us’. “The Ivories trailer. I knew they were friends of yours. I went to every single concert, waiting, biding my time. It took several months but it paid off. Tonight.”

The trailer.

“Well, I’ve got to go,” he said, tossing my wallet and license to the concrete. “I’ll be seeing you around. Trust me, you’ll be seeing a lot of me around. Tell Harper I look forward to seeing her again. Tell her,” he said, smiling wickedly, “I’ll enjoy every single minute.”

Then he ran. And I chased, tried my damnedest, but he was too fast and I was too hazy to keep up. I could hear people shouting behind me and turned just in time to see Harper with policemen in tow heading toward the alley.

“Over here!” I shouted. Harper turned direction toward me and the officers followed.

“Oh my God, Callum! You’re bleeding!” She shouted as she reached me, running her hands over my bloody face. Her hand went to her mouth in a gasp. “Your eyes! What happened?” She asked, tears streaming down her face.

I removed my t-shirt to hold over the bleeding wound.

“He got away,” I said stoically and in disbelief.

I had promised myself that if I ever saw that guy again it would be the last. I felt weak and pathetic. Next time, I’d be prepared. Harper and I gave statements over everything that happened. They took pictures of my head for evidence. I hadn’t glanced in a mirror since the attack and when I caught a glimpse of what he’d done in the photograph, I almost laughed. I looked like a hopped up serial killer. Blood ran down my face and my eyes were bloodshot, literally. Two red orbs stared back at me, letting me know just how serious John Bell really was.

“He...knows where we live,” I stated to the officer quietly, not wanting to alarm Harper any more than she already was.

“Do you have any other place to stay while we look for him?”

“We do but I believe we’ll be okay tonight. He knows we’d be waiting for him. He’ll be waiting for our guard to be down.”

The officer agreed.

Harper and I took a taxi home. It was three already and we both felt pretty beat up. I couldn’t help but feel incredible anxiety as I slid my key into our door. I turned the knob, throwing the door open fully before stepping over the threshold. I placed my hand on the jamb preventing Harper from going in and listened. Not a sound. We both entered and I closed and locked the door behind us.

“Stay here,” I ordered before examining every room for evidence he was there or had been there.

I came back out to a nervous, fidgety Harper.

“Do you think he’ll find us?”

“I’m sure of it,” I said, trying not to allude as to why.

“How...how did he find me?”

“The Ivories Trailer,” I told her honestly.

Her jaw quivered a bit before she smashed her teeth together to still it. “Okay,” she simply said, walking towards me with purpose and dragging me by the hand to our tiled bathroom.

She signaled for me sit on the toilet so she could tend to my wounds at eye level. My heart rate had steadied at that point and I was actually becoming very tired.

“Let’s just sleep,” I said.

“No, I won’t have you bloody my nice white sheets,” she said.

“You want me to sleep with you tonight?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep any other way.” I agreed. I would be too worried about her all alone to get any kind of rest whatsoever.

She ran the water in the sink, letting it warm, before grabbing a wash cloth from the cabinet. She let the water absorb into the cloth before twisting out the excess with shaking hands. She gently removed most of the blood before giving up and letting me know there was too much and I’d have to just wash my face. While I did, she grabbed her little emergency kit full of supplies I used to tease her incessantly we’d never need. Never again.

I sat back down and she pushed her fingers through my hair to pull it away from my wound. I winced as it tugged a little at the tear and she moved her fingers slower, more softly. She blew into my hair to dry some of the moisture that had built at my hairline, where the wound was. I closed my eyes at how sexy I found that. Her lips were red and swollen from worry from biting at them for hours. It was quiet, so quiet it was deafening. I could hear every single thought ramble through my mind. Kiss her, I kept ordering myself. Kiss her and tell her that you love her. Let her know what you would do for her. She applied Neosporin to prevent infection and bandaged the wound.

“Sleep,” she said, dragging me by my hand again to her bedroom.

I said nothing. I was already bare chested from having to remove my shirt to stop the bleeding earlier. I threw off my boots but left my jeans on as I tumbled into her bed. It was soft and smelled unbelievable. It smelled like Harper and awoke my senses. Abruptly, I was much more alert than I had been in our warm bathroom, not so quick to doze off but still very sleepy. Harper left to change into one of my boxers and t-shirts, like she always did, and it always sent my heart into a frenzy at the sight of her.