Oh, I did.

Obviously.

Did the asshole think I wouldn’t or something? I thought about that every minute after he opened his mouth and said those words. I suppose I always knew it was coming. I just preferred to have my head stuck in the sand and keep living in denial. I think in some naïve part of my mind I thought I always had more time.

I didn’t, though, and reality had become a tragic thing.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Carter. I wrapped the covers around myself as the icy wind tore into the room. “And shut the window, will you?” Winter in the Pacific Northwest was a bitch filled with buckets of cold rain and heavy winds.

“I’m not shutting shit,” he retorted, getting off the bed. “I’ve come to get you, and we gotta go now.”

My brows pinched together. “What are you talking about?”

“Ron kicked me out,” he simply said. He picked up my backpack off my dresser and emptied it on the floor. All my textbooks and homework assignments fell out in a heap.

“That’s my winter break’s homework,” I hissed. “Put that back inside.”

“Where are you going to put your clothes then?”

I was so confused. My head was spinning. “Why do I need clothes?”

He sighed and shook his head at me like I was being dumb. “What did I just say? Ron kicked me out, and you’re coming with me.”

I paused. “Your father’s kicked you out ten million times before, Carter.”

He kneeled down to my level, and my eyes widened when I saw his lip was busted up.

“This time it was different,” he told me flatly.

My hand reached out to him, and my finger lightly brushed his lip. He was stoic about it, like my touch did nothing to him. Of course, I was used to this.

“He hit you,” I whispered in shock.

“I hit him back,” Carter replied evenly. He pulled away from me and resumed what he was doing, which was opening drawers and shoving whatever clothes inside. I cringed when he grabbed a handful of my underwear, and I leaped out of bed to stop him, taking my blanket that was wrapped around my body with me.

“Enough!” I went at him. “Put that back, Carter! You’re being ridiculous! We have nowhere to go!”

“I’d rather we have nowhere to go than be here in this shithole!” he fired back, pushing me back so he could resume.

I was panicking at this point. He couldn’t just decide this for the both of us. I stepped away and watched him fill my backpack to the brim with clothes. I was a little disturbed by how well he’d sorted through them, knowing which ones I wore and which ones I didn’t. Carter was a lot more mindful than I’d given him credit for.

“Carter,” I said quietly, my back resting against the door. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“No, I’m not. It’s crazy! Where are we going to go?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I can’t jump into something this deluded. Are you hearing yourself right now? You need to stop and just think, alright?”

He exhaled and shook his head like I was annoying him. Zipping up my backpack, he tossed it to the ground beside the window and turned to me. I had to crane my head up now to look at him. Carter was nineteen then and he was broad and big. One of the very few guys around at his age that actually looked manly, and I knew it was genetics at play because Ron was a huge guy.

“I have stopped and thought about it,” he told me calmly, coming even closer now. “I realized that I would rather be scared shitless out there on the streets and be in control of my life than to be stuck here inside a prison under the illusion of safety.”

He stopped in front of me, his body barely touching mine. I didn’t respond for a moment. I shut my eyes and looked away from him. I didn’t want to be under his affect again. Christ, he always made me drunk on him when he got close to me like this, and I know even then he was doing it on purpose to get his way. By fucking with my body I would forget about the logic my brain was spewing.

“Then go and do it on your own,” I muttered out weakly. “I’m not going anywhere, though.”

He exhaled and shuffled even closer. He smelled of earth, and I noticed a sheet of dirt on his body, as if he’d rolled around the ground for bit.

Goddamn him and his superpowers.

My heart started thumping harder, especially when his hand touched my face. He pulled aside my hair and took my chin in his grip. He forced it up to him, and in the dark I could see the fire in his eyes. That mask he wore was down, and he was looking at me lovingly. Like he cared for me, and I wanted to believe it so badly.

“Be with me,” he whispered desperately, bringing his face down to mine. “Ignore everything your head is telling you. Be with me, Leah, and let me take you away from this place. Away from Russell and the sick men he has around. He’s going to destroy you if you stay, and I’m going to make everything better if you come. Be with me.”

He drew me in with those words. He stroked an already burning fire inside of me, making me heated and intent on his every word. I was lost in him like the fool that I was. He was pleading for me to be with him and, fuck, I wanted to be with him since I was ten years old.

“Carter,” I whispered indecisively. “I don’t know –”

He cut me off with a kiss. His whole body pressed against the length of mine. He took my mouth into his like it was everything to him. My hands immediately gripped his jacket and I kissed him back. Dear God, I burned for this guy. I opened every part of myself up to him. I surrendered my soul and I let him take every inch of it.

The blanket fell to the ground and I would have been chilled to the bone if he hadn’t been covering me the way he was. One of his hands was in my hair, tilting me up as he kissed me even deeper. The other hand was somewhere against my back. Honestly, I wasn’t really paying attention to it or to anything else but the feel of our mouths locked together. This was better than my first kiss with him. This one was all tongue and passion, and I needed it like my next breath.

He pulled away abruptly, his forehead rested against my own. His eyes were shut and he was breathing just as heavily as me.

“Come with me,” he urged. “We’ll get out of this together.”

Completely high off his kiss, I stared at his lips and felt myself nod. “Okay.”