He stumbled forward, reaching his arms over his head to wrench at my hair and tug at my shirt. Blunt fingernails raked against my neck, burning a trail of scratches across my skin. He ran forward a few steps and then back again, slamming me into the wall once more. This time I felt something hard dig into my spine. Maybe a light switch or the fire alarm.
I yelped as agony seared through my back. My grip loosened, but only for a second. He may have been a Green, but he wasn’t weak or anemic. Maybe his blood wasn’t “clean” enough and they hadn’t been taking as much from him. Nor was he fat and lazy the way so many of the Collabs were. I couldn’t afford to let him go. He was knocking the crap out of me now. I’d never be able to defend myself face-to-face.
I tried to remember anything from the self-defense class Mom had dragged me to when I was thirteen. Bits of it flashed through my mind along with things I’d figured out through trial and error here at the Farm. The eyes. I knew I could hurt him if I could just reach his eyes. But my grip on his throat was slipping already. Not daring to let go, I tightened my legs around his hips, clinging to him with every ounce of strength I still had. My only hope was to weaken him before he crushed my spine completely.
He staggered forward again and I could hear him gasping for breath, my arm strangling the sounds in his throat before they could escape. He was trying to talk. But I still didn’t let go. He staggered back a step, but he was weakening and this felt more like a pat on the back than the assault his previous body slams had been.
A second later, he teetered forward and fell to his knees, his forehead missing the corner of one of the lab desks by mere inches as he did a face plant on linoleum.
Slowly I pulled my arms out from under his heavy weight and pushed myself up. My legs still gripped his waist. I sat there a moment, sucking air into my lungs, straddling his back, too worn out to move, trying to think. His hood was still up. All I could see of him were his hands, which were large and strong. And, probably, had bits of my skin under the nails.
I shuddered at the thought. Clearly, back in the Before, I’d watched too many of those forensic shows on TV, if that was the one thing that went through my mind.
Had I killed him?
I pushed myself off his back, then struggled to flip him over. It was easier than I would have thought, given how much bigger he was. I leaned down and pressed my ear to his chest. I felt it rise and fall beneath my face even before I heard the strong, steady rhythm of his heart.
Relief poured through me. Not just because I was still alive, but because he was, too. I felt my throat close and tears burn my still-tender eyes. I didn’t want to be a murderer.
Before my tears could fall, I scrambled back. I didn’t want to die, either. I didn’t know why he’d come looking for us instead of going straight to the Collabs, but I wasn’t going to stay around to find out. I had to get Mel out of there. Fast.
And yet, for some reason, I hesitated as I saw his face for the first time. There was something familiar about him. It was like I should know him, but just . . . didn’t. Most of his face was obscured by the beginnings of a beard, too long to be mere stubble, like he hadn’t shaved in weeks. Most of the guys on the Farm didn’t bother to shave. Still, not many guys our age could grow anything like a beard. Some of the Collabs were older, but he obviously wasn’t one of them or he would have been wearing the blue uniform. I studied his features, looking for some hint as to why he seemed so familiar. His nose had a funny little bump in it, like it had been broken.
I pushed back his hoodie to reveal dirty blond hair. A single lock of hair flopped back into place to drape across his forehead. Recognition rocked me back on my heels.
He must have moved the second I took my eyes off him. He sprang up, flinging me flat onto my back, covering my body with his own. My head banged against the floor, and I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain. The impact knocked the breath out of me.
There was nothing groggy or slow about his movements. Obviously he’d only pretended to pass out. I’d fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book. And as if that weren’t bad enough, I felt the cool edge of my shiv press into the skin at my throat.
Damn it!
Could I make any more mistakes today? How had I been so careless as to let him get my weapon? My shiv!
I swallowed hard against my frustration, bumping my chin up a notch to relieve the pressure against the blade.
Slowly I opened my eyes to stare up into familiar blue ones.
I forced a smile. “Hey, Carter. Long time no see.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Lily
Carter and I had gone to school together back in the Before. Despite what teen novels everywhere would have you believe, sitting beside a hot guy in ninth-grade biology is not the basis for eternal love—at least, not the requited kind. And, yeah, I admit it, in my more romantic moments, I imagined that I alone saw through his tough, bad-boy exterior to the wounded soul inside. Carter had been the kind of guy who ran hot and cold. One day he’d be all charming smiles, the next brooding glares. Some days he’d flirt with me; others he’d ignore me completely. What can I say, that charming, bad-boy thing he had going was like catnip to a geeky girl like me. And, yeah, my predictability disgusted even me. I’d spent the first two periods of every day reminding myself not to be an idiot—because a guy like Carter didn’t even exist in the same social universe as I did—and I’d show up to class ready to banish my crush forever, only to have him flash me one of those crooked smiles that made me melt inside.
Then one day, he’d pushed his parents too far by driving his dad’s Lamborghini to school. I still remembered when the police had come to arrest Carter. I’d been standing outside of English, books clutched to my chest, when they marched him down the hall, his hands cuffed behind his back and an I-don’t-give-a-crap grin on his face. He’d flicked his shaggy blond hair out of his eyes with a shake of his head. When he met my gaze, he winked at me.
I hadn’t seen him since then.
Now, he levered himself off of me and sat back on his heels.
My heart pounded inside my chest as I waited to see what he would do. Carter Olson—who I hadn’t seen in years—was alive. He was here at the Farm. And he’d just tackled me. Oh, and I’d tried to kill him.
A second later, I pushed all those emotions aside with more determination than I’d ever managed in the Before. I wasn’t that fifteen-year-old girl anymore and I had bigger problems than a hopeless crush.
Carter had seen the pills. He’d followed me back from the quad. He’d disarmed me and winded me. He had every advantage. If he wanted to destroy me, there were about a dozen different ways he could do it.
But instead he held out a hand to help me sit up.
“Hey, Lil,” he said.
I blew out a breath. If he was going to kill me or even take me to the Dean’s office, would he be offering me a hand up and using that nickname I’d disliked even back then?
I took the hand he was still holding out and let him help me into a sitting position, aches already cramping the muscles of my back. Cringing, I scooched away from him, giving an experimental little twist. A little gasp of pain escaped.
“You alright?”
“I’ll live,” I quipped, but then cringed a little inside and sent up a silent prayer, I hope.
“Sorry about that.” He gave a little nod to indicate the brawl. Then he reached out a hand and ran his thumb along the spot on my neck where he’d held the shiv against my skin.
He hadn’t broken the skin, but the scratch he’d left burned like hell. Still, there was something disconcerting about his touch and I twitched back from him, not liking the way his gaze went from my neck back to my eyes.
“Hey, nice apology.” I aimed for sarcasm, but didn’t quite hit it, since I was still winded. “Considering you just beat the crap out of me and all.”
“Hey, you’re the one who jumped me,” he said. He scooted back to lean against the nearest lab table, stretching a leg out between us.
Good point.
“And you’re the one still holding the weapon,” I countered.
He looked down as if surprised to see the shiv still in his hand. With a shrug, he reached up and set it onto one of the lab tables, then casually draped his arm across his raised knee. “Feel better now?”
Not by a long shot. On the bright side, Carter was definitely the Green from the quad who’d picked up the pills. The fact that he was here now meant he wasn’t off turning me in to the Dean’s office. Also, a moment ago, I’d been at his mercy. He could have killed me and he hadn’t.
On the not-so-bright side, I still didn’t know why he’d followed me. Had he recognized the pills? Did he know what they were?
I wrapped my arms around my knees, hoping to hide the trembling in my muscles. My tears were still crawling up my throat and the only way I could keep them down was by talking. Like if I stopped to think about things too long, something inside of me would crack open and the jagged pieces would shred me from the inside out.
So I just kept talking. Like this was all perfectly normal. Like I hadn’t tried to kill him a few minutes ago. “You could have, you know, said hello or something. I didn’t know it was you.”
“Hey, when you attacked me, I didn’t know it was you, either.” He stood slowly, smiling as if completely unperturbed by my belligerence. He ran a hand pointedly across his windpipe, which looked red. Then he held out a hand to help me stand. “Besides, I couldn’t exactly talk. You were choking me, after all.”
Hmm. ’Nother good point.
I gave him a suspicious once-over, but I couldn’t ignore his hand, so I took it and let him help me to my feet, even though I dropped it just as quickly.
The way he ran his hand over his throat drew my attention to his jawline. It was too scruffy and unkempt to be a full beard. Still, on Carter, it looked less ridiculous than it would have on a lot of other guys.
When I’d known him back in the Before, Carter had been maybe three or four inches taller than I was. Sometime in the past year or so, he’d shot up a good half foot. Now he towered over me. He used to have a sort of whippetlike leanness to him. That was gone.