To Hate Adam Connor

“Whooaa, easy there.”

It was a stupid move on my part. Never get in the way of Lucy Meyer. Ever. She stepped on my foot.

With her heel.

Very hard.

“Jesus, woman!” I yelled, momentarily dropping her arm.

“You little piece of shit!” she screamed at Jake before landing another punch on his shoulder.

“You crazy bitch,” Jake hissed back, letting go of his nose so he could capture her wrist. Lucy stopped with her tirade, and he started twisting her hand. At a loss for words, I wrapped my hand around Jake’s throat as I tried to keep Lucy away with the other.

“Drop it,” I said to him as calmly as I could manage. What had I gotten myself into?

Jake’s eyes hardened, and he twisted her wrist farther, causing her to gasp and twist her body to lessen the pain. I tightened my hand around his throat and pushed his head back into the wall until his face started to turn red and he was having trouble breathing. “I won’t repeat it, Callum. Let her go!”

He shoved her hand away and a second later, Lucy was on him again, screaming obscenities, cursing him all to hell. I let Jake go and turned my back to him as he kept coughing.

“Stop it,” I said to Lucy and got a light punch on my shoulder for all my troubles.

Jesus.

Did the woman listen to me? Of course not. I doubted she ever listened to anyone.

“I’m gonna kill him,” she kept yelling while trying to hit Jake by reaching around me.

I glanced at the end of the hall to see if I could spot Jason, but there was no one near us, not even the couple who had been in a kissing frenzy just a few minutes before.

Her eyes were focused on Jake. “Who do you think you are!” she screamed again, pushing and pulling at me to get to him. “You little bastard! How dare you!”

“You either get her out of my face or we’re gonna have a problem here, Connor,” Jake croaked from behind me, his voice fucked up. Maybe I’d squeezed a little harder than necessary—not that I felt sorry for the guy.

“Shut the fuck up,” I growled at him and finally caught Lucy’s flailing arms.

“Let me go, Connor,” she screamed and lifted her foot again. She must’ve been exhausted because she was starting to move much slower, and I knew her game, so I managed to move my foot away before she could find her target. I twisted her body as gently as I could and held her back against my chest, trapping her arms.

How nobody had heard the whole mess, I had no idea.

I braced my chin on her shoulder and whispered to her, “Calm down, Lucy. Calm down.” She smelled of pink roses and a subtle hint of citrus, soft and sharp at the same time. I shook my head to clear my mind.

After a slight hesitation, she started squirming against me. “Don’t tell me to calm down, goddammit! I’m gonna kill him. Let go of me.”

“No. I need you to calm down for me, Lucy. Can you do that? Please, sweetheart. Calm down and tell me what’s going on here.”

Her chest falling and rising rapidly, she curled her hands around my arm. I was expecting her to try something on me, or simply push me away, but she surprised me by just holding on to me. “I told you…” she said slowly “…not to call me sweetheart.”

“If you promise to calm down, I’ll never call you sweetheart again. Will that make you happy?”

She took a deep breath with difficulty and nodded. Her hands were still gripping my arms, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate me pointing that out.

Jake chose that moment to slither away from the wall and walk away from us. He faced us and kept walking backward. When he shot Lucy a quick salute and grin…Lucy went rigid in my arms for a second then let out a frustrated scream and tried to go after him.

I sighed and lifted her legs off the ground. “That’s it. We’re leaving.” Carrying a kicking and screaming Lucy, I walked outside.

The moment I let her go, she tried to run past me and back inside again. I cut her off before she could manage that.

“Why would you do that?” she screamed, her chest heaving. Apparently it was time to attack me again.

“I save you and that’s how you say thank you?” I asked, blocking the door so she wouldn’t try something.

A security guard came running toward us. “Is everything okay here?”

Lucy turned her murderous eye on the guy and growled, “Yes!”

The guy ignored her and turned to me. “Everything good, Mr. Connor?”

She stepped in front of him and waved her hands. “Hello? Why are you even asking him? Maybe I’m the one having a problem with him?”

Ignoring Lucy yet again, he waited for an answer. I rubbed my neck and nodded. What was I even supposed to say? As soon as he left, Lucy whirled on me.

I raised my hand to stop her before she could start all over again. “Shut it.” I was seconds away from getting in her face and yelling right back at her, but I made the mistake of noticing her shaky hands and all the fight I had left in me drained away.

“Look.” I closed my eyes and tried to find the right words to say to her. “Look, it seems like neither one of us is having the best night here. I’m just trying to make sure you’re all right, nothing more. Then I’m leaving, and you can go kill whoever you want to, okay?” I took a deep breath to give her some time. “If you don’t want my help, that’s fine. Just calm down a little so we can both go on our way.”

Surprisingly, she nodded and turned her back to me. I won’t lie, it was tempting to wait a few more minutes in silence and then just leave when she was feeling more like herself, but when she hugged her elbows to hide the fact that her body was starting to shake uncontrollably, I knew I couldn’t leave her there.

Shit!

I thought about putting my hands on her shoulders and…consoling her? Warming her up? Just something to ease her, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate that, so instead I faced her and tilted her chin up with my fingertips.

“Lucy?”

She opened her eyes and what I saw broke my heart: a single tear that followed an almost straight line down to her chin. Instinctively, I wiped it away. I didn’t know shit about this woman, about who she really was inside, but from what I’d seen so far, I knew something was seriously wrong.

“I’m not crying,” she announced.

“Of course not,” I said softly.

“I’m not.” She wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand and looked up at me. “These are just angry tears.”

“Of course,” I repeated. “I wouldn’t expect anything else from someone like you.”

Her face flushed and her posture stiffened even more. “And what is that supposed to mean? Someone like me?”

Of course she’d twist my words. How else could she manage to start another fight? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she fed on making me miserable.

I shook my head. “I’m not doing this with you. Good night and have fun, Lucy.” I turned around to leave, but she put her hand on my arm and stopped me.

“Just wait a minute. What—”

“I meant someone as stubborn, strong, and willful as you, Lucy,” I explained, cutting her off. “I’m not looking to start a fight with you. Not tonight.”

She took her hand off my arm. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well then, I’m sorry.”