By all accounts, I should turn and get the hell away from this enraged man who had once hurt me so badly I didn’t think I’d ever recover. But instead, anger swells up and I stand my ground with the knowledge I have a gun to protect me if needed. “You asshole,” I sneer at him. “This is all on you. You made stupid decisions and now you need to man up and accept the consequences, you jackass.”

It’s almost as if a pool of red-hot fury fills JT’s eyes and his jaw tightens so hard I’m expecting him to crack teeth. I think for a moment he might tell me to get out of his house, but instead he starts to walk toward me in almost a zombielike fashion, his right hand curled into a tight fist as his chest rises and falls sharply. I know without a doubt he’s overwhelmed with rage at the situation and with me, and he intends to lash out…probably physically. Before he can reach me though, my hand dips into my purse and I pull out my gun, holding it aimed directly at his heart.

He stops in midstride and his eyes slowly slide to the gun. I expect him to be cowed, but instead when he looks back at me his lips curl upward and he taunts, “Going to shoot me, Sela?”

“You take another step closer, and I will,” I tell him with a quavering voice. “Now I’m going to leave—”

“You won’t do it,” he says softly, talking right over me. His voice so assured, he starts moving toward me again. Deliberate steps without a stutter of caution in them.

Almost a cocky swagger.

He looks utterly deranged and my hand starts shaking as my finger tightens on the trigger.

“I dare you,” JT whispers, and then gives a husky laugh. “I dare you to fucking do it, Sela.”

My hand shakes harder and he’s only two steps away from me.

“Go on,” he urges me softly, putting one foot in front of the other. “You know you want to.”

Tears sting at my eyes because the urge to pull the trigger is so intense, and yet my moral conscience isn’t letting me do it. It’s not letting me fucking avenge myself nor protect myself.

JT takes the last step and he walks right into the gun until the barrel is pressed into his chest. He laughs at me and says ever so softly, “Can’t do it, can you?”

I don’t admit defeat though, and bring my other hand up to steady the gun. “If you don’t—”

JT moves so suddenly I can’t react. His casted arm swings hard, catching me at my wrist and causing my gun to go flying, where it clatters across the hardwood floors. JT’s good hand—and I find out quickly enough it’s his dominant hand because it’s brutally strong—wraps around the front of my throat.

“You goddamn filthy cunt,” he screams at me, spit flying from his mouth and spattering on my face. With his hand clamped tightly on my throat, he marches me backward across the floor. “Think you can come into my life and fuck with what’s mine?”

My butt slams into something and I vaguely recall a large desk sitting catercorner. Although my momentum is stopped, JT’s isn’t and he pushes me right onto the desk with his hand on my throat. He leans his entire body weight into me…against me…and vomit rises in my throat that his body’s touching mine.

I bend backward until my spine hits the desk, JT coming to lay on top of me. For added leverage, he places his casted arm across my chest. Scenes from my rape flash before me, except now I can see JT’s face in my memory as clear as day. Now that I know who he is, I can see his ugly face twisted in sickening pleasure as he pumps away on top of me. Both my hands come up to latch on to his wrist in a desperate attempt to dislodge his grip. My legs start kicking furiously, trying to get purchase on the hardwood floor, but just the tips of my sneakers can touch and won’t grab hold to give me leverage.

As he leans in toward me, JT’s face twists into an ugly grimace and the reeking fumes of alcohol wash across my face. “You’re still a mess, Sela.”

Those words…

You’re a mess.

Still a mess…

My eyes go round with understanding and JT nods vigorously at me, his cracked lips peeling back, stretching so tight in a macabre smile that they start to ooze blood. “That’s right, Sela. Did you think the brown hair would throw me off? Think I wouldn’t recognize that face…that mouth…that throat that swallowed my cum? One of the best fucks I’ve ever had and you didn’t think I wouldn’t remember that?”

I go dizzy at the implication, my lungs deflating with the realization that JT knows who I am.

He. Knows. Who. I. Am.

“I didn’t see it right away,” JT whispers, his face hovering just over mine. “Not that night at the mixer. But in Beck’s office…in the clear light of day, and frankly, I was sober then…I saw it. Knew exactly who you were, and I had to wonder why in the fuck you’d bother to come back into my life.”

“You sick fuck,” I scream at him, trying to buck but having no leverage. “Get off me.”

JT’s hand tightens on my throat, his cast pushing harder on my chest. My lungs compress and I fight to drag in a tiny breath of precious oxygen.

“I have to assume you told Beck all about our interlude at that party, right?” JT taunts. “Otherwise, why would he be so determined to get me out of The Sugar Bowl?”

I try to shake my head in the negative, feed him a lie so that perhaps he doesn’t see me as a threat, but he merely responds by gripping me harder.

“I have to admit,” he says, eyes wild with fevered craze. “You’re in a very tempting position. I could fuck you raw right now and not a damn thing you could do about it.”

“Get off,” I wheeze, my vision starting to go blurry.

He ignores me, shifts his weight. For a brief and blessed moment, his hand relaxes and I drag in air that feels like razors against my bruised neck. But he merely moves his casted arm upward and places it at the base my throat and presses down. My hands release his wrist and move to the cast, trying to push him off. “But I don’t have time for that. I’ve got bigger problems…namely that you’re a major threat to my existence. Why you haven’t gone to the cops yet is beyond me, but fuck if I’ll take that chance now.”

He leans his weight on me. A gray haze starts to crowd my peripheral vision and an image of Beck’s face flashes before me.

“One more thing I want you to know before I end you,” JT says in a soft voice…almost lovingly. “Surely you know you’re not my first, and definitely weren’t my last. In these next few moments, when I’m choking the life out of you, I want you to go with the knowledge that you’re not the only girl of Beck’s who caught my attention. Sweet Caroline was a lovely piece that I just couldn’t resist, and she put up a much bigger fight than you ever did, which made it all the better for me.”