Delayed by Nathan Kingsly (best manga ereader txt) 📕

way out for Emma. Her eyes are so big on her face, the bruise and the blood darker than they were even a few minutes ago—Ger’s arm white, where she is digging into it.

Ger is no longer looking at me, instead, at what he can see of Brian, which isn’t much I wager from his position in the middle of the room. His scowl grows deeper by the second.

“So, what now, Ger? Don’t you think you’ve ruined enough lives today? Let her go, kill me if you want, but she's done nothing to you.” I’m not sure what I’m thinking. Emma shakes her head, her eyes growing larger if possible, but I ignore it. Provoking him isn’t one of my brighter ideas, but I am now down to the wire, as they say. I can only hope he will settle for taking me down, and I can bargain for Emma’s way to freedom.

When his eyes focus back on me, they are with a hatred that I share for him. “I’ve only begun ruining your life. You’re the reason I was locked up, treated like a criminal for taking back what was mine.”

“Yours?” I started to laugh, but it’s cut short by pain. Fire explodes in my head, then down into my whole left side. I couldn’t have guessed that such a small entry would cause so much pain. “My mother was never yours.”

“Oh, she’d been mine before Harold was on her radar. She’d been my ally, my defender, and friend. She turned her back on me the moment she left school with him. He took her from me and filled her head with lies.”

“What lies?” If I keep him talking, someone might come. Two gunshots are sure to raise alarms.

“That what we had wasn’t love,” he spits. “I took care of her. She took care of me. She stuck up for me when the jocks pushed me in the halls, and I helped her study for her finals. After I dragged her from a party, she said she loved me, and we sealed our love that night. None of that was a lie, but the next day everything changed.” He points the gun at me. “Harold stole her, and now I’m going to steal something from you for keeping me from her as your father did.”

“Please.” Her voice is a whisper. Fuck, Emma, this is not the time, but she's not looking at me. “I have a family--”

Ger jerks as if he’d forgotten her. His eyes blaze as his fingers tangle in her hair, yanking her head back. He presses the gun so hard that the skin at her temple spiders away. She whimpers, tears roll down her cheeks.

The blood in my veins pumps that much harder. There is no more time left, and it is only this moment.

“I had that once--” He sounds like a deranged demon, guttural and unhinged, that lost his sanity millennia ago.

There's no telling what he will do. With one firm push of my good arm, I’m on my feet, and despite everything, my body bolts in their direction, but there is still space enough for him to see me coming. His features morph from anger to surprise then back again. Another shot goes off. I stagger, my knees hit hard on the carpeted floor. A shock wave of pain spreads like a damn breaking loose, unable to be contained as the room fills with Emma's screams.

All I can feel is pain, and it’s getting hard to breathe. Everything in my ears is coming through as a hum as if we're standing too close to loud machinery. The desire to shout and look above me disappears the moment I attempt either. Every time I blink, it becomes harder to keep my eyes open. It would be so easy to make this stop, to give in to the blackness trying to swallow up my vision. Instead, I am fighting, my body sweating under the pressure of it, and inside my head, I scream, ‘STAY THE FUCK AWAKE!’

Air whips my face, and the squeal of the hinges hit me before the sound of the door banging against the wall reaches my ears. Opening my eyes, I struggle to move when shouting erupts around me. Strength I didn’t know I had, has my hand coming from my side trying to reach towards where I hear Emma. Pain blinds me, blacking out, and when I come too, her hands grip into my shirt, her mouth next to my ear. I can’t make out her words, but I know it's her.

Guns are going off above us, the sound making me cringe, wishing I could cover Emma with my body. We’ve been through so much. How did I let us get here? I’m not strong enough to protect her.

I’ve spent so much time focusing on the things that I thought were important, the things that would help me when this situation came, and they all failed me. A shiver runs through my chilling body. My fist clenches as I drag another breath into my lungs. It feels like fire, and it sounds like a broken kazoo on the way out.

My eyes close. Behind them, I see all the things I could have done instead. Stayed at home, never leaving my family. Probably taken a walk and ran into Emma, starting my life in that white house sooner. Kids. Something seizes in my insides. I struggle to breathe again, every breath painful. When it came down to it, preparation helped, but I’d wasted my whole damn life on it.

Feeling a gust of air, my eyes come open.

Then I saw it, wedged between my past and my future, a small piece that connected the two. My life has no guarantee, I'm not sure if I'll even get out this time, but nothing at all is written in stone saying I would live in this constant state of unrest. I no longer have to live as if my past and future