I froze on the third floor landing, pressing Kate against the wall, keeping her body behind mine.

This was not good.

“What’s wrong?”

I gripped the gun even tighter. “I don’t know. Something just feels off.”

Maybe I was paranoid. Maybe it was the PTSD. But no matter how I tried to convince myself that I was overreacting, that it was all in my head, I couldn’t make my body go up those remaining steps. My instincts had kept me alive for four years and every single instinct in my head told me that something was not fucking right.

Kate clutched my hand tightly, her nails digging into my skin. Her breath hitched. “Do you think someone’s up in the apartment?”

I hesitated. That was the worst part of all of it—my instincts had kept me alive and at the same time, my instincts had gotten me “killed.” I hadn’t felt any special sense of awareness that day I watched my friends die around me, hadn’t seen the danger coming my way until it was too fucking late. Whatever confidence I’d had in my abilities was now called into question by the one glaring time I should have seen the threat coming and missed it entirely.

“Matt.”

Kate’s hand on my arm jolted me back.

“Are you okay?” she asked, worry threading through her voice.

I nodded, not entirely sure that was the truth, but not knowing what else to say. These were the moments when I felt the most fucked up, when I didn’t know what to do, and I ended up frozen with indecision. And the worst part, the hardest part, was that I’d always been someone she trusted, someone she’d looked up to when we were younger. Now I felt broken.

She pushed her way through life, making no apologies, not letting anything stop her. I didn’t want her to see what it was like in my head, to know that the things I’d survived had messed me up more than I cared to admit, and that I didn’t always know when it would trigger, when I’d feel fine one minute and off the next. That was the part that frustrated me the most, the side of it that made me want to scream. I couldn’t manage it; it managed me.

“Matt?”

Her voice pulled me out again.

“We need to go,” I muttered, flight taking over.

Kate didn’t argue, following my lead down the stairs. Maybe I was overreacting, but all I knew was that each step made me feel like fresh air filled my lungs, like I could suddenly breathe again, like I’d left the cloying decay of death behind me in the staircase. We hit the lobby, my arm wrapped protectively around her waist.

“I’ll see if I can come back for your stuff. It just doesn’t feel right. I don’t know how to describe it; it’s just an instinct thing …”

“Matt?”

“Yeah?”

Kate’s gaze met mine, compassion in her brown eyes. “You don’t have to explain.”

The compassion did me in. It was too close to pity, too close to her seeing inside me—all of my fears, all of my weaknesses. To her looking at me like someone who was weak rather than someone she could lean on.

That night I’d burst into her apartment, I’d been so determined to keep her safe, so focused on getting between the guy who’d broken in and her, that I hadn’t had time for doubts, had just acted. But now I was reduced to this giant fucking weight dragging me down, quicksand beneath my feet, and the action that had once been so easy fled me. That was the thing about this—it snuck up and sucker punched you when you weren’t prepared.

I opened my mouth to answer her, when all of a sudden, a loud boom exploded around us. I didn’t hesitate, didn’t think, just hit the ground, my body covering Kate’s.

Chapter Eighteen

We’ve received reports that tonight’s explosion took place at the apartment of Kate Reynolds, Senator Edward Reynolds’s daughter. Our thoughts go out to Kate …

—Capital Confessions blog

Kate

I hadn’t truly appreciated how big Matt was until he was lying on top of me, his hard body pressing me into the concrete sidewalk. I didn’t think I’d ever seem someone move as quickly as he had; one minute I was standing there, the next I was roadkill.

My ears rang, smoke billowing around us, the faint sound of shouts mixing with the bell-like noise pounding my head. I gripped Matt, trying to get his attention, feeling like I was about to suffocate under his weight.

“Matt.” I shook him gently. “Matt.”

His head jerked down, his gaze meeting mine, his eyes wide and unfocused. Oh, shit. I’d seen the tension in his body when we’d been in the staircase, experienced the demons he lived with on a daily basis. I’d done a little research on PTSD since he’d returned and knew that certain events could trigger a reaction. I figured the stress of the past few weeks qualified, and the explosion definitely hadn’t helped.

“Can you let me up?” I asked, trying to keep my voice soft while simultaneously wondering if he could hear me, or if like me, his hearing had been affected by the blast.

For a minute I didn’t think my words had registered, and then he pushed off of me, holding a shaky hand out and pulling me up off of the ground, his body tense. A crowd began to gather around us, residents spilling out of the building, people on the street rushing over. The shouts and questions still seemed so far away.

I looked up at the glass windows of my apartment building, doing a mental count of how far up the explosion had been, my gaze drifting over until it reached the window that had been my bedroom. My stomach clenched, my mouth went dry. It looked like the blast had taken out my place and the apartment next to mine—which thankfully, had been vacant since the last tenant was evicted. This had been no accident, and if Matt hadn’t stopped us, we would be dead.

“Are you okay?” he asked, wrapping his arms around me, burrowing me into his body.

I nodded, not quite trusting my voice, tremors shooting through me as the full impact of what had just happened hit me like a ton of bricks. Someone had tried to blow me up. My father had tried to blow me up. The lump in my throat became a boulder.

Sirens sounded in the background, the noise growing louder, more people spilling out onto the sidewalk outside my building. I felt like an immovable object, unable to pick my feet up, panic and fear planting me to the asphalt as surely as though I’d sprouted roots.

“We need to get out of here.” Matt’s gaze swept over the crowd. “We don’t know when they set up the bomb, if they’re still here. And I really don’t want the police getting involved. There are too many questions I’m not ready to answer, the likelihood that someone on your father’s payroll could get involved, too high.”

My breath hitched, feeling inescapably like a caged animal. I’d been full of bravado before, but now, a few steps separating me from life and death, I realized how stupid I’d been, how arrogant my lack of fear was. I’d underestimated my opponent, and that had been an almost deadly mistake.

My father tried to have me killed.

“Kate.” Matt tugged on my hand. “We have to go. Now.”

He propelled me forward and I followed, grateful for his strength. I ducked my head, following his lead as we blended into the crowd, heading toward my car. The farther we walked, the more I thought about the things I’d lost, my apartment that, while kind of crappy, had been my home, one I’d been proud of, one I’d built through my own hard work. I still remembered the day I’d rented it—the moment when I’d decided I could no longer be a part of my parents’ lives anymore. I’d been absolutely terrified and completely free at the same time. It had been the first time I’d really been on my own—independent of Blair playing big sister, Matt looking out for me, or the weight of the Reynolds name mucking everything up. I’d just been a college student there, living on ramen when the occasion called for it, mourning the loss of the boy I’d loved, plodding through my life, day after day.