Excerpt from Fleeting Fires by Nadège Richards
“Want to tell me what’s going on here?” Jakob asked from beside me.
I guffawed. “You mean beside the fact that he locked Echo and I up underground for days and somehow filled her head with his shit?” I rolled my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “If not that, there’s nothing else.”
“Bastard,” I heard Kahl grumble.
“Coward,” I shot back, my eyes burning with the challenge.
“Fool.”
“Ass.”
“R—” Kahl closed the small space between us and gripped my shoulders, pushing me into a wall. “I didn’t have to do much for her to remember!” he rushed to say, a gritted whisper. “But you made her forget—forget me, forget everything. If she wasn’t so foolhardily infatuated with you, you wouldn’t even be alive right now…”
My jaw clenched as the people walking by stopped to stare at us. Conroy, Jakob and the others had slowed to turn back.
“So that’s what this is about. Echo? And not just her, but your past with her.” I shook my head and smiled. “Since we haven’t much time to spare with your idiocy, stop thinking you’re the only one who can help her, Zimmerman,” I grounded. “Infatuation? Were you not the one who had us in cages? I know we just met, but by my book, dragging someone to your own personal Hell is not the way to soften them up.” I kicked off the wall and came to stand in front of him. I was taller by an inch, give or take, and my fists clenched at my sides with the dire need to hit something, anything. “Stay away from her; her past with you is minuscule. Know you’re place, because it damn sure is not by her side.”
I pushed past him, my shoulder knocking him off kilter, and averted Conroy’s gaze as I made my way to the front of the group.
“I can’t,” I heard Kahl call out. I turned to face him and he did the same. “Stay away from her, I mean. I won’t.”