Chapter 2 - THE GROCERY BASKET
The grocery store was too bright.
Anna felt it immediately when the automatic doors opened and white fluorescent light spilled over polished floors and stacked produce displays. Her eyes stung. The ringing in her head had not faded. She moved through the aisles with a basket looped over one arm, putting in exactly what Ethan had ordered: bread, eggs, milk.
Nothing extra.
Nothing that looked like a choice.
Her fingers trembled when she picked up the carton of eggs.
A little boy nearly ran into her near the cereal aisle. His mother apologized. Anna smiled automatically and said she was fine.
She was not fine.
Her vision blurred once near the dairy coolers, then sharpened again. She reached into her coat pocket for her phone. No signal of courage arrived. No one to call. No name she trusted enough to turn into a rescue.
When she was younger, before her mother died and before her father remarried distance and paperwork, Anna used to believe trouble announced itself loudly. As an adult, she had learned that trouble often arrived looking organized.
She turned toward the register lane and the world tilted.
The basket slipped against her wrist.
Eggs slid.
Milk shifted.
Bread toppled over the edge.
Anna tried to correct it, but her grip gave out completely.
The basket crashed to the floor.
Eggs smashed in a wet burst across the tile.
The milk hit next, rolling once before splitting open and sending a white spill across the aisle.
Several shoppers gasped.
Anna blinked at the spreading mess as if it belonged to someone else.
Then the floor surged upward toward her.
Or maybe she fell toward it.
She never found out which.
Because just before her head could strike the tile, strong arms caught her.
A man’s voice, low and sharp with alarm, said, “Careful.”
The last thing Anna saw clearly before the edges of her vision went dark was a black wool coat, silver-black hair, and a pair of eyes that had gone suddenly, intensely focused.
Then everything went black.
When sound returned, it arrived in pieces.
The scrape of shoes.
A cashier asking for help.
Someone saying they should call an ambulance.
And the voice again, closer now, angrier.
“Who did this to you?”
Anna felt cold air against her throat.
Her turtleneck had slipped down.
Her eyes opened slowly.
She was lying half against the chest of the man who had caught her, one hand supporting her shoulders, the other steady at the back of her neck. He was older than her by at least fifteen years, tall, severe, sharply dressed even in a simple black coat, and he was staring at the bruises around her throat as though the sight had personally insulted him.
Anna tried to sit up.
“Don’t,” he said gently.
Then he looked at her face properly.
Everything in him changed.
The anger did not disappear.
It turned into shock.
Then heartbreak.
Then something even heavier than either.
“How did you end up like this?” he whispered.
Anna frowned, confused.
She had never seen him before in her life.
And then the sound came from outside the grocery store.
BEEP.
BEEP.
BEEEEEP.
Aggressive car horns, blasting again and again from the front parking lot.
Anna’s body reacted before her mind did.
She grabbed the front of the man’s coat hard enough to wrinkle the wool.
“No,” she whispered.
The horns blared again.
The man’s expression sharpened instantly. He turned his head toward the store entrance, listening.
The horns became louder. More frantic. More demanding.
Anna did not need to see the car to know who it was.
May you like
Ethan was outside.
And he was already angry.
