I Walk the Line ♤ (gxg)

chapter 16: danger

Two hands grabbed her throat from behind, lifting her off the ground and utterly suffocating her as her back was pressed against someone's front.

August could've sworn that the hands crushed her windpipe with all the sharp pains stabbing her throat from inside out. She had been so suddenly lifted from the ground by her throat that she didn't know what to think. Her feet thrashed wildly as the person was dragging her backwards, the girl gasping for breath as her hands frantically tugged at the wrists of the hands choking her.

Her eyes squeezed shut as her back suddenly slammed against the metal door of the roof, the hands now on the front of her throat, digging their fingers into her esophagus. She didn't have to open her eyes to know who it was breathing their red-hot anger right against her face and gripping her throat with a dangerous pressure.

"What the fuck did you think you were doing?" the woman's husky voice growled between her teeth, her heavy breathing matching the terrified girl's as all the woman could feel was red, hot anger.

August couldn't speak through the hands around her throat; she only looked up at those pools of green eyes that seemed as if they were lit ablaze, the face of the woman contorting to an expression that made the girl fear for her very life.

"Answer me!" Willow throatily screamed in the girl's face. She had returned to her room to find that the girl had suddenly vanished, leaving behind unlocked handcuffs and a bent bobby pin laying on the floor.

"Let...me go!" August spoke in a strangled voice as she tried to pry the woman's iron grasp off her throat. She felt tears rise to her eyes, threatening to spill over. She thrashed her feet and her entire body along with them, trying to free herself from the woman's hold.

Willow only pressed her entire front against the girl, flattening her small body against the door and freezing her movements. Her face only centimeters from hers, she spoke in a taut voice, "What exactly made you think that you could just walk out of the room? Huh? Are you really that brave or really that stupid?!" Her hands tightened around the girl's throat, causing her to let out a whine that began to break through Willow's anger. She noticed tears spilling from August's eyes and just how tight her hand was around her throat.

August couldn't move, as the woman's stomach was pressed against her own and her legs pressed against her thighs, completely gluing her against the door. Black spots began to fuse her vision as she couldn't get any air—the woman was strangling her.

With the blink of an eye, Willow snapped out of it, realizing how the girl's face which had been red before was starting to turn blue, those cupid lips along with it. Her hands released August's soft throat, her body crumpling to the ground as she choked on air while gasping for breath. Listening to the girl's violent coughs, Willow stumbled back, the feeling of the girl's vulnerable throat still buzzing on her hands. She balled her hands into fists as a lump formed in her throat. She desperately wanted the feeling to go away because it was causing a maelstrom of feelings inside of her. Guilt's ebony tentacles began crawling up her throat, suffocating her the same way she had been suffocating the girl.

Willow looked in sheer horror as August gently held her throat that was hot to the touch, sobbing as she lay folded on the ground similar to the way she did the other night.

"I-I'm sorry..." Willow mumbled, shocked that she was apologizing for the first time in forever. She had every right to be angry with August. She escaped the room. That was putting her own life and Willow's life and Willow's gang in danger. If she had escaped and ran away, there was no telling who she might blabber to.

But why hadn't she run away?

Willow turned around to where she had found the girl sitting and saw the familiar leather journal laying open on the ground, her own pen lying next to it. It was the journal she found the girl writing in while on the rooftop of Cornell, the one she decided to pack in the girl's suitcase for reasons unbeknownst even to herself. She was tempted to read it while the girl had been passed out on the dorm bed, but she had just thrown it in the girl's suitcase and decided she didn't have time to read it at that moment.