I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead.

Yeah, wasn't that my typical luck? My day in and day out? Slipping in and out from the friggin' jaws of death like a suicidal mouse playing with a cat? If this was what the rest of my life, which, granted, didn't look like it was gonna be very long, was gonna be, I wasn't so sure I wanted part of it. It got damn old, damn quick.

I'd faced down a lot of things in my life. Homicidal jerks that had to be taken down before they took me, I'd been clipped by cars, nearly fallen off dangerously narrow ledges. I'd been taught to be a survivor, to get up and keep going every time life decided it wanted to bitch slap me and tell me to do otherwise. Defy the odds, that was my motto.

Yupp, spend your last breath spitting right in their faces.

But even with that mentality damn near stamped into my genetic code, I couldn't see the silver lining, the escape route, right now. And I wasn't even facing anything all that dramatic. No, just one person. One normal, mundane person who was, somehow, a lot more scary than anything else I'd faced over the years.

My big brother. And he was pissed.

Guess I had some explaining to do. And fast.