Title: Cuts Like A Knife

Author: Stress

First written: May 12, 2002

Edited and replaced: January 21, 2005

Summary: Part I of the Soul Mates Series; She thought that life couldn't get any better. She had friends and a family that loved her – she was taken care of and had no complaints. But that was before he came into her life. And, no matter how hard she tries to escape his grasp, he'll never let her go.

Manhattan

Later that day, Jess, who had not been killed in a freak carriage accident, was looking around for a respectable place to stay. She had just set foot in Manhattan a little over an hour ago, and had had no success yet. "What was I thinking when I decided to come here?" she moaned as she realized what mess she had gotten herself into. She was miles away from her friends, family and the life she had always known.

Sighing in despair, upset at herself for giving up and running away from her problems, Jess sank down onto the dirty ground directly outside of a restaurant that was called Tibby's.

"Hey there, Cupcake. What's a perdy li'l thing like you doing down there?" drawled a young man, around seventeen years old or so, as he strolled up to her and extended his hand.

Jess flinched in memory of the last time she had been with Rip in their alley. "Hi," she whispered as she stood up on her own, refusing the stranger's hand.

The boy in front of her laughed confidently as he wiped a lock of his blonde hair out of his light green eyes, pushing his scratched glasses up his nose. "I see you don't need any of me help, then, do ya?"

Jess pushed her hair out of her face as she thought of an excuse to get away from the boy. "Naw, not really. I'll just be going now," she said with a note of panic in her voice. "What if this fella is just like Rip?" her brain screamed at her as she trembled slightly under his questioning gaze. As she stood there, she jerked as flashbacks of some of her more unmemorable experiences with Rip flashed before her eyes.

"Are you O.K.?" he asked as he noticed her shaking and her glazed over expression. He reached his hand out to give her right shoulder a gentle shake and was surprised when she tried to move herself away from his touch. "Is something wrong, Miss?"

The word set off a bell in her brain and her eyes snapped open. Not really paying attention to her surroundings, Jess was only able to comprehend one thing: She was standing near an alley, next to a strange guy, who had his hand on her injured shoulder.

"RUN" was the only word that came to her mind. She never wanted to be put in the situation where she could let someone take advantage of her, ever again.

Without even stopping to pick up her suitcase of belongings, Jess tore down the street. Though she had no clue to where she was going, considering she had never been to Manhattan before, she ran as if the devil himself was after her. "I'll take a turn down this block and run through this road and I'll make a right down this alley," she muttered to herself as she continued to speed through the streets. A quick look behind her told her that no one was following her, so Jess turned down one last alley and approached the corner, with the intent to catch her breath once she entered a well-lit area.

"O.K., I think that I'm safe now," she panted as she walked to the corner. But she stopped dead when she heard someone whistling. Jess paled. "Who is here, now?" she cried softly, praying that it was only another lost little girl like herself.

She turned the corner hesitantly and let out a gasp of surprise to see another young man, one around her age, wearing a cowboy hat over his sandy brown hair, with a red bandana knotted around his neck, twirling a lasso. Forgetting for the moment that she was trying to hide from all members of the opposite sex that she did not know, Jess stared at the fluid motions of the rope.

The young boy heard her gasp and dropped his rope. Lifting his head to look at the person that had actually found his "secret spot", he started to greet Jess.

Her heart still pounding from the sprint she had just finished, her shoulder still aching from Spindle's knife from the night before and her head still racing from all the new things she had encountered since leaving Queens early that morning, Jess did the only thing she could think of now that she had found herself face to face with a young man, alone down a secluded alley: She fainted.