She swallows hard and glares at me as she flexes her jaw. I don’t know if it’s anger or fear warring through her right now, but I don’t fucking care. I don’t let up; I tower over her, waiting for her next move. After a few seconds of mulling it over she nods. Good. She understands.
“Come on! Let’s go!” Cason yells, putting an end to our standoff. I’m sure that was his intent.
Narni stands tall, confident. I have a feeling that if she didn’t want to go, she would fight me tooth and nail if I tried to force her. She quietly walks the rest of the way to meet Cason at the Jeep and climbs into the backseat.
She has no idea what I’m willing to do for my family. But she just may find out
It hurts—it all hurts. An ice pick is chipping away at my skull on the inside trying to find its way out. At least, that’s what it feels like as I pull myself out of the fog twisting around my brain, making me feel like I’m still dreaming. Maybe I am.
I don’t remember drinking that much last night.
I don’t know how I ever woke up on mornings like this without Jesse. Hangovers are so much more bearable with him by my side. I slide my hand towards him, slowly reaching out for the sweet warmth he gives me. I reach and reach until I’m stopped by something cold and hard, and definitely not what I was looking for.
I wince as soon as I touch the wall and breathe slowly, trying to wrap my head around what I’m feeling. It’s not Jesse, and it’s cold. Where the fuck am I? I’m scared to open my eyes. I’m scared of the little voice in the back of my head that tells me the moment I do I’m not going to like what I find. I slowly blink my eyes open, and as I do, the sting of the air hits my dry eyes, making the tears roll without permission. I’m greeted by a swinging lamp that only makes the hammering in my head ten times worse each time the light sways into my view.
My focus fluctuates in and out. But even though I can’t make out my surroundings quite yet, I know instinctively that this isn’t home. The smell is wrong, and from what I can make out, I’m in a dark, dank room with one little window. Like a basement—a very empty basement, except for me and whatever it is I’m lying on.
I grab onto a metal frame that is even colder than the wall and pull myself up. As soon as I’m upright a wave of nausea hits me, and the room sways. I hunch over and breathe through it until my world rights itself enough to open my eyes again. The panic starts in my toes, a lightness that begins until my whole body, my whole world, is cloaked in fear. I close my eyes again, trying to keep my breaths steady. I need to think back to last night. To what happened.
We were at the barn party. Jade was with Adam, and Cason and I were talking on the bench. My heart tears a little remembering that conversation. Then Jesse went to get another beer. Jade was sick. Wait. Jade wasn’t sick. Jordan told me Jade was sick. A cold, calculating voice saying, “Goodnight, Fallon.”
This isn’t a hangover.
Ice douses my veins as last night’s memories all hit me at once. Was it even last night?
Jordan is a traitor. Jade wasn’t sick. He tricked me. He’s helping Marcus.
The last thing I remember is nothing. Literally. My world went dark. And now I’m here. The thought that I was brought here by Marcus makes my stomach roll even more until I am full-on retching off the side of the makeshift cot under me. Nothing but bile comes up, making me gag harder and causing my head to pound and my stomach muscles to ache.
A door placed conveniently across the room—or maybe I’m conveniently placed away from it—opens. The hair on my body rises up as fear pounds in my blood. I scoot back into the corner, forcing the nausea under control as I wipe my mouth clean with the back of my hand. My eyes lock onto the only way in or out, waiting for him to appear in the doorframe.
I recognize his gate before I can see him clearly. His form comes into view, all five-foot-ten inches of the lanky devil, holding something in his hand that he rests on the floor on the side of the cot in front of me. He looks next to him where the bile is pooled and wrinkles his nose. It’s ridiculous this disgusts him, after every wicked thing he’s done. A little bile should be easy for him.
“Yeah, side effects of the drug. It’ll wear off soon enough,” Marcus says with a little chuckle that makes me wince further into the corner. The fact that he finds drugging his ex and the side effects from that drug amusing is disturbing. I can’t help but close my eyes and hope this is a dream. That I’m not locked away by the man I’ve feared and run from for the last year, and that he hasn’t caught up with me right when life was becoming somewhat normal and good.
“Ah, I see. You’re not entirely comfortable yet. No worries, that’ll wear off too.” His words come across as nonchalant as his posture. How can he think he can just force me to be what he wants? I need to get out of here. Think Fallon. I need a plan.
And my phone. My phone.
I slowly slide my hand to my back right pocket, where I always put my phone. Jesse gripes at me for it because I’m always sitting on it. The little trickle of hope in having my phone is lost when I reach my flat, empty pocket.
“Looking for this?” Marcus holds up my phone, and I sigh. “Come on, Fallon. I can’t have him finding you here.”
He takes the phone and drops it on the floor before stomping on it repeatedly. I twitch with every crunch of the glass and plastic as he destroys what might be my only way out of here. Once he’s done, he kicks the pieces of the phone over to the other side of the room. “There. That should do it.”
“What are you doing Marcus? Where am I?”
“Home,” he says gesturing with his hands to the house. As he drops his arms, he shrugs. “Well, part of it. I’ll let you see the rest when I can trust you not to run.”
“This is not my home. You’re fucking crazy if you think I’m staying here,” I grit out.
“It will be. It’ll be easier if you just accept it. I can give you a good life, Fallon. Besides, it’s not like you have much of a choice. I won’t let you leave,” he says sincerely, like what he’s saying isn’t out of the ordinary. Like this entire situation isn’t some part of the Marcus freak show.
But it is. This entire situation is my worst nightmare come to life. It’s the dream that wakes me up night after night. It’s the laugh that haunts me. It’s the face I see every time I close my eyes. But instead of waking up and it all being just a dream, I’ve woken up and it’s all real. Very real. If I couldn’t feel my pulse pounding in my ears right now from both fear and rage, I’d double check it to make sure I was alive.
“So what? You’re going to keep me here? Hide me away and pretend I’m here by choice? You know he’ll look for me. He won’t stop until he finds me. And then what are you going to do? You’re never going to get away with this,” I say, mustering the little bit of hope I can find in me. I can only pray that Jesse finds me, quickly.
“ENOUGH! You are mine. Not his. You were never his,” he yells. “It’s time that you figure that out. Do you think you just happened to accidentally find this town? Or Jesse? That wasn’t an accident. All it took was a bird twittering in the right ears. You’re here because I wanted you to be.”