In My Arms You Shall Hide

Chapter 22

Kittie

I strain to hear to the noises down the hall, likely toward the estate’s main entrance. I listen for footsteps or talking, and for a wild second, I wonder if it’s the police, even if it makes no sense.

But Cory and Raney don’t waste any time. They move in the next instant while I’m left sitting numb in my chair, trembling so hard it rattles my bones.

“That has to be him,” Raney murmurs as she rushes toward the sunroom’s rear door. The exterior door is chained shut, and I watch in the moonlight as she retrieves something from her pocket and pulls at the padlock.

I figure she’s about to run—not that I can blame her. If by him she means her father, that means I’m dead already. And that knowledge serves to cement me into my chair all the more.

But something must be conveyed between the two of them without words. Cory shrugs off his hoodie and drapes it over my shoulders; the sudden weight of it over me snaps me out of my daze. In the next second, the chains around the door handle clatter to the floor with a heavy clinking.

“Are we running?” I ask as Cory helps me to my feet.

A man shouts in the recesses of the estate. A familiar voice calls Raney’s name, searching for her.

But she ignores it. Instead, she kicks out of her house slippers.

With his hands on my shoulders, Cory ushers me toward the door. My heart’s already galloping, but nearing the door only adds to my unease. I won’t be able to keep up with them if we run.

Raney gestures toward her slippers. When I step into them, she turns and throws the rear doors open with a metallic scrape. A burst of harsh wind sweeps the inside, and I brace myself against it. I can’t tell if I’m shaking strictly from the fear or the cold now.

“We’re not going anywhere,” she explains to me and then takes both my hands. “You are.”

My fingers instinctively tighten around hers. “Wait—”

The wind disrupts her blonde hair, and the light makes the fluttering strands glow. The harsh shadows against her face make it impossible to see her expression, but I can tell she’s smiling.

“We have unfinished business,” she explains to me. Before I can make an argument or beg her to come with me, she shakes her head. “It’s been lonely these last three years. I want you to know I’m grateful I got to have a friend, if only for a little while.”

“No!” I protest but flinch as Raney’s name echoes down the hall like the crooning of a ghost. The sound causes me to lower my voice to a whisper, nearly stolen by the gusts of groaning wind. “All of us can get out of here. We can go together.”

Raney laughs humorlessly and then abandons my hands to adjust the sweater on my shoulders and zip up the front, forcing my arms through the holes. “My dad won’t be far behind.”

“Then let me stay,” I beg. “He’s after me, too, and I can’t run very fast. I can buy you both some time to get out of here.”

“Not this time, Kittie,” she says. “You don’t get to throw your life away for someone else again. Besides, we’ve got to put this to bed.”

Just as Raney steps away, Cory places a meaty hand against the small of my back. I jolt when he leans down to me and instructs, “Run straight through the forest; make no turns. There is a neighbor a mile out in that direction. Don’t stop until you reach their property. Now, go.”

With that, he pushes me, causing me to stagger forward. The slippers sink into the crunchy snow, and I almost fall. My breath turns into white plumes of smoke, coming out like a chimney as I sprint across the yard. I suck in the icy air, trying to stay upright.

A knife-like cold penetrates the slippers when I pass the tree line. I glance back only once to the blackened sunroom before I press forward, face stung by the wind. The second I break past the yard’s perimeter and steal away into the darkened forest, I’m almost sure I’ve left something behind. A heaviness, a ghost, something that loomed long over me without even knowing it until now.

For only a second, the freedom feels weightless as I stumble through the night. Yet, the further I tread into the forest, the more my chest tightens. It’s not just the running cramps, my breathlessness, or my heart drumming in my ears. Terror closes in on me, and I swear I can hear my father’s call from the shadows cast across the snowy ground. Lurking somewhere beyond the trees, my past and present blend together again.

“Kat. Kat!” My father calls. Some part of me knows it’s a memory of his voice shattering the stilted silence in his home during my childhood, but my heart’s certain it’s calling to me from behind the trees. “Katherine! Get back here! NOW!”

I run harder, nearly losing my footing on snow-covered roots. My childhood fear and the kind strangling me now blur together until I’m no longer sure where it’s safe. Back at the estate with some stranger—someone who wants to kill me even if I’ve never even met them? Or into the forest where the swirling, dizzying spell of memories damns my freedom? Whether it’s the estate’s walls that are haunted or the trees that loom unforgivingly over me—I don’t feel safe anywhere.

But I slow down, turn, and start running again, trusting in my feet, even when I’m sure they’ll fail me. In my thundering heart, I know there’s one place in this world for me. And even if it makes me crazy, I call Dorian with my entire being and pray that he’ll somehow hear its call for him. Because it’s only in his arms that I can hide.

Dorian

Socializing and playing nice are baked into the career my father handed me. I wish he had given me his unflinching ability to smile at the faces he hated instead of his neuroticism.

I ignore a glass of bourbon, sitting at a bar between two gentlemen from the Sanderson Company—a conglomerate specializing in medical device and pharmaceutical sales. Considering Tacron Global manufactures medical devices and equipment, only a portion of the company deals with sales, and businesses like Sanderson are a necessary little suckerfish under the belly of a shark. Or at least, that’s how my father explained it. It sounded more like his ego.

Our relationship is more symbiotic than that; we need good-looking men and women who talk a big game to physicians and surgeons, and they need products to peddle. I only care that our products are worth a damn, not if a pretty face can talk them up.

I don’t know the names of the men beside me. Luckily, James has showed up tonight, and the cocktail of his people-pleasing and brown-nosing compensates for my friendly but distant demeanor.

My attention lingers on Katherine. Most days, I can push her from my thoughts long enough to do my job. But the way we spent the last two nights spins around in my head like a highlight reel, playing the sounds of her cries, the heat of her skin, the way it felt sliding into her, and the look in her eyes.

I manage a thin smile when James gets a roar of laughter from our company. We’re two hours into the dinner, and the trio are three sheets to the wind. Yet, there’s no sight or sound of Paul anywhere.

This is infuriating because a dinner with a sales company is exactly the scenario he should be present for. A sliver of me is glad for his absence. I hate the man, and no one has to wonder about his opinions on me.

And here I am. I left my sanctuary behind and have slithered back into a mask I suffocate behind to appease people I barely even like.

Whenever I’m not expected to respond to a question, I find my eyes wandering to the overhead TV screens running that night’s football game and flickers of various commercials.

James is in the middle of telling a story about Tacron’s disastrous Christmas party two years ago. Something about a handful of my colleagues getting drunk and destroying company property has somehow morphed from an HR nightmare to a lengthy anecdote.

“And then he…shit, I don’t remember. Paul was there; he usually tells the story,” James grumbles into his glass after losing his momentum.

I instinctively glance at my wrist and find it bare. Remembering that I gave my watch to Katherine causes a pang of pain to echo in my chest. I peel my eyes off my arm and flick them up to James.

“Where is the bastard, anyway?” I ask.

James frowns and fishes his phone from his pocket. The light from his screen illuminates twin squares on his glasses as he reads over what I imagine is a text message. “I figured he’d be here by now. I mean…he asked when you got here, so I figured he wanted to talk to you about something.”

I quirk a brow. “When I got here?”

James only offers a shrug.

Realization slams into me the following instant, and I curse, getting to my feet and slamming a few bills on the bar. James and the others call out after me when I storm out without a proper goodbye, but I’m already calling Cory’s phone before I hit the parking lot.

It goes straight to voicemail, and a stone of dread settles in my stomach.