Chapter 6 Blake
Blake
Iwake up disoriented, wrists numb and tingly, head heavy with sleep.
For a second, I can’t figure out what’s wrong. My arms feel weird—awkward, suspended. I try to roll over and can’t. Something tight digs into my skin at my wrists.
I blink against the dim light, trying to shake the fog.
My limbs feel slow, heavier than they should.
Like I’ve just woken from a sleep I don’t remember falling into.
A nap meant to be thirty minutes that you wake up from four hours later.
My head throbs, vision swimming at the edges, and there’s a sour taste coating the back of my tongue.
I shift again, testing the resistance.
It takes me a second to realize why there is resistance. I yank hard.
My eyes snap fully open.
I pull again—harder this time—and the grating sound of plastic on metal confirms it.
I freeze.
Everything in me goes still, like my brain has to buffer before it can deliver the next logical conclusion.
What the fuck?
Both arms are pulled tight above my head, locked to the headboard. Thick zip ties, not the thin ones you can snap with enough leverage. These are heavy-duty. Industrial.
The kind that means business.
Panic rises fast.
I look around. The entire room has been torn apart. The drawers are open. Boxes turned over and emptied.
Clothes spilled out, some crumpled on the floor, some kicked halfway under the bed. Whoever did this wasn’t careful—they were searching.
How the fuck did I sleep through this?
A sick twist of realization punches through the panic: I’m not in my dorm anymore.
No building security, no RAs. Just me and Mads in a shitty team-issued apartment, with a key card opening front door that apparently isn’t too hard to bypass.
The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until now.
My legs are free, but the rest of me is trapped—sweat sticking to the sheets, heart thudding so hard I feel it in my ears. I twist, trying to see my phone.
"Hey, phone—call Mayson." Nothing happens. There’s no way to use the voice controls without it in range, so where the fuck is it?
It only works if the phone’s nearby, and I don’t see it on the nightstand where I left it. Not on the floor, either. I twist, scanning the room with as much range as I’ve got, but there’s nothing. No screen glow, no lifeline.
Just me. Alone. Zip tied to Mads Keller’s bed.
My first thought—my gut-deep, knee-jerk reaction—is that fucker. He did this. He thought it’d be funny. He probably left me here so he could waltz onto the field and play clueless when I didn’t show up.
But the second thought is clearer, more logical.
No. He wouldn’t do that. Mads is an agent of chaos, sure, but he wouldn’t screw with my practice schedule. Not with how seriously I take it. Not with how seriously he takes it.
He also wouldn’t trash his own room.
My alarm didn’t go off. And this isn't a prank.
It’s something else.
Something worse.
I twist my wrists again, harder this time, ignoring the way the plastic digs into my skin.
No give.
The zip ties are pulled so tight that I can barely rotate my hands. I try to shimmy up the bed, thinking maybe I can slide the ties higher, shift the angle, get some leverage—but the metal creaks, and all I manage to do is knock my thigh into the headboard and give myself a charley horse.
If throwing my full weight into these restraints while contorted in some half-assed backflip isn’t enough to snap the plastic, I’m not sure what is.
“Goddamn it,” I mutter, wincing.
I roll to the side, try hooking my foot under the blanket to fish around for my phone. Nothing. I reach with my toes, desperate and clumsy.
There’s nothing sharp nearby, not that I can get to without my hands anyway. Just the frame beneath me, the flat sheet tangled around my waist, and a mounting sense of dread clawing up the back of my throat.
I don’t scare easily. I don’t panic.
But this is bad.
Every creak of the apartment feels amplified, like footsteps just outside the bedroom door. Not on the stairs outside—inside. My heart slams against my ribs. The doorknob doesn’t move, but I swear I can hear someone crossing the living room.
I know it’s all in my head, but someone was here and I don’t know where they are now.
I suck in a breath and hold it.
It’s daylight now. Too late for Mads to still be here. Which means I’m alone. Tied up. Helpless.
The panic climbs in my throat until the front door clicks open, cutting straight through the spiral, followed by the clatter of keys and a very familiar voice. “Sleeping beauuuttyyyy, wake the fuck up! You’re late for practice.”
My whole body sags in relief and fury all at once.
“Mads!” I shout, panic clawing its way straight out of my throat. “In here! Help!”
There’s a beat of silence. Then the sound of feet pounding across the floor, a loud thud as he collides with something, and then the bedroom door swings open.
He skids to a stop and takes in the state of the room. “Holy sh—Blake?”
I’m flat on the bed, zip-tied, red-faced, and vibrating with a mix of rage and sheer humiliation. “Get. Me. Out. Of. This.”
His eyes go wide. “Okay. Yup. Yep. Definitely not how I thought this morning was gonna start.”
He’s already crossing the room, looking wildly around for something sharp. “Scissors,” I snap. “Top drawer.”
“You mean the vibrator VIP lounge?”
“Mads.”
“On it.” He grabs the handle of the nightstand drawer and yanks it so hard the whole thing nearly comes completely out. He fumbles past the mess I dumped inside yesterday evening and comes up with a pair of tiny eyebrow scissors.
“Are you serious?” I snap, writhing on the bed. “Those aren’t gonna work. They’re for trimming stray hairs, not for hacking through FBI-grade plastic.”
“Well, it’s what we’ve got unless you want me to bite through them,” he mutters, crouching beside me, one knee on the mattress. “And I’m not ruling that out yet, by the way.”
Of course, he manages to make even that sound filthy.
My brain scrambles at the image before I can stop it, and I hate that I’m not horrified. Not really.
The problem is, some traitorous part of me finds it… charming. Him, hovering too close, every line out of his mouth managing to wedge under my skin.
I should be worrying about the fact that I’m tied up and possibly screwed in about five different ways, but instead, I’m over here wondering what his mouth would feel like literally anywhere near my body.
I need to get a fucking grip.
He presses one hand to my arm, steadying it, and starts sawing at the plastic where it’s looped tight against my wrist. His brow furrows, jaw clenched, a muscle twitching just below his cheekbone. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this serious, except maybe while we were stuck on the elevator.
The plastic holds firm for a few terrifying seconds. Then—snap. The first tie gives, and I suck in a harsh breath.
He immediately shifts to the second one, not saying anything. Not looking at me.
My whole body is trembling now, not from fear exactly, but from the adrenaline crash. From the delayed realization that I was stuck. Really stuck. That if he hadn’t walked in when he did…
The second tie breaks.
And suddenly I’m free.
I sit up too fast, blood rushing to my head, wrists stinging, shoulders burning from being held in place for so long. I cradle one wrist, then the other, rubbing at the angry red grooves carved deep into my skin.
Mads doesn’t move. He’s still on the bed, staring at the mangled ties in his hand.
“You okay?” he asks finally.
“Yeah,” I say automatically. Then again, less convincingly: “Yeah, I think so.”
His gaze drops to my wrists. He reaches out and gently takes one of my arms. His fingers move over the mark there, barely touching it, but I flinch anyway. “Jesus, Blue,” he mutters. “These are bad.”
“They’re fine,” I say. “It looks worse than it is.”
He looks up at me. “What the fuck happened?”
I try to pull my arm back, but he holds on. “I… I don’t know. I woke up like this.”
It sounds so much more concerning when I say it out loud. How the hell did I sleep through someone zip-tying me to my bed?
“We need to tell Coach Carmichael,” he says. “Or Doc. Or someone.”
“No.” The word escapes before I can think better of it. I yank my arm back and stumble off the bed.
“We’re not telling anyone,” I say. I cannot risk that.
I think of some bullshit excuse. “If I tell Coach what happened, he won’t let me practice today.
Or he’ll send me to counseling. Or flag it with the campus security, and then I’ll be on some damn administrative hold while they do a safety evaluation.
You think I want to sit out the season because I overslept and someone thought they were funny? ”
“You didn’t oversleep,” Mads says, standing too.
His voice is firmer now. “You were tied up. That’s not a joke.
That’s someone intentionally stopping you from getting to practice.
Or whatever the fuck it was they were actually trying to accomplish.
” He looks around the room. “Are you hiding drug money or something?”
I glare at him. “No, and I’m not getting benched over this.”
He doesn’t need to know what I am hiding.
“You could’ve gotten hurt.”
“I didn’t.” Much.
“You couldn’t get free. What if I hadn’t come back when I did?”
“But you did.” I exhale, dragging a hand down my face. “And now I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” He lifts one of my wrists again.
This time, I let him. He runs his thumb slowly over the mark.
A pale indentation rimmed in raw red; the skin is slightly raised and tender.
His hands are warm. No jokes. No bravado.
“You need to get these looked at,” he says.
“Even if you don’t tell Coach the whole thing.
Go to the trainer. Say it was a workout band or something. But you can’t ignore this.”
I hate that he’s right.
I hate that he looks at me like that.
“Fine,” I mutter. “But I’m not missing practice.”
“I wouldn't dream of suggesting it,” he says. “But if you pass out mid-drill, I’m carrying you off the field. Bridal style. In front of everyone.”
“I will stab you.”
“Promises, promises.”
He lets go of my arm, finally, and steps back.
The air between us feels different now—charged, unsettled, like he’s crossed a line but somehow landed on the right side of it.
For all his cocky remarks and infuriating grins, he hasn’t pushed too far.
He read the edge and stopped, like he always does.
And that’s the part that throws me. Because this is a borderline horrifying situation—me, cornered and vulnerable, him, close enough to dismantle every defense I’ve built. Yet instead of bracing for the worst, I catch myself breathing easier.
And I can’t decide what scares me more: the way this whole thing could have gone wrong in a hundred directions… or the fact that I might actually trust him, of all people, to catch me if it does.