Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
HANNAH GRACE
“ W hy are you looking at me like that?” Zach asks.
From the deep furrow in his brows, his confusion is genuine. But I have to be cautious with what I say. Based on how quick he was to smash my phone, it’s obvious to me that the person in front of me is a stranger.
Cole, please be on your way .
“Looking at you like what?” I ask and try to slowly push Laura Leigh farther away from Zach.
“Like you don’t recognize me. Like you didn’t know it was me all along.” He reaches out a hand and I flinch. “You don’t need to be scared of me, HG.”
His finger moves to Laura Leigh’s hand, and he runs his thumb over the plastic zip tie.
“I didn’t want to do this,” he says.
“Why did you?” I ask, continuing to push myself between Zach and my sister.
“Stop! You act like I’m some fucking creep. I already told you you didn’t have to be afraid of me! I’m not going to hurt you!” he screams, surging up from the bed and moving to the window.
“Of course I’m scared of you. You broke into my house. You destroyed Cole’s car. You kidnapped my sister, Zach. Or whatever your name is.”
“My name is Zach. And I’ve loved you since I saw you crowned Miss Tennessee. The moment I saw you, I knew you were meant for me. That’s why I started writing you. So I could tell you. But when I did, you stopped responding. And I-I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t imagine my life without you.”
A different piece of the puzzle clicks into place.
“Eric?” I whisper.
One side of his mouth quirks up in a half smile.
“I thought you’d appreciate the name. I picked it after that book you were studying. The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”
Tension fills Laura Leigh’s body. She’s waking up. I squeeze her shoulder, hoping she can hear me and not react.
“H-how did you even find out about that? All that information was private.”
“You didn’t try so hard to hide who you were, Hannah Grace Whittaker. From Mistletoe Creek, Tennessee. I love that town at Christmastime by the way. I’ve spent a lot of time there learning who you were, where you got accepted to college. A little more effort and I figured out where you lived. Followed you to your classes. Fuck, I audited all of them, so it wasn’t too hard to fake the credentials I needed for my job as a gym teacher. But it all started with that class. I sat staring at you while that boring-as-fuck professor droned on about that stupid book. I still get hard every time I think about it.”
Bile churns in my stomach.
“It was so easy to predict what you were going to do. Which school you wanted a job at. Of course, I had to get rid of the previous gym teacher?—”
“What?!”
“Aww, don’t worry, HG. I didn’t kill him. But it’s hard to teach gym when your leg is broken. So I became the substitute. And made sure he didn’t want to come back.”
Keep him talking; buy time for Cole to get here .
“Y-you didn’t have to do any of that.”
“Yes, I did!” He yanks his hands through his hair as he paces from the window to the bed. “You stopped fucking responding to my letters, you fucking bitch. You acted like you were better than me, so I had no choice than to try to be your friend. To make you see that we were meant to be.”
Shivers rack my body as his mood goes from explosive to calm again.
“So I became your best friend. Watching all those stupid movies, doing all the bullshit to be your best friend, scaring off anyone else who tried to befriend you, just to have you ignore me anytime I brought up anything resembling a date. Do you know how hard it was to hear all about those dates from those apps? How badly I wanted to find those guys and slit their throats? Do you know there’s a weird sort of sound someone makes when you do that?”
His eyes take on an excited glow, and I don’t want to ask how he knows that.
“I—”
“I figured, what better way to convince you how perfect I was than to rescue you from your boogeyman? The purse perfume was easy. I grabbed it from your bag one day at school and snuck into your house while you were still there and dropped it in your bedroom. Just something little. Something to make you run to me. Instead he showed up. He was the one who got to rescue you, not me. But he could never feel the way I felt about you. So I had to show you how incompetent he was.”
“The flowers.”
He nods, his eyes glowing brighter.
“Again, I thought you’d come running, but you ran in the opposite fucking direction. To him.”
“You broke the cameras too,” I say.
“I did. After watching him fuck you on his car, he’s lucky I didn’t break him like that.”
“H-h-how…you were in Ohio.”
His laugh contains no humor and sends another cold chill down my spine.
“How fucking na?ve are you? I didn’t go anywhere. I don’t have family in Ohio, HG. I aged out of a group home when I turned eighteen. There’s no ‘Nolan Family Holiday.’ Not unless me eating a frozen Thanksgiving dinner counts. No, instead I sat in my apartment, watching your phone as it started to move.”
“I never gave you access to Find My Phone.” It was strange when he had mentioned it earlier, but I hadn’t caught it.
A small part of me had known though. Just not enough to keep my guard completely up. I trusted the enemy and this is what I got.
“Tsk tsk. You think that’s the only way I could track it? So much for big, bad security guard.”
“He’s not a security guard,” I argue.
“But he’s not smart enough to check your phone for apps that track you? I figured out where you were going, but I couldn’t figure out why. It was easy enough to drive the same direction. And what an eyeful I got when I hiked to that overlook. I didn’t take you for such a slut, Hannah Grace. But there you were spread-eagled on his fucking car.” His gaze drops to my breasts, his tongue slicking along his lips. When his hand drops to adjust himself in his track pants, I cringe.
“He’s lucky I didn’t end him right there. All I saw was red. But if I ended him, you wouldn’t end up with me. You’d mourn him.”
“Is that why you destroyed his car?”
“No, the car was because you guys seemed to be getting too comfortable and I knew I had to make another move. The cameras got the brunt of my rage the day I saw the two of you.”
After watching the video where he destroyed the car, I can only imagine how much violence he took out on the cameras.
“But no matter what I did, you didn’t choose me. You kept choosing him—a fucking murderer—over me, your best friend.”
“He’s not a murderer,” I say.
“You still don’t want to see it! He has you fucking brainwashed!” He reaches down, yanking on my wrist and pulling me upright.
I squeal, looking over my shoulder at Laura Leigh. She hasn’t moved.
“What did you do to her?”
I struggle against his grip and it tightens painfully.
“Stop fighting me. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“What did you do to my sister?” I ask again and try to hold still.
His grip lessens but he doesn’t let me go.
“She’s fine.”
“She’s not fine.” Tears stream down my cheeks, and I start to struggle against his grip again. “What did you do to her, you fucking psycho?”
If I thought his grip was painful before, it’s nothing compared to what it is now as he picks me up and slams me against the wall behind me. My head cracks against the drywall, stars popping in my vision.
“Had you been more concerned about her when she got to the school today than on getting eaten out on your desk, this wouldn’t have happened to her.”
I gasp and his smile is downright evil.
“That’s right, HG. I came down to your classroom after school to see if you’d tell me anything about the car and tried the handle. It was locked, but it wasn’t too hard to look in the window in the doorway. You really seem to have a thing for sex in public places. We could have some fun with that.”
The glint in his eyes has bile building in my throat.
“She could need help, Zach. I need to know what you did to her. What if she needs to go to the hospital? You think I’d want to be with you if you killed my sister?”
“It’s just a little Ambien in her wine. Just enough to knock her out to get her here. Quit being so fucking dramatic.” He’s so matter-of-fact about what he did. Like he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong.
Does he?
“You fucking drugged her?”
“I had to get you here, didn’t I? Although I considered letting things play out between us beforehand. Just enough to fuck her. It wouldn’t have been hard; she was practically begging for it. But then I realized that she might look like you but she wasn’t you. I didn’t want a copy of the original. I was saving myself for the real thing. For you.”
“I’m not going to be with you like that, Zach. I don’t love you.” I try to keep my voice calm, but under the exterior, I’m shaking.
What the hell did I get myself into?
“You do love me. You told me so yourself. And it wasn’t a lie.” His voice pitches at the end, becoming almost a screech. It’s like driving a needle into my temple, and I struggle not to show how much pain his voice is creating.
“Not like that, Zach. You were my best friend. That was it. That’s all that was ever going to be between us.”
“No! You’re going to learn to love me. If you let yourself. If you forget about him.”
His ranting shows how unhinged he is.
I shake my head. “No.”
His grip on my biceps is bruising where he still holds me against the wall.
“You’ll either choose to be with me, HG, or I’ll make it so you wished you had made a different choice.” His voice is a calm kind of seriousness, more terrifying than any of his outbursts so far, and he turns his attention to my sister.
“W-w-what do you mean? Don’t hurt her.”
“There are worse things than me hurting her physically, HG. What about the pain she would feel when her beloved older sister disappears? How would she feel if she never saw you again?”
“You wouldn’t kill me,” I say with more belief than I feel.
“You’re right, I wouldn’t.” My relief is short-lived as he keeps talking. “But I would kill for you to be mine. Indefinitely. I already have. I may not have family in Ohio, but I do have a house similar to this one there. I’ve been getting it ready for a while now. One just for us. It will be just you and me when I come to see you. But I’ll have to split my time. I’ll need to be there for Laura Leigh as she misses her sister, mourns her loss. And every time I come see you, I’ll bring you every detail of how I make her fall in love with me. Every detail of what I do to her to make her call my name when I fuck her. Every way I imagine it’s you as I slam inside her pussy. Every moment I count down until it’s you and me in the same positions. Maybe we should start right now.” He frees one of his hands and pulls more zip ties from his pocket. “I could use these on you and have you watch while I convince her that we’re at my apartment. That I’m feeling everything she is.”
He knocks my feet out from under me and my head hits the wall again, stunning me. The tie is around my ankles before I can fight back, my hands zip-tied in front of me.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
“You’re giving me no choice,” he says and presses a kiss to my temple, a gesture meant to comfort.
Maybe in his mind he is.
He moves away from me and toward Laura Leigh.
“Stop. Zach!” I struggle to sit up, leaning against the wall as a headache throbs in my skull.
“Shhh. Or I’ll gag you too,” he warns and leans down to Laura Leigh’s ear, nuzzling it much the same way Cole has woken me up a time or two. “Laura Leigh, sweetheart, you fell asleep.”
She murmurs and stretches against the bands, struggling against their grip. He brushes a kiss against her cheek and continues to murmur in her ear. Words I can’t hear, but I have to stop. I can’t let him do this to her.
“Zach!” I hiss and he looks up. “I…um…I changed my mind. I-I’ll be with you. Please. Just leave my sister alone.”
The smile is so much like the ones we’ve shared hundreds of times before, my heart shatters, discolored by the knowledge that he’s been playing me all along.
“How can I be sure you’re telling the truth? Maybe you need more incentive,” he says and slides his hand under the front of Laura Leigh’s shirt, pulling it up and exposing her stomach and the underside of her bra.
“No! Th-there has to be something else. Please. I’ll do anything else. We can leave here tonight and I’ll be with you. I’ll stay with you. But you have to leave my sister alone.”
“You’ll do anything?” He moves closer to me, and I breathe a sigh of relief even as I struggle to hold still as his hand reaches out to me.
“Yes.” I keep my gaze steady on his, needing him to see the truth.
“You’re not lying.” It’s more a statement than a question.
“No.”
I am willing to do anything he says if it means Laura Leigh is safe.
“Prove it,” he says.
“H-how?”
“Kiss me.” He raises an eyebrow, almost like he’s waiting for me to refuse.
Swallowing around the lump in my throat, I hold out my wrists.
“Cut me free, please?”
He reaches over, snagging the knife off the dirty mattress, and slices through the ties on my wrist and my feet.
“What are you waiting for?” His question is issued more like a challenge, and I realize my time is up.
Using the wall for its steadying support, I stand up and try to ignore the way the room spins around me.
You can do this. You have to do this .
I press my fingers into the wall behind me, pushing off and lifting them up and around his neck. He tugs me flush against him, and I resist the urge to gag at the bulge he rubs against my stomach.
“I love you, HG,” he says, licking his lips.
It’s my cue.
This is for Laura Leigh. This is for me.
Closing the distance, I hold my lips against his and my entire body rebels. I have to force myself to stand still. To not yank myself out of his arms. But just like I knew he would, he takes over the kiss as soon as our lips connect, stabbing his tongue down my throat. My stomach heaves and I have to fight the recoil that builds. His hands move from my hips to my ass and he squeezes roughly.
This is wrong. Everything is wrong. The urge to vomit is so strong, I swallow the bitter taste, and my stomach knots on itself, cramping with how hard I’m fighting my body’s natural revulsion to Zach’s kiss.
Pretend you’re kissing Cole .
I try, but Zach isn’t Cole. He doesn’t smell right. He doesn’t feel right. He isn’t Cole.
I have to make this convincing though. I need him distracted.
So I scrape my nails through his hair, moaning enough that he doubles his efforts. With my free hand, I move down, dragging an index finger down his chest to the waistband of his track pants before shifting to the front pocket of my jeans, my fingers closing over the small cylinder I stashed before I left the house. A little travel-size stocking stuffer I’ve had for years that has stayed tucked in the glove compartment of my car. I’d almost forgotten about it, my fingers only grazing it when I tossed my keys into the compartment earlier to hide them from Cole.
I palm the canister and pull my hand free as Zach breaks the kiss.
“That was better than I imagined,” he murmurs, squeezing my ass again and rubbing me on his erection.
I don’t say anything, but I doubt he needs me to. What I have to say would ruin whatever fantasy he’s woven in his head.
“Now for your second thing you need to do to save your sister. You’re going to call him and tell him you ran away from him because you don’t want to be with him.”
“Him?”
Why can’t Zach say Cole’s name?
“Your boyfriend.”
“Cole?”
I test my theory and am rewarded by a vein that pops on Zach’s forehead as his entire face turns bright red.
“Are you fucking more than one man?” he asks.
I flinch. I’ve never heard Zach talk like this, and I’m still trying to reconcile who he is with who I knew him to be.
“No.”
“Then you know who I mean.”
“I don’t have my phone.” I point in the direction where the electronic device lies scattered on the floor.
“Use mine.” He pulls his phone from his pocket. “Put it on speakerphone.”
“What do I tell him?”
“Fuck, do I have to think of everything?!” he screams again and my head throbs.
“I-I don’t know what to tell him that’ll make him back off. He’s…stubborn.”
And he is. Nothing I say—even what Zach wants me to tell him—is going to make him stop.
“Tell him…tell him that you’re tired of pretending with him. That you don’t see a future with him because he’s not who you need him to be. He couldn’t even figure out who was harassing you. And rather than be a man and find out, he came and whined to me about it. Me.” Zach laughs again, the laughter verging on the maniacal. “God, that was such a fucking high. And he had no idea.”
“You want me to tell him it was you?” I ask.
“Fuck, you really are a dumb bitch. No. I want you to tell him that you realized today that you love me. That you want to be with me. Calling him from my phone will clinch the deal.”
I stare at the phone, using the passcode he’s had me use when we’ve been out and I used his phone.
The irony that I know his passcode but not the real him is not lost on me.
“His number is in my contacts. Under Murderer,” he says.
I suck in a breath, fighting the sob that wants to break free. I gave Zach that ammunition over Cole. It was my fault. Mine for trusting Zach when he was the bad guy all along. Pulling up the contacts, I scroll until I do find one titled Murderer and click on it.
“Speakerphone,” Zach reminds me.
I click the icon and wait. But I don’t have to wait long.
“Zach, hey, man, what’s up?”
Zach nods at me.
“C-cole, it’s me.”
“Hannah Grace, I’ve been looking for you. Where are you?” His voice is calm, like he didn’t frantically text me after I ran out of the house.
I glance up at Zach. He points at the phone and then at Laura Leigh. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath, praying for strength.
“I’m with Zach. Cole, this…this isn’t working for me anymore.”
“This?” Cole asks.
“Us. I realized today that the two of us aren’t meant to be together. You’re my past. I l-love Zach and I want to be with him. I want you to leave my house and go home. Go back to LA.” Tears blur my vision as they run unchecked down my face and drop onto the carpet at my feet.
“What about whoever is after you?” he asks.
“You should have found him by now. The fact that you can’t means he’s not meant to be found. It’s time I accepted that and moved on. Zach will keep an eye on me. He’ll help me.”
“Hannah Grace?—”
“I’m sorry, Cole. Goodbye.”
I hang up the phone, a sob breaking free as Zach snatches the phone out of my hand.
“Quit your fucking blubbering. I’m doing you a favor. You don’t want to be with someone as stupid as he is.” Zach closes the distance between us, grabbing my hair and yanking it back so that I look up into his eyes. “Now kiss me again.”
I fight the grip on my hair, struggling with the throbbing pain in my head, as I shake it.
“No.”
“No?” He tugs harder and I bite my lip as the throb intensifies.
“F-first you have to do something for me. Cut Laura Leigh free. Let her go.”
“You have nothing to negotiate with, HG. Give me another kiss—a real one this time—and then maybe I’ll consider cutting Laura Leigh free,” he says.
I sigh, squeezing the canister still hidden in my hand.
“Fine.”
But he doesn’t release the grip on my hair, and I have to fight through the black that hovers at my vision as I lift to my tiptoes. He moves closer, releasing the grip on my hair, and I lift my hands like I did earlier. Only while one wraps around his neck, the other lifts in front of his face and I depress the can of pepper spray. This close, it hits his eyes, nose, and mouth and bounces back at me, stinging my eyes.
“Fuck!” he screams, pushing me away as he lifts his hands to his eyes.
I fall close to Laura Leigh, landing on my hip in a way that shoots pain through my toes as my head throbs from the jarring fall, but I fight through it, grabbing the knife he drops and ripping through the zip ties at Laura Leigh’s wrists and feet.
Zach is still screaming as he staggers blindly around, and my own eyes water.
“Leigh, you have to wake up. We have to go.” As I’m shaking her awake, her eyes open groggily for a moment before they widen at Zach’s screams.
“What’s going on?”
“We need to go. We need to run.” She staggers up and we race for the front door while Zach continues to shout behind us.
The door bursts open in front of us and I tuck Laura Leigh behind me, lifting the knife still in my hand.
“Honey Girl, it’s me. Murphy’s with me.”
“Cole.” I race forward, launching myself at him.
He catches me, holding me close to him and reaching out a hand for Laura Leigh.
“Cole?” she asks.
I don’t blame her for being confused. I haven’t even told her about Cole yet. Before he can respond, Murphy rushes past us, gun drawn while he charges down the hall in the direction of Zach’s voice.
“He’s the one…it was him all along,” I stutter out.
“We know. Come on. Let’s get out of here and I’ll tell you about it,” he whispers and brushes a kiss against my temple.
“Please,” I say and blink to clear the burning sensation in my eyes. “Laura Leigh?”
I lift my head from Cole’s chest to find my sister looking at me, eyes wide.
“I’m here. Can we get out of here though? This place is giving me a major case of the icks.”
I take a step, the throbbing in my head growing tenfold and the burning sensation of my eyes overwhelming me.
My next step makes me feel like my leg weighs two hundred pounds.
“Hannah Grace?” Laura Leigh’s voice is warped, and I try to turn my head to find her.
“Honey Girl!”
That voice follows me into the darkness, but I know I’m safe. Because he’s here.