Chapter Five
I CAN’T SEE.
My hands are tied. My feet are tied too.
I’m lying on my side, and there’s a throbbing pain in my shoulder. I’m trying to think why. I’m trying to think where I am. Then I try to move. My hands, my legs, my shoulder, anything that I can think of. Which is when I realize I’m in a box.
No, wait. I think… I think I’m somewhere else. Somewhere much scarier. Much, much. Because this thing that I’m in is moving. It’s jostling me. Jolting and bumping and… Holy God, I’m in a car.
I’m in a trunk.
I’m blindfolded and all tied up in the trunk of a car, and I’m being taken somewhere. Oh, my fucking God ! I’m being kidnapped. By Bo.
No, by a Grayson.
I am, aren’t I? He’s kidnapping me. He is… I can’t breathe. I can’t…
This isn’t real. This isn’t… happening. This has to be a mistake. This has to be…
I’m wheezing and thrashing and hitting my feet, my shoulder, my palms against the walls in an attempt to break free.
Even through my mad panic, I know it’s foolish, that I’ll never be able to get free.
Still, I keep doing it and doing it and fucking doing it.
Until it becomes my downfall and drains out whatever energy I had.
And I slip away.
There’s a head on the wall.
A bear’s head. It has the meanest yellow eyes I’ve ever seen. I’m trying to determine if it’s real; it can’t be, right? I mean…
Wait.
Wait a second.
I can see. I can fucking see!
As soon as my brain registers that, I knife up into a sitting position and frantically look around.
Instead of a car or whatever vehicle the box was in, I’m out of the box and in a room now.
A room with walls made of dark wood and decorated with animals’ heads.
There’s not one, not two, but three bears’ heads surrounding me.
Three.
In addition to a pair of antlers. What the…?
The room is sparsely occupied, so there isn’t much to see except a chest of drawers to my left, made of the same dark wood as the walls and the floor, and a nightstand. Again, dark and wooden. Oppressive. And then there’s the bed that I’m currently sitting in.
I look down at myself, and the first thing I notice is the burns.
Rope burns around my wrists. All red and angry.
My dress from yesterday—somehow, I know enough time has passed that it’s tomorrow—is all dirty and streaked with dirt and grease.
A sheet covers my lap, dark like the rest of the decor and stark against the backdrop of my white dress.
The sheet is scratchy, as if it hasn’t been used in a while, but it’s warm.
Meaning somehow I’m the first person to end its disuse, and I’ve been doing that for possibly a few hours now.
Oh my God, what is this place?
What the fuck is this place, and what am I doing here? What…
I spring out of the bed, but as soon as my bare feet hit the hardwood floor, I realize how weak I am.
How shaky and jittery, and how the entire room spins.
I’m going to throw up. I am. I feel the bile rising.
But somehow, some way, I manage to drag in a breath and keep the contents of my stomach in.
When I get my bearings back, my eyes zero in on the door right in front of me.
And I run.
I don’t think about it. I don’t think about what I’m going to find on the other side of it.
All I know is that I need to get to it. I need to turn that silver knob, open the door, and get out of here.
I need out, out, out of this oppressive room where I can’t seem to catch my breath.
And I’m there. I’m right there, my arm stretched out, fingers within touching distance of the knob, when it happens.
When something flies through the air—I feel it pass by me in a whoosh, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up in a sudden chill—and thunks itself into the door.
A knife.
A pocketknife with a black handle and a sharp and glittery blade.
It’s barely an inch away from my head, and the thought of that gap closing, and that blade lodging itself somewhere else other than the solid wood, makes me clench my eyes shut.
It makes my heart pound so loudly that it could’ve been knocking at the door that the knife—and me—is stuck to right now.
But no amount of mayhem in my body could’ve prevented that voice from reaching me.
That rough and deep, unused-as-the-sheet-over-my-body, voice.
“Wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Crazily, my initial thought is that this is probably the very first time he’s spoken since we met in the café.
Like he said his last words to me and then didn’t speak up at all until now.
Why that would matter, why that would even enter my brain, I don’t know.
All I know is that he’s here. He’s behind me, and he just threw a knife at me.
He threw. A knife at me.
A knife.
Oh God, oh God; oh God, what is happening? What is this? What is…
“You run, I’ll catch you,” he goes on, raising goose bumps up and down my body. “Be a waste of both our times.”
I should turn around now. Instead of standing stuck to the door, staring at the knife that could’ve killed me, I should face him. I should show some strength. Even through the mind-numbing fear, I know that.
But I can’t move.
I’m shaking like a leaf, but I cannot make myself move.
Not even when I hear him take in a deep breath, as if sighing with impatience, followed by rustling in the background.
Then, “We’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s not a lot of places that you can run to.
Plus, I don’t really think you can run at all.
The drug I gave you takes a while to wear off, and until it does, you’re gonna be disoriented and wobbly.
So your best option is to stay here, get some rest.”
Drug.
He drugged me? He… Oh my God. In a flash, I whirl around and there he is.
Or at least, there his naked back is.
He’s standing at the chest of drawers, and his back is turned.
There’s a towel wrapped around his narrow waist, but other than that, he isn’t wearing much of anything.
I glance to the side where I see another door, ajar and with steam wafting out of it, telling me that he was in there, probably taking a shower.
I was so occupied with everything else that I failed to notice there was a bathroom in here as well.
But I’m noticing now.
His hair’s wet, all dark and dripping drops of water. I watch them sluice their way down his thick, muscular neck before getting lost in the expanse of his back. And expanse is right because it’s huge. It’s muscular with dense, fanned-out shoulder blades and the sleek, tapering line of his spine.
I was right when I said he reminded me of the mountains I see through my window every day. Unwavering and strong, made of thick, burly muscles. They make him look like a fighter who could crush anyone with his fists. An outlaw, a criminal who snatches people off the streets.
Who snatched me.
I feel the bile rising up again, but I push it down because I’m not finished perusing his back. Because scary strong muscles aren’t the only thing that needs my attention; there’s something else on his back that needs to be studied. Up by his left shoulder blade, specifically.
A letter.
It’s the first letter of my name. An R; but most importantly, it’s a brand. Like the one you see on animals, on cattle. Put there by a hot, scalding iron; and oh my God, it’s insane. Why does he have a letter branded on his back?
A second later, my thoughts disintegrate because he drops his towel—the only thing that was covering him—and I clench my eyes shut again. I clench them and clench them so hard that I start to feel dizzy again. My knees start to shake, and my stomach feels queasy. I don’t know if—
“You can open your eyes now,” he says.
And they pop open.
The first thing I notice is that he’s covered. He has on a shirt and pants. I can’t tell very many details about them, other than they’re dark-colored, because my focus is on other things.
Like his face.
I know I saw him only yesterday, but I’m looking at him like I’m seeing him for the first time. And maybe I am because a day ago I thought he was the man of my dreams, but today I know he’s from my nightmares.
I know there hasn’t been any mistake at all. No matter how badly I want it to be, I know this isn’t a mix-up. I know he isn’t Bo Porter. He’s a Grayson.
His eyes are as dark as they were yesterday, but now I can picture them glittering in the night, as if they belong to a wild animal, a predator evolved to see in the pitch-black.
His jaw is still as stubbled as yesterday—maybe more so—but today I think the growth could be as sharp as the blade still inches away from my face.
His cheekbones are high and peaked just like they were at the café, but today they look like dangerous cliffs that you could fall off of and plunge to your death.
God, he’s a death trap, isn’t he?
His entire body. His face.
But nothing—not even the pain of death—could diminish one thing about his beauty. If anything, now that I know who he is, it all makes sense. Why I felt so afraid. Why he looked so threatening. Why his beauty felt heartbreaking. Because it is.
But what was he doing at the café? How did he know to be there? How did he know to order those things for me, that I only told Bo about? How…
“How do you feel?” he asks, leaning against the dresser now.
My tongue is sticking to the roof of my mouth, but somehow I unglue it. Pressing myself to the door, I say, “You… you d-drugged me?”
He roves those predator eyes over my face. “Had to.”
I dig my nails into the door. “H-had to?”
“Couldn’t have you screaming when I put you in the trunk of my car.”
His words cause a massive shiver to go through my body, making the rope burns on my wrists tingle. I have to drag in a shaky breath so I can keep talking: “What… what is this place?”
His eyes are boring into mine, his features blank. “A hunting cabin.”
“Did you”—I take in another shaky breath—“k-kill them?”