Chapter Eight
THE WHITE DRESS he bought me is beautiful.
It’s made of delicate lace and embroidered flowers. It’s held up by two fragile spaghetti straps, and the silky fabric molds around my large breasts and flares around my big hips, hitting me just above the knees.
As I look myself up and down in the bathroom mirror, I realize I’d never pick out this dress, which would probably be doing myself a disservice.
Because it’s stunning. Not only due to the intricate needlework on the lace, but also because instead of hiding things like all my other clothes do, like the dress I wore to meet him did, this dress highlights them.
My pillowy breasts, my small waist, and my rounded hips that give me an hourglass figure.
It’s like he knows me more than I know myself. He knows how to turn what I think are my flaws into something beautiful.
Even though my hair’s all over the place, messy and unkempt, and my blue eyes are terrified, I do think I look pretty in the white dress.
At the courthouse.
Somehow in my perusal of this town from the car, I missed the big white building with the big white pillars. I missed the lettering on the front that said, “Broken Ridge County Clerk of District Court.”
I missed it, and now here I am, gripping the sink tightly because my knees are about to give out. I’m either about to hit my head on the ceramic on my way down, or I’m going to puke all over myself. Either way, I’m ultimately going to die.
Or at least, that’s what it feels like.
Like my life’s about to end. And it is, isn’t it?
It took me a bit to understand what he meant back in his car.
I couldn’t put two and two together. Not until we got inside the building, and he told me to go change in the bathroom, pointing toward the brown paper bag I was clutching to my chest like a shield.
That’s when it hit me. What he meant by the white dress in a brown bag, the courthouse, the daughter.
But I’m not the daughter.
I’m not even a Turner. I’m useless to him. I’m not the one he wants in a white dress. He shouldn’t be forcing me to mar—
Don’t say it. Don’t say that word.
I straighten up from the sink and exhale shakily, deciding something.
I’m going to tell him the truth.
That’s the only way. He needs to know I’m not Peyton, and forcing me to do what he wants me to do isn’t going to get him what he wants.
He’s wasting his time with me. He’s wasting his…
shooter friend’s time as well. Killing Brecken Turner over me, the daughter of the nanny and a ranch hand, isn’t going to get him his revenge.
I’m the wrong girl.
As I walk to the door, I know there’s every chance that once I tell him, he may kill me and Peyton’s brother anyway before going after the real Peyton, but it’s a chance I have to take.
Somehow I get to the door and manage to open it, and there he is.
All towering and broad-shouldered, a figure to be reckoned with, standing at the end of the hallway leading to the restrooms, waiting for me.
But he’s not standing alone; he’s got someone with him.
A cop.
Right there. Right by his side. And they’re absorbed in a conversation. So much so that they haven’t yet noticed me. Not even when I start walking toward them.
Slowly.
One foot in front of the other.
The cop—the sheriff—is the one talking while my kidnapper remains silent.
He has his arms folded across his chest as he listens, and to most, he may appear bored and aloof.
But somehow I know he’s not. He’s annoyed.
If that pulse in his jaw is anything to go by.
How strange that I somehow know him, too, even though we only met two days ago.
Finally, his focus shifts, his dark eyes home in on me, and I stumble slightly with the force of his stare.
It’s powerful and heavy. Thick and hot.
His eyes move. They go from the top of my head to my feet, all in one go, in a hurry.
As if he doesn’t want to miss anything. But once he’s done that, taken me in as a whole, he goes slowly.
He stares at me deliberately. He spends a lot of time on my neck, the base of my throat, and I wonder if he’s thinking about his fingers wrapped around it from this morning.
Before he moves on to my chest, which is trembling with my racing breaths.
He watches me breathe for a long time, as if he’s trying to learn how to do it himself.
As if he’s forgotten how to take the air in, and maybe he has because I haven’t seen his chest move even once all this time.
And when I’m just about to reach him, his gaze drops down to my thighs.
I don’t know what he sees down there except meaty flesh, but whatever it is, it makes him unfold his arms and finally turn to me.
It makes him fist his hands by his sides.
At last, my walk down the hallway ends, and I come to a stop a few feet away from him. I don’t have to wonder if every girl who takes a walk down the aisle feels what I’m feeling in this moment. Or if every guy who waits for her at the end feels what he’s feeling. I already know they don’t.
I already know that a girl isn’t supposed to feel this intense rage and a man isn’t supposed to do this for revenge.
Intense rage at the fact that he made me, forced me, to wear a white dress, while he himself is dressed in all black like this is his funeral.
Like his life is ending rather than mine.
And then he has the audacity to look at me like that.
To stare at me in a way that made my skin all heated. That branded me. Without my permission.
He has the audacity to imprint himself on my body without my consent.
Just when his tightly clenched jaw moves and he opens his mouth to say something, I turn toward the sheriff and blurt out, “Help.”
My sudden plea shocks the sheriff.
It shocks me too. I didn’t know I was going to do that until I did.
And now that I have, I can’t go back. I have to take a chance, especially when it’s right there.
Only a couple of feet away. Turning to him completely, I grab the sheriff’s arm as if it’s my lifeline, and Jesus Christ, it may very well be.
“I need help. You need to help me. I’ve been kidnapped.
H-he kidnapped me. This… this man, he kidnapped me. ”
The sheriff’s frown thickens as his eyes jerk over to him behind me, and I grab his sleeve in urgency.
“No, look at me. Look at me!” My frantic voice brings the sheriff’s attention back to me, even though he still looks confused.
“Whatever he told you, it’s a lie, okay?
I don’t know what you were t-talking about but he’s lying.
He’s a liar. He just got out of prison. He’s on parole and you need to…
You need to arrest him, call his parole officer. ”
When it looks like the sheriff’s going to say something, I dig my nails into his arm and keep going, my voice even louder than before: “Two days ago in Bozeman. H-he drugged me, okay? And then h-he put me in the trunk of his car. Look”—I show him the marks on my wrists—“he tied me up. With ropes. I have evidence. And then he brought me here. He said he…”
“Come with me.”
This is from the sheriff.
Even though I’m hyperventilating and dizzy, I can still make out the concern on his face and also in his tone. And it’s so relieving, this reaction, that I almost burst into tears. I almost crumple down to the floor.
I don’t, though.
I hold on to the sheriff—Cooper, his nameplate says—even harder. “Please, I want to go home. Just…”
“Let’s go,” he says and begins walking.
And since I still haven’t let go of his arm and my fingers have a death grip on his sleeve, I go with him.
The corridor we’re making our way through is crowded.
It has people coming and going, men with uniforms everywhere.
This has to be the safest place or the second-most-safe place other than the police station, right?
There’s cops all over. I mean, they can stop him, can’t they?
Sheriff Cooper, even though shorter and stockier in build, can stop him and that shooter friend of his.
On that thought, Sheriff Cooper stops at a door and enters.
It’s an unoccupied office; the space is dominated by a giant desk, and the room holds a few other things I have no hope of paying attention to.
I also do not have any hope of keeping it together and not jumping practically a mile when Sheriff Cooper abruptly stops, spins around, and thunders, “What the fuck?” He stabs his finger over my shoulder and keeps going: “I thought you had it under control.”
I go still at his words.
I watch Sheriff Cooper’s mouth open and his angry face contorting as he continues, “What, you’ve got nothing to say?
She almost got us caught back there.” Leaning forward, he warns, “You got any idea the favors I had to call in to get your fucking license?” He shakes his head.
“Should’ve said no the moment you called.
I knew this whole Grayson-Turner bullshit would land me in a world of trouble one day.
” He stabs his finger again. “You listen to me, Arsen, if this comes back to me, I’m gonna lose my badge.
Hell, I’m gonna lose my life and I ain’t fucking dying for no one, you hear me?
Not even for a Grayson. No matter how much goddamn money you throw at me. ”
As soon as the sheriff finishes, a click echoes in the room.
It’s the office door closing and it’s mostly soft, especially after the tirade by the sheriff.
Still, it serves as a wake-up call. It’s not as if I hadn’t been able to figure it out; I was slow figuring things out in the car, but this I got the moment the sheriff opened his mouth.
But now that the door’s been closed, and I’m trapped inside with not one but two people, two people who mean me harm, my body is catching up, and I slowly turn around.
His presence hits me like a sucker punch.