Chapter 4 Octavia
FOUR
OCTAVIA
“It means you’re mine.”
His voice plays on repeat in my head as I try to decide how I feel about his confession, but honestly, I don’t know how I feel.
I don’t feel like I know anything anymore, and even if I did, I don’t know if I can trust myself.
I thought I knew who I was, but then everything that’s happened with Abel has proved otherwise.
I was blind to him. I thought he loved me.
I thought he was Mr. Right. I thought he was my person.
But it turns out, he was only mine if I was somebody else, some creation he molded in the way he wanted.
What’s worse is that I had no idea he was squashing me into a box that was the wrong shape for me until I was already misshapen and deformed.
Abel might be an asshole, but everything that happened was as much my fault as it was his. I allowed myself to be manipulated…twice.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
I didn’t learn my lesson the first time. I let him do it again, and this time, I don’t have the excuse of love and sex and infatuation to blame. This time, I was just an idiot.
“It means you’re mine.” The memory of Knight’s calm, perfectly reasonable claiming words replay in my head again, pulling me from my own internal castigations and back to the present.
Knight thinks I’m his. He came all the way to Rapid City to bring me back to Montana. To bring me home. To him.
“Doll.”
A solid, firm hand lands on my thigh, and I snap my head to the side to stare at the man it belongs to.
Blinking, I wait for him to say something else, but instead of speaking, he just looks at me expectantly, the same way he’s been looking at me since my brain crashed after his confession earlier.
“It means you’re mine, Doll, and I’m taking you home.”
His words and the implications behind them did something to me, and everything he said and did after that is a blur.
Abel would have demanded a response, but I don’t think Knight expected me to say anything.
I’m fairly sure he didn’t say anything else or try to explain himself.
Instead, he collected my makeup bag from the bathroom, grabbed my still full suitcase, took my hand, and led me out of the Airbnb and down to a car he’d parked on the street outside the building.
Before I even really processed what was happening, I was on an airplane, and we were in the air.
Blinking, I focus my attention on him and find him still staring at me intently.
“What about the rest of my things?” I finally ask, my voice rough.
“I’m handling it,” he says simply, turning his attention back to the panel of controls in front of us.
Did I mention that the airplane we’re in…
Knight is flying? Right now, I’m sitting in the co-pilot seat because, apparently, Knight has his pilot’s license.
He even pulled all of his certifications out of his bag when I started to freak out and showed them to me.
He can fly several different kinds of airplanes and helicopters, and when he said he was taking me home, he actually meant he was flying me home on an airplane that only holds six people.
I’m not afraid of flying, at least not on a big, normal airplane. But this teeny tiny tin can with wings is terrifying, as is the view of nothing but sky ahead of us, and the view of the ground not as far away as it should be below us.
Honestly, I’m not sure if everything that’s happened today is real.
It’s not even lunchtime, and so far, a guy I barely know has turned up at my rental, undressed me, bathed me, redressed me, done my hair, told me I’m beautiful and perfect and…
his, then drove me to a private airfield and put me on a very, very, very small airplane.
Later, when my feet are back on terra firma, I’m sure I’ll think of a thousand protests, comebacks, and reasons I should have used to explain why I couldn’t just leave Rapid City but an hour ago when he so calmly said, “It means you’re mine, Doll, and I’m taking you home.
” I couldn’t think of a single reason why letting him just take control wasn’t the exact right thing to do.
“Octavia?” Knight says, using my full name for the very first time.
I don’t hate my name. In fact, I think it’s pretty cool. But most people call me Octy, mainly because it’s easier to say. Only I don’t think he’s called me anything but Doll since he stepped into my Airbnb and took control of my absentee brain.
“I’m not okay,” I blurt, answering a question he hasn’t asked.
Something about what I just said must be funny, because his lips twitch at the corner, and he chuckles softly.
Oh, good lord. The hint of a smile changes his face, and the timbre of his amusement vibrates through me, making my nipples pebble beneath the bra he picked out and helped me put on.
Oh my god, I let him pick out my underwear and then help me put them on. I just stood there and let him dress me. I let him dress me after I let him undress me. I let him lift me into the tub and wash me.
Reality rushes in on me like the black hole that’s been surrounding me has collapsed, and everything I’ve let happen today is being sucked back into me at a million miles an hour. “What is happening right now?” I gasp.
“We’re in my Daher TBM 900, cruising at an altitude of just below thirty thousand feet. We should be landing in Bozeman in about forty-five minutes,” Knight says succinctly, like he’s making a report.
Squeezing my eyes tightly closed, I inhale slowly, filling my lungs with air, then exhale it out again.
Repeating the action twice more, I slowly open my eyes, expecting to find myself waking up on the uncomfortable bed at my Airbnb, and realizing that Knight, the tub, and the plane were all just a dream.
Only as my lids part, all I see is bright blue sky and the eternity of nothingness ahead of us through the plane’s window.
It’s all real. I really am on a plane right now. Knight really did show up at my door. He really did tell me I’m his, and he really did bathe me, dress me, and then take my hand and lead me away from everything that’s happened in the last few months, like he was the key to making everything better.
My thoughts are racing, but Knight’s presence glows bright, but intense and calm, beside me.
Turning my head, I look at him. He’s a gorgeous man.
His hair is dark with streaks of gray starting to show here and there.
It’s not exactly styled, but trimmed short in a military cut that isn’t exactly fashionable, but suits him.
His skin is tan but smooth, with only a few lines at the sides of his eyes.
His lips are almost pouty, his features austere, and he’s more rugged than beautiful.
Manly. If we were animals, he’d be the alpha.
As if sensing I’m staring at him, he turns and looks at me, his blue eyes, the color of the cloudless sky ahead of us, settle on me, and the burning intensity of them drags all the oxygen from the air, making me feel like I can’t breathe.
“What happened to your pinball table?” he asks without preamble, his jaw clenching, changing his entire demeanor from placid to lethal and cold in the blink of an eye.
I consider lying to him because part of me doesn’t want to tell him what really happened. I don’t know if that’s because admitting what happened out loud will make me cry, or because I’m worried telling him will only exacerbate how dumb I already feel.
“Abel, my ex, destroyed it.” The words are out before I can stop myself.
“Accidentally?” Knight asks slowly.
“No,” I whisper, ashamed to admit it.
“I see,” he says, the two words sounding so dangerous that goose bumps pebble my skin. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Deal with what?”
“Everything,” he says simply, like it’s the most obvious answer in the world.
“What is happening?” I ask with a self-deprecating scoff. “I feel like I’m going to wake up in a minute, and this will all have been a dream.”
“I’d like you to dream about me,” he says straight-faced, his tone even with no hint of teasing.
“It means you’re mine, Doll, and I’m taking you home.”
His words whisper in my mind, taunting me with undeniable proof that everything that’s happened this morning is very real. “What you said about me being yours. What did you mean?” I ask, unable to stop myself, even though I think I already know the answer.
Rockhead Point is a weird town. Something happens to the people who live there, and it’s either an ancient magic or a dangerous chemical leak, but something messes with the inhabitants, tricking them into relationships that likely never would have happened anywhere else in the country.
“You’re mine, Doll,” Knight tells me again.
His voice is so serious, so sure, that I can’t find the words to disagree with him. So instead, I snap, “You know that my name is not actually Doll, don’t you?”
He literally called me Octavia two minutes ago, so I know he knows my name.
But I’m confused and overwhelmed, and I have no idea how to process everything that’s happened so far today and why I’m not freaking out.
Being an asshole to him feels easier than addressing the fact that his claiming me doesn’t feel as wrong as it should.
“Your name is Octavia Ruth Hodkins. Your birthday is August 30. You’re twenty-three years old.
Your style is gothic Lolita, but sometimes you lean more toward gothic, and other times you like to shock people by wearing bright colors.
You’re a talented tattoo artist and a good friend.
You lost your dad in a car accident when you were a child, and your mom six years ago to cancer.
You have an older brother who lives in Australia, but consider your friends as closer family than him,” Knight states, like he’s reading the information from a file.
Blinking, I stare at him as he recites facts about me like we’ve known each other for a lifetime, not like we’ve only spoken to each other a couple of times.