Chapter 31
Sammy
I wake up the next morning vibrating with both excitement and something that feels a lot like regret.
I still have the echoes of Bear and Cameron on my skin, the feel of them in my soul, and I stay in bed for several long moments, remembering the way they touched me yesterday.
Their murmured praises as they cleaned me up afterward and the feast they cooked for dinner.
The soft, muted laughter and the night spent lounging on the couch between them, watching old rom coms.
I feel warm and fuzzy inside in a way I’ve never experienced before, and I know it’s come from the two of them–Bear with his abrupt, intense passion and Cameron with his serious, steady smile and wonderful hands.
They’ve somehow taken me between them and made me feel like I’m the most cherished person who ever lived.
It’s not a feeling I’m used to, and something inside me wants to fight it. Wants to kick and scream and say I never wanted anything like that.
But laying here in bed, I feel my toes curling in pleasure and my mouth lifting in a sly grin, and I know I don’t want to fight it. I want to lay back and relive every moment of last night–every moment of the last week–to make sure I don’t lose the feeling Bear and Cameron have given me.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that shit.
Because I need to get up, get dressed, and get out of this house before the sun comes up if I’m going to get down the hill and to the cafe before Cam realizes I’m missing.
I might need Bear and Cam like I need air and water and food.
But I also have a date with my father, and I’m not willing to miss it.
I glance at my phone again, narrow my eyes, and then look at the cafe in front of me.
This is the address my father texted me, and I know the time is right–I’ve checked that five times at least–but there’s no one here.
The parking lot is empty and there’s nothing else in this area.
The cafe sits in a small open spot in the midst of a heavily forested area an hour from Wood, the trees stretching up around the building like they’re trying to hide it from someone.
It’s quiet and peaceful here, nothing but the sound of birds echoing through the air, and normally I’d be twirling through the parking lot, face to the sky and a grin on my face as I soak in the sense of isolation.
Right now, I’m not doing any twirling.
Because I had to take a deserted dirt road to get here, and there’s no one else around.
The cafe isn’t even open, and by the look of the peeling paint and cracked windows, it hasn’t been open for quite some time.
Something’s wrong.
Something’s really wrong.
And I’m far enough from town and its lone cell tower that I don’t have any cell coverage.
I checked that too, the moment I got here and realized that the place was deserted. Now I look again, desperate with a fear that I can’t quite name, but the result is the same.
No bars.
Not even an option for SOS.
Shit.
I turn back toward Cam’s truck and head for it, my feet scuttling through a layer of dried pine needles on the asphalt as I walk.
Then I realize there’s no reason to be walking. I’m here on my own. I don’t need to try to pretend to be nonchalant about this.
The thought has barely passed through my brain before I break into a sprint, my heart hammering in time with the pattering of my feet as I race for the truck.
I don’t know what’s got me so spooked when this place is deserted–it’s not like there’s someone hiding in the cafe with guns or something–but my senses are screaming that this is wrong-wrong-wrong and that something bad is going to happen.
It’s too quiet here, too deserted, and too far away from town.
The dirt road had barely been traveled and that building looks like it hasn’t seen customers in years.
Deserted parking lot. Hour from town. By myself. No Cameron, and no cell coverage.
My nervous system is now screaming this list at me, after having kept quiet for the fucking hour it took me to get here.
And though I love adrenaline just as much as the next girl–more, probably–I prefer the kind I find myself, jumping off a bridge or standing and waiting for a train to come too close. Stuff I can control.
Fear I can manage.
Not this haunted-carnival-deserted-building-spooky-nowhere sort of adrenaline.
I want to go home, and as my feet fly across the cracked asphalt, all I can think about is Cam and how he doesn’t know where I am or have any way to track me, and how fucking stupid I was to leave him a note that didn’t tell him anything except the vaguest of details.
I should have given him the exact address of the place.
The time I was supposed to be here. The name of the man I was going to meet.
Christ, I should have woken him up and made him come with me.
Except I didn’t, because I’d realized exactly what he would see: me trying to meet a man who might very well attempt to convince me to move out of town.
Move away from Cameron.
I hadn’t wanted to hurt him or make him nervous, and I’d thought that was a good idea at the time, but now that I’m here on my own and no one is here to save me if something goes wrong, I realize how monumentally stupid that was.
God damn my need for adventure and stupid decision-making. Fuck these bad choices and the constant search for something exciting.
I want Cameron.
I want Bear.
And neither of them is here to protect me from whatever has my instincts screaming with warning.
Shit, shit, shit.
I increase my pace, racing for the truck and trying to figure out the best way to get back to the road, and am nearly there when another car comes screeching into the parking lot, all black paint and dark windows, the driver wearing sunglasses that cover half his face and his mouth set in a grim line.
And when he screeches to a halt right next to me, jumps out of the car, and comes for me pressing a rag across my mouth, I fight him as hard as I can.
But he’s bigger and stronger than me, his hand pressing the rag down until it’s almost inside of my mouth, and before long I’m forced to take a deep, shuddering breath.
Chemicals fill my mouth and nose, bringing an acidic tang I’ve never experienced before, and I know in that moment that I’m being drugged.
I’m being kidnapped.
And Cameron and Bear are still asleep in our house in Wood, with no idea that any of this is happening.
When I wake up again I’m in a brightly lit room, the ceiling high above me and light flooding in through windows to my right.
I frown at the ceiling, trying to place the long beams and boards, all rough wood, but I don’t recognize it.
We had low ceilings at Aunt Sue’s house, and Bear’s ceilings aren’t much better.
Those aren’t the ceilings of a small house. They belong in something big. Almost palatial.
I turn my face slowly to the right, looking for the window, and find instead the back of a cream-colored couch, both too expensive and too clean to belong in Wood. I move my fingers across the fabric and find it soft and springy.
Definitely new.
Definitely expensive.
Something is very, very wrong here.
My eyes move quickly around the room, taking in a range of tasteful decorations, all done in shades of beige, and paintings that do nothing to make me feel any better. There’s no color anywhere. Nothing flashy or handmade.
Nothing that would exist in the small, slightly beat-up homes of town.
The memory of the man in the black car slides quickly into my brain then, like it’s just remembered that it needs to make an appearance, and I gasp.
Shit. That man came for me and pressed a rag over my mouth, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in a room with expensive furnishings and beige everything.
Christ, where the fuck am I and who brought me here?
I turn my head in the other direction, trying to move as slowly as possible so I can take in the room, but everything’s become a blur of beige and white, my mind canceling vision as it puts all its energy toward trying to think.
Trying to plan.
Cameron and Bear don’t know where I am. They don’t know how long I’ve been gone or who I was meeting. All they have is a general reference about the direction I went.
And they may very well still be asleep.
God, I’m in trouble. I wanted an adventure and to meet someone who might be my father, and I’m so used to taking risks that I didn’t stop to fucking think about how big this one is.
And here we are. In more trouble than I’ve ever experienced and with no plan to get back out again.
Then I see the man sitting next to me on the couch, watching me carefully, and freeze.
“Welcome back, Sammy,” he says.
The fog disappears from my brain in seconds and I sit up sharply, suddenly sure of what I need to do. “Who the fuck are you and how do you know my name?” I snap. “Where am I? Where’s my truck? And who the everlasting fuck gave you the right to drug me and take me away from it?”
I’m up and moving before I’m finished speaking, already intent on getting out of this house and back into the woods, but he puts a hand out, grabs my wrist, and yanks me back down.
“Sit down before you fall, girl. That drug’s not out of your system yet.
As for your questions, I drugged you because I’ve been watching you long enough to know you weren’t going to come quietly, and I needed to get you here so I could explain some things.
You’re in my vacation house. Your truck is still at the cafe.
And I suspect I have the right to want to see you, as I’m your father. ”
The world freezes around me like someone just hit the pause button on a movie and I stop breathing, everything turning slow and muddied.
My father.
My father?
This man drugged me and kidnapped me, then brought me here because he thinks he has some right to me, and is now sitting there calmly explaining all of this like I should just accept it?
And he’s claiming to be my father?
I breathe out slowly and try to process the thoughts raging through my brain. This man kidnapped me and brought me here to talk to me. He claims to be my father. He didn’t think I’d come voluntarily.
He’s been watching me.
I pause on that for a moment, then remember the thoughts I had earlier about a real family. Someone who looked like me and shared my blood.
People I could claim as my own based on more than just liking them.
And the idea of the kidnapping and a drug-soaked cloth start to melt, like candy that’s come too close to a fire, and my eyes are flying over his face, looking for anything that might be familiar. Eyes like mine, or the turn of his lips. The cheekbones or the skin or set of his head.
I don’t see anything. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there, and I’m so entranced with the idea–so breathless with excitement–that I put my suspicions to the side. Just for a moment.
Just because I might be looking at someone important, and on the edge of the best adventure of my life.
“You’re my father?” I breathe.