Chapter 33
He sent me to my bedroom after those angry men left last night. Didn’t use quite the same commanding voice as he did with them, but it was close. Then he locked up the whole house except my bedroom door—I could hear his footsteps on the creaking wood going from one window to the next, slamming the wooden shutters and latching them. He didn’t come to see me before he left the house and locked the front door too.
I felt like I was inside some cocoon rather than a prison. Kind of like being inside the house that gets swept up by a tornado—where everything is bright and sunny in the eye, but all around it, the world is whooshing by, getting destroyed by the horrible wind and rain. That’s how it feels when we’re alone too. When he’s making me come like nothing I ever imagined possible.
Is that only because I know I’ll die soon so I’m making the best of it?
My mom always said that was the best way to live. She spent a large portion of her life as a club whore, not getting treated well at all. My dad agrees with her, although he spent a large part of his life a prisoner and not getting treated very well at all either.
I wish I could speak to them. I wish I could call them and tell them I’m just fine. That I’m making the best of it and that I’m sorry for being stupid enough to trust a strange biker in this time of war. I should’ve known better.
The thing is, he fooled me. He said all the right things and did all the right things too. And when he had me on the hook, he flipped the script and brought me here on the end of a chain.
How many books have I read where that was the main plot?
Too many.
Maybe that’s why this whole thing doesn’t scare me as much as it should. Or maybe that’s just because of how ferociously he sent those three men away last night when they came for me. No way he did that just because he wants to kill me himself.
I went over and over all that for the entire night. Didn’t sleep a wink.
I’ve been sitting by the window of my bedroom, watching the stars slowly disappearing from the dark sky and light start rising from behind the hills. At first the light was just a band of silvery white against the blue, but it kept growing, kept expanding, kept pushing away the darkness. If I wasn’t as tired as I am, maybe I’d see some significance in that.
The sun revealed a small family cemetery beneath an old oak tree in my direct line of sight. Leaves are still clinging to the branches, black in the darkness, golden as light rose. I heard Tyler’s bike ride up. I knew it was him because I’d somehow know that sound anywhere. But he didn’t come into the house. If I wasn’t as tired as I am, I might wonder about that. And stay put when I see him climb the small elevation that leads to the cemetery. He sat down beside it, leaning on the tree trunk. If I was smarter, maybe I’d just stay inside.
Instead, I find the single pair of shoes they packed for me—my old pair of red Chuck Taylors—then climb out of the living room window and head up to that cemetery as well. It’s so weird he told them to pack my stuff when they abducted me. What kinda kidnapper does that?
It’s cold outside, but there’s no wind. My footsteps barely make a sound as I approach the tree. Tyler’s eyes are closed as though he’s fast asleep and doesn’t hear me. But he opens them once I’m standing over him, the icy plain in them especially empty and beautiful today.
“You shouldn’t be out here, Eden,” he says.
“Because someone might hurt me?” I ask and sit down beside him on the cool, dry earth.
He shrugs. “Yeah.”
“But you’re not gonna hurt me, are you?” I ask, looking very closely into his eyes to get the full answer. I don’t—they remain as desolate as ever as he doesn’t answer my question.
“What do you think this is, Eden?” he asks after a while. “A fictional story like in one of your books?”
This time I don’t answer. Maybe he’s right. Maybe the shock of getting abducted locked my mind into thinking I’m in one of my favorite dark romance books where nothing truly bad ever happens, especially not in the end. Where every abduction ends in a happily ever after and true love conquers all. I probably imagined true love blossoming between us for the same reason. Because my mind is always at least partly stuck in some book. But I’m too tired to even worry about that.
“This is real, Eden,” he says. “You’re here so we can get revenge on Devil’s Nightmare MC. And I will hurt you to get that.”
Maybe he’s tired too. Because there’s no fire in his voice and nothing changes in the peaceful plains in his eyes as he says it.
“I don’t think you will,” I say. “And I don’t think I’m just stuck in some book in my head. I see you, Tyler. And I don’t think this is who you are.”
He scoffs. “Which part? The one who abducted you? Or the one who sat through boring old movies with you?”
The look in his eyes finally changes. Turns manic. Crazy almost. Angry the way it was when he sent those guys away last night.
“Was everything that happened before we came here a lie?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I figured out what you wanted and gave it to you. And that’s why you’re here now, imagining we’re in love or whatever it is you’re doing.”
I look away because I no longer know what is real and what’s just a figment of my wishful thinking. Those words hurt more than his knife ever could, I’m sure.
There are five tombstones here. One larger one, three smaller, all weathered to a smooth surface, making it impossible to read the names that were once on them. A husband and three kids dead, the wife left alone in this world? Too sad to think about.
“How is hurting me to hurt the Devils gonna make anything better?” I ask. “They’re just gonna kill you and all your friends in the end.”
“Not if I kill them first.”
“You won’t.”
He scoffs again. “Because you think they’re unbeatable. But that’s just a fairytale.”
I shake my head. “Because I know they won’t stop until they hunt you down, all of you. They’ll never stop coming.”
It’s not something I’m especially proud of, but they’re killers, through and through. And I don’t think Tyler is. Not the way they are, anyway.
“The same way they didn’t stop until all the men who imprisoned my dad were dead,” I say, knowing I’m treading on very thin ice here, but it needs saying. “Including your parents.”
“I won’t have you talk about my parents!”
“Killing me and everyone I love won’t bring them back,” I insist, even though he sounded like he means to stop me the next time I do it. “It’ll just get you killed too.”
He scoffs. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. I don’t got much to live for beyond this.”
That’s a very sad thing to hear someone say. It cuts me deep like a knife to the chest and I have no idea how to stop the invisible bleeding.
He stands up and yanks me to my feet. “You need to accept where you’re at. No more of this insane pretending.”
We’re standing so close I can feel the heat rising from his body. And smell his intoxicating scent—leather and metal and ice, somehow. I can smell myself on him too.
“You want me as much as I want you. Don’t deny it, because I know,” I say. “And you don’t want me dead or broken or raped by your men, no matter what you say. You want me all for yourself. Just like I want you.”
“Shut up.”
The words feel like a slap to the face. But a real slap would be easier to bear.
He doesn’t say anything more, just drags me back towards the house. I practically have to jog to keep up with his long steps.
He doesn’t stop until we’re in the foyer of the house, which smells like dust, the leftovers from yesterday’s dinner and loss.
He lets me go and bolts the front door behind us.
A part of me hopes I’ll get more of what he gave me last night now. And another part is very afraid of the black clouds gathering in his eyes. All his darkness is once again shrouding him. The darkness I thought I’d managed to chase away.
“I gotta go away for a couple of days,” he says and jogs up the stairs.
I’m still standing in the exact same spot he left me in when he returns with his bulging saddle bags.
“Why are you going?” I ask.
“Because not everything you said was complete bullshit,” he says. “The Devils will do whatever it takes to get you back. No matter the body count. I might have underestimated that.”
“Just let me go home,” I say. “End the war. And then we can start over.”
He laughs darkly. “And what, live happily ever after? Get your head out of the clouds, Eden. This really isn’t one of your love stories.”
“What about me?”
“You stay locked up in this house until I get back.”
“What if you don’t come back?”
I feel very shaky and teary all of a sudden. Like maybe I’m finally going to shed a tear over this crap situation he’s put us in.
The question gives him pause. But the next moment he’s grinning darkly again. “You better hope I do. Because there’s guys here who hate you and your father worse than I do.”
I want to tell him that he doesn’t hate me. But then he’ll just mock me again, call me na?ve and delusional, and I don’t want to hear it.
He waits a couple more minutes to make sure I’m gonna stay quiet then walks to the door.
But he turns back before opening the door, and there’s a look in his eyes I haven’t seen there before. They’re never soft, but right now they are.
“There’s a library in the room next to the study,” he says. “It has a ton of old books you’ll probably love. Knock yourself out while you still can.”
That was the absolute last thing I expected to hear him say. Hell, it wasn’t even on the list of things I thought he might say.
“Thank you,” I say.
But by then he’s already gone, and the door locked. And I once again have no idea what to think.
He pulls me this way and that, makes me feel like I’m on a flimsy boat stuck in a terrible ocean storm, one I can’t possibly survive. And then he does something like this. Gives me a library to lose myself in. Which is exactly what I always wanted.