4. Charli
4
CHARLI
Pain. That’s the first thing I’m aware of, before my eyes even open—pain.
My head is throbbing, and I can feel achy spots running from my spine all the way down to my thighs—why am I so sore? It takes a moment for it to click, for me to remember what happened to me, but then it hits. The snowstorm, the car, the wheels sliding out from underneath me, and then the tree?—
And then nothing. Blackness. My eyes snap open, and I lunge forward, ready to grab the wheel once more and take off. I can’t risk staying in one place for too long, not with James probably already out there looking for me?—
“Hey, hey. Stay where you are. You need to rest.”
A voice freezes me in my tracks—a man’s voice, to be specific. My eyes take a second to focus, but eventually, they land on someone sitting at the end of a small bed in front of me—his brow is slightly creased, his eyes fixed on mine with concern.
“Callum?” I whisper, before I can think twice. Because this man, he looks almost exactly like him. Same brown eyes, same dark, curly hair, though his is shorter—he has a scar beneath his lips and a smattering of stubble where Callum had none, but other than that, he’s the spitting image of him. But how…how could I…
“He’s not Callum. I am.”
My head whips around, so fast it makes my brain spin. And there he is—Callum, almost exactly as I remember him. Crop of dark hair, clean-shaven, strong jaw, brown eyes flecked with little spots of gold. As handsome and huge as ever. And yet…
And yet beside him, there’s another one. Another man who looks like him. His head is shaved, like his face, but the eyes are the same, the shape of his face, the brawn of his muscle. I scramble backward on the bed, my heart slamming against my ribs in panic.
“What the fuck is going on?” I hiss. I must have hit my head harder than I thought, because I’m seeing triple right now…
“You’re safe,” Callum assures me, as the man on the end of the bed stands up. “You’re okay, Charli, I?—”
“Who the hell are these people?” I demand, my voice rising, ragged, before I can stop it. The two other men exchange a glance, and it’s clear they’re not entirely impressed with my presence here.
“These are my brothers,” Callum replies, gesturing to the one with the shaven head. “This is Dax. And this…” He points to the other. “Is Chuck.”
“Brothers?” I shoot back. “You’re…?”
“Triplets,” he replies quietly. “I did tell you, when we…when we knew each other before. Guess you never got a chance to meet them.”
“What am I doing here? Where’s the car?” I ask, peering around. This is all too fucking surreal. And as I look around—I can tell it’s only going to get stranger.
“Wait a second,” I gasp. “This place, I’ve been here before. It’s the?—”
“Yeah, we came once before,” Callum agrees softly. He’s doing his best to keep his voice calm and steady, but it’s taking everything I have not to flip the fuck out on him right then and there. How can he be approaching this so calmly? He’s talking like this is normal, like any single part of this is normal, but I feel like I’ve been caught in the middle of the worst kind of fairy tale. Running away from my wedding day, crashing my car, and waking up surrounded by three identical men…
Three identically hot men, that is.
“When did you bring her here?” one of the other men—Dax, I think—bites out, clearly pissed with the way all of this is going. His brother fires a look at him.
“A long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”
“Why am I here now?” I ask, fear gripping hold of my heart. “I need to get out. I need to go. I?—”
“You need to rest,” the other man, Chuck, interjects. His voice is soothing, or at least attempting to be, but I can’t think about relaxing right now, not in the face of everything that’s happening.
“No, you—you don’t understand,” I plead with them. “James, he’s out there, he’s looking for me, and if he finds me…”
I trail off as I look between them again. Something strikes me. What if James sent them? He’s got connections in pretty much every major force you can imagine, the cops, the army…would it be such a stretch to think he could have paid off some retired Navy SEAL to do his bidding for me? That’s what Callum was when I met him, his skills just as polished as they’d ever been, except with no place to aim them. That was his problem, his inability to turn off his mind, even in the face of what we had. He might have put that to better use in the years since he dumped me out here in the woods, turned to mercenary work to make ends meet. He wouldn’t be the first…
I swing my legs out of bed and plant them on the floor, trying to stand up, but I’m so dizzy that I end up crashing down to the bed once more. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and try again—but before I can so much as get on my feet, Callum is at my side, pushing me back down.
“You need to rest,” he orders me firmly. “You can’t go anywhere. You need to?—”
“You need to get your hands off me!” I exclaim, pulling away from him. I’m distinctly aware that I’m still in my wedding dress—I guess I should be glad they didn’t undress me, but it feels like I’m still ready to be dumped back at that altar the first chance they get. Like James is waiting to pick up where he left off, and there’s no chance I’ll be able to get out…
“We’re trying to help you, fucking hell!” Dax interjects, his voice laced with irritation.
“Then let me go,” I plead, turning to face him as I sit on the bed. “I’m not asking you to help me. Just let me out of here, I’ll leave, I’ll get back in my car and drive away and it’s like I was never here in the first place?—”
“You’re not going anywhere, not in that car,” Chuck tells me. “It’s fucked. You’re lucky you didn’t wind up with anything worse in the way of injuries?—”
“Then let me get out there and hitchhike!” I explode. “Please, you don’t understand, the longer I stay in one place, the easier it’s going to be for him to find me?—”
“Who? For who to find you?” Callum prompts me. And then I fall silent. Something about the way they’re all looking at me…it’s like they already know something. And it could just be my paranoia-addled mind, it could just be the stress of everything that’s happened, it could be my inability to accept that I might truly have escaped James once and for all…but I turn on them.
“Like you don’t know,” I spit back. “You’re working for him, aren’t you?”
“For who?” Dax fires back impatiently.
My eyes widen. “So you are working for someone?”
“That’s not what he said,” Callum protests. “Dax, shut up, let me talk to her?—”
“No, if she thinks we’re working for someone, then we deserve to know who,” he snarls, taking a step toward me. There’s anger flashing in his eyes, and I recoil without thinking. Not that I should be letting these fuckers think they’ve gotten the better of me, not that I’m going to let them intimidate me. I’ve already made it so far away from James, I won’t go back now, no matter what he’s planned, no matter how he tries to stop me.
“I don’t need to tell you,” I snap. “You already know. Don’t you? He sent you after me. Bring me out here, and lock me up until he could get to me, that’s what he told you?—”
“None of us have any idea what you’re talking about,” Callum tells me, agitated.
“Then let me go,” I beg him, turning my attention back to him once more. “If you’re not working for him, let me out of this place, now, please. I need to go. I need to?—”
“You can’t go out there, not in this weather,” Chuck tells me, shaking his head.
“The snow?” I ask, furrowing my brow. “I know it’s pretty bad, but?—”
Chuck quiets me as he gets to his feet and yanks the curtains open. Outside, everything is white, coated in a heavy blanket of snow as far as the eye can see.
My heart sinks. Crap. Suddenly, I feel as though I’m a rabbit in a trap, desperately trying to shake free before the hunter who laid it finds me. I don’t know if I can trust these guys. I don’t know if they’re telling me the truth—is it really that bad out there, or is this just their way of spinning the story to convince me it’s not worth getting out on the road again? Is James on his way right now…?
Dark shadows form at the edges of my vision, and I gasp down a breath—I feel as though I’m going to pass out.
“Here, here, lie down again,” Callum mutters, and he guides me toward the bed, slipping a pillow behind me. I’m lying on top of the covers, in my wedding dress, surrounded by three triplets—one of them the last man I loved before I got with James. And I thought today couldn’t get any stranger…
“What are we going to do about her?” one of the men—Dax, I think—asks, as I squeeze my eyes shut and try to bring myself back down to earth.
“I don’t know,” Callum replies. And even though it’s been so long since the two of us last saw each other, I think I can recognize something in his voice—concern? Maybe. Either way, I’m not sure I buy it, but it’s not as though I have much of a choice. The longer I lie here, the more my body hurts, and I can tell that the impact of that crash is only just starting to make itself clear.
“Do you really think there’s someone after her?” Dax presses.
“I can’t see any other damn reason why someone would be on the road in this weather if they weren’t,” Chuck cuts in. I want to plant my hands over my ears, but I know it won’t make any difference. I’ll still be here, trapped, stuck, unable to get on the road again and put some more distance between James and me…
“Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here,” I cut in, voice blunt. I manage to open my eyes again, to find all of them staring at me like I’ve just dropped out of the international space station and into this cabin.
“Then tell us what you were doing on the road,” Dax demands, lifting his chin and narrowing his eyes at me pointedly.
I glare back at him. “I’m not just going to tell you everything.”
“Why the hell not?” he shoots back. “What are you trying to hide?”
My lips part with anger. Why does he just assume that there’s something I should be ashamed of?
“I’m not trying to hide anything! I just?—”
“Then tell us,” Dax demands. “Tell us what you’re doing here.”
“I can’t. It’s not that easy. Just let me go, I’ll?—”
“You can’t go anywhere in this weather,” Chuck reminds me again. I can feel tears pricking at the edges of my eyes—I feel trapped, my feet rooted to the ground. Fleeing the wedding, I had managed to actually get the road under my feet, to feel as though there was a way for me to get out of all of this, but now…
Now, I’m back to square one. Stuck, with no way out, these men refusing to let me so much as see the outside world. I want to scream. I want to tear this fucking wedding dress off my body, and I want to run back out into the snow—I don’t care how much danger it might put me in. It’s better than being trapped here in this place, knowing that, with every passing moment, James could be closing the distance between us.
And that, when he finds me…he’s going to rain down a hell I’ve never even imagined before.
“This girl’s going to be trouble,” Dax mutters. I don’t even want to look at him right now. Of course, I’m trouble—I’m always trouble. My life can never just be easy, no matter how hard I try, no matter?—
“Jesus, Dax, give her a break,” Chuck shoots back. At least I have someone on my side. Or do I? It doesn’t seem likely that these three could have nothing to do with James. Maybe he even thought that I would try and make a break for it on the day of the wedding, and hiring these guys was insurance to make sure I wouldn’t get far. Maybe they drove me off the road, maybe they had iced it up so I had no choice but to swerve off, maybe…
I realize I’m panting, gasping for breath, just trying to stay awake. If I pass out, I don’t know what will be waiting for me when I wake up, and I don’t want to know. I clench my jaw and squeeze my eyes shut, and stab my finger toward the door.
“Just…just get the fuck out!” I demand. “If you’re really not here to hurt me, then just leave me the fuck alone!”
As soon as I say those words, I feel something shift in the room—Dax is on his feet, striding toward me, though I can barely make him out through the blur in the corners of my vision.
“You don’t get to talk to us like that,” he snarls, and he slams his hand down on the bed before me, sending a loud creak through the room that makes me jump. “You don’t?—”
“Dax!” another one of the guys calls out to him, but it’s clear that whatever control they had over him, it’s gone. And now he’s staring me down like he wants to take a chunk out of me.
But if he thinks I’m going to make it that easy for him…he’s got another thing coming.