Chapter 23 Jade
JADE
His words echo in my head, making me panic.
“Cabin? What the fuck is he talking about?”
“You’ll see.”
"No, let me out!”
“Calm down.”
I’m panicking. I can’t breathe.
"This is insane," I say, hating the tremor in my voice. "You know that, right? You're literally kidnapping me.”
"I'm taking you somewhere we can talk without interruption."
I should have known. Should have seen through his calm agreement, his easy fine, I'll drive you. Phoenix Crawford doesn't surrender. He doesn't let things go. He doesn't lose gracefully.
He takes what he wants and deals with the consequences later.
And right now, apparently, he wants me.
"Without my consent!"
"You would never have agreed."
"Because it's crazy!"
He shrugs. One shoulder, casual, like we're debating where to get dinner. "Maybe."
I want to slap him. Want to claw at his face until that infuriating calm cracks and I can see something real underneath. Fear. Doubt. Anything.
Instead, I press myself harder against the passenger door, as far from him as the confined space will allow.
"People will look for me," I say. "My mother. My friends. When I don't come home—"
"You told your mother you were in California with a man she already hates. She'll assume you're being irresponsible. It'll be days before she worries enough to act."
He's right. God help me, he's right.
Mom warned me. Warned me about men like him: men who use money and charm and isolation to trap women. And I walked right into it. Flew across the country and let him dress me up and parade me around, and now I'm in a car heading God knows and no way out.
Stupid. So fucking stupid.
"The investors," I try. "They saw me leave with you. If something happens to me—"
"Nothing is going to happen to you." For the first time, his voice carries an edge. "I'm not going to hurt you, Jade. I would never hurt you."
"You're hurting me right now!"
"No. I'm refusing to let you make a decision you'll regret."
"That's not your choice to make!"
"Someone has to make it. You're too angry to think clearly."
I laugh. It’s a wild, unhinged sound. "I'm too angry? You just destroyed any chance of me ever trusting you again, and I'm the one not thinking clearly?"
"Yes." He glances at me, and something in his expression makes my stomach drop. Not anger. Not cruelty. Something worse.
Certainty.
He believes he's right. Believes that kidnapping me is somehow justified, somehow reasonable.
"Phoenix." I force myself to breathe. To think. "Listen to me. I understand that you're upset. I understand that things didn't go the way you planned tonight. But this, whatever this is, it’s not the answer. You have to see that."
"What I see is the woman I want walking away from me." His hands tighten on the wheel. "And I'm not going to let that happen."
"You can't force someone to stay with you!"
"I'm not forcing you to stay. I'm forcing you to listen."
"Same thing!"
"It's not."
I slam my palm against the dashboard. "God, do you hear yourself? Do you have any idea how insane you sound?"
"I sound like a man who knows what he wants."
"You sound like a psychopath!"
Something flickers across his face. Pain, maybe. Or anger. It's gone before I can identify it.
"Call me whatever you want," he says quietly. "It won't change anything."
The road keeps climbing. The trees press closer. The last glow of city lights disappears behind a ridge, and suddenly we're surrounded by nothing but darkness and the twin beams of the headlights cutting through the night.
I think about grabbing the wheel and forcing him off the road. But we're going too fast, the curves too sharp. I'd kill us both.
I think about waiting until he stops, then running. But running where? We're in the middle of nowhere. I'm wearing a silk dress and heels. I'd freeze before I found help.
I should scream but no one would hear me.
The trap has closed around me, and I didn't even see it coming.
"How long?" I ask, my voice hollow.
"How long what?"
"How long have you been planning this? The cabin. Was it always the backup plan? If the girlfriend act didn't work out, you'd just... take me?"
His jaw tightens. "I didn't plan this."
"Bullshit."
"I didn't." He looks at me, and for a moment I see something crack in his composure. "I never wanted you to find out. I thought we'd have the dinner, it would go well, and you'd never have to know that it started as—"
"As what? A business arrangement?"
He doesn't answer.
"Say it, Phoenix. Say what I was to you."
"You were never just—"
"Say it!"
The word echoes in the car. My chest is heaving. Tears burn behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. I won't give him that satisfaction.
"You were an opportunity," he says finally. "A solution to a problem I didn't know how to solve. But you were always much more than that.”
The confirmation shouldn't hurt this much. I already know. I heard Marcus. I saw the investors' faces.
“Like what?" I whisper.
He's quiet for a long moment. The road curves again, and through the trees I catch a glimpse of something—a structure, small and dark against the darker sky.
“You are my obsession.”
I laugh bitterly. "You have a funny way of showing it."
"I know." He pulls off the main road onto a gravel drive. "But you're going to understand. By the time we leave here, you're going to understand everything."
The cabin materializes out of the darkness. Small. Isolated. The kind of place where no one would hear you scream.
Phoenix stops the car and kills the engine.
The silence is deafening.
He turns to look at me, and in his eyes I see something that terrifies me more than the isolation and more than the fact that no one knows where I am.
I see a man who has no intention of letting me go.
"Welcome to the cabin," he says. "We have a lot to talk about.”