48. Sydney
forty-eight
sydney
I am in bed, awake for some reason, when he comes.
It starts with an easy knock. A one-two-three tap that has me setting my book aside and sitting up straighter. When I don’t move, the knock comes again. Harder.
My throat tightens. I creep out of bed—as if the door is transparent—and inch toward it. The knocking stops, and I exhale. I look through the peephole, only to find Oliver standing right there.
I jump back, and he pounds on the door. The sound seems to vibrate in my chest. He can’t get in, though. I have the safety lock on the door plus the deadbolt under the handle. I check again. He has a bottle of something in his hand. He drags his hand through his hair, leaning a forearm on the door.
“Open up…” he calls. He tries the handle. It jiggles but doesn’t turn. “Come on, Sydney, open the door.”
Abso-fucking-lutely not.
I rush back to my bag and search for my phone. I power it up, staring at the logo that glows on the dark screen. It takes precious seconds while Oliver’s knocking gets more intense. Carter wanted me to turn it on for him, but I couldn’t.
As soon as the home screen comes alive, I unlock it and dial Penn’s number.
He answers on the first ring. “Sydney?”
“Oliver is outside my room,” I say in a rush. “Trying to get in.”
“Shit.”
“He looks drunk, Penn.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “You have two minutes, and then I’m calling my father.”
“Stay on the line with me. I’m on my way up from the lobby.”
A door crashes on his side of the line. I stand in the doorway of the bathroom, just in case Oliver tries to… I don’t know, use the peephole in reverse. If that’s even a thing. So I stick to the shadows and clutch the phone to my ear, counting down the seconds.
“Almost there.” Penn’s voice has a slightly echoing quality to it. “I’m in the stairwell.”
They won their game tonight. I went for the first period, but I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t keep watching Oliver on the ice—he made sure of that. I begged off. The arena and hotel are connected by a skywalk, so I didn’t even have to go outside.
I got upstairs and ordered room service. Dad and Perri stopped by to check on me, both a bit worried but also, impossibly, willing to give me space. They filled me in on the game, then they bid me goodnight and retired to their room down the hall.
“Oliver.” Penn’s voice comes both from my phone and outside the door. “What are you doing, man?”
“She won’t open the door.” Another thump.
“Yeah, well, you should take a hint. She doesn’t want to see you. She doesn’t want you sitting behind her. She doesn’t want you lurking and scaring her even more.”
“I—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Penn snaps. “What is this? No wonder you’re up here. You get fucked on tequila.”
Oliver mutters something I can’t make out.
“Fuck off,” Penn answers. “Let’s go.”
“No.”
“No? Okay, fine. Sydney, you may as well call your dad now. Oliver will get kicked off the team for underage drinking, probably, and his career will be ruined. Which is not your fault but his, because he’s the stupid bag of dicks who decided to drink tequila from the bottle.”
I shake my head. I know neither of them can see me, and I… I should want to call my dad. But a part of me, deep down, knows that was a hollow threat.
“She’s calling,” he tells Oliver.
I look through the peephole just in time to see Oliver shove off the door. He staggers away under Penn’s watchful gaze. Then, like Penn knows I’m at the door, he glances my way.
“Goodnight, princess.”
The next knock comes way too early. I stumble out of bed and shove open the heavy drapes, shocked when sunlight streams in.
When no more angry knocks follow, I hurry back to the door. It had better be my father, because I’ve had enough adrenaline for one lifetime.
Instead, I find Carter and Penn.
I open the door without thinking.
Carter’s smile falls.
I look down at myself, then back at him. Long-sleeve shirt, leggings. For once, I’m appropriately dressed to answer the door. Minus a bra, because no one in their right mind sleeps in those.
Penn prods him forward.
I step back to let them in, glancing quickly down the hall for a second. There’s no sign of Oliver. And no sign of my father either. So I close and latch the door, slowly facing them.
Carter holds up a white paper bag and cup of coffee. Penn holds the other two.
“Breakfast,” Carter says. “Have you eaten?”
I lick my lips. “I, um, just woke up.” I inch toward the bathroom. “Give me a second.”
I brush my teeth and hair in record time. Check the bandages. I bled through the bandage and into my sock on the plane yesterday, but I don’t think anyone noticed. No one said anything. But now I double-check everything is hidden before I step back out.
They gave me a room with two beds. Penn sits on the made-up one, his shoes off and feet up. Carter stands in the middle of the room, his hands in his pockets.
“Hi,” he says. “Penn?”
“Yeah?”
Carter doesn’t take his eyes off me, but his words are for Penn. “Get the fuck out for a minute.”
I smile.
Penn grumbles and grabs my keycard. “Just in case you get carried away. And only because you smiled, princess.” He kisses my cheek on the way past.
The door closes with a soft snick behind him, and Carter strolls toward me. Lazily, almost, but his gaze gets hotter by the second.
“You shut me out,” he says.
“I shut everyone out.”
“That’s over.”
“Maybe,” I allow. I mean, I don’t really know if it is or not. Is that up to me? Do I get to just decide to be in a funk or out of one?
Is this a funk? Or is it depression?
Or… something worse?
Shit. What if it’s something worse?
What’s worse than depression?
“Hey.”
I blink up at him.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he informs me.
I nod. He cups my jaw and leans down, slowly touching his lips to mine.
When he pulls away, I try to follow.
“More?”
“Please.”
He tilts his head. “Did you kiss Penn? Last night?”
“No,” I breathe.
I reach for him, suddenly anxious. If I stop being valuable—if I don’t want to do the dark stuff he likes, for example—will he still want me? Or what if I can’t leave my apartment for months? Or what if he goes somewhere and I become emotionally reliant on him and have a panic attack the second he’s out of sight?
“Sydney.”
I freeze. I’ve been trying to drag him closer. He hasn’t budged, though. He just examines me with those ocean-blue eyes that see everything .
“When did I break?” I ask him. “God, I can’t even kiss you without losing it.”
“You’re not losing it.”
“I am,” I assure him.
I release my hold on his jeans and step back. I bump into the wall and lean against it, closing my eyes. Normal seems very fucking far away from where I am.
“I’ll tell you who I blame: the guy who tried to rape you.”
I stare at him.
“And then Oliver.”
When I cringe, he clicks his tongue.
“I’m going to make an observation,” he says. “And you can tell me if I’m wrong.”
“Okay…”
“You were grabbed by two masked men and thrown into a trunk. Driven to an unknown location. Promised pain and violence. You didn’t know who they were when one put the rope around your neck and tried to rape you. You only knew it was Oliver and Penn who stopped it.”
My throat closes.
He reaches for my hand, and I let him take it. But it’s me who ends up clinging to his fingers.
“You were dealing with that, and then you saw him again. The same mask. It brought you back to that warehouse. You relived your first trauma as you experienced the second.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “But?—”
“But then you found out who was actually touching you in the arena, and he didn’t stop. No one was there to save you from him.” His gaze darkens. “You inserted Oliver behind the mask for the previous event because it was him the second time. Someone you trusted for saving you became the villain, and your memory has blended the two.”
My vision blurs. As soon as I blink, tears spill down my cheeks. I can’t stop fucking crying, and I hate it with every fiber of my being.
“In my dreams, the clown-masked guy succeeds in raping me. And when he takes it off, right as I’m on the verge of passing out, it’s Oliver.” I dash at my cheeks. “I know it wasn’t him the first time.”
“You know it when logic is in control,” he agrees. “But then your emotions take over. Similar emotions for both events, would you agree?”
“Yes.”
He sits on the bed and pulls me down with him. My knees go on either side of his hips. I like being face-to-face with him like this. It puts us on an equal level in other ways. Mentally, maybe.
“So how do I fix it?”
He lifts one shoulder. “I don’t know. But I do have an idea for helping you regain control. If you want it.”
I suck in a long, slow breath. With Carter’s hands on my waist, the cords that bind around my chest don’t seem so tight. I lean forward and press my forehead to his, closing my eyes.
Do I want control?
Did I ever have it? I guess it doesn’t matter, because my answer to the first question overrides everything else.
“I want it.”