Chapter 23 #2
“Jed?” I asked. “What the hell? Why on earth would we need maid service at that hour?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “I like a clean room,” he said vaguely.
“Bullshit,” I said. “What are you up to? What’s the point?”
He just gave me that glassy, impenetrable look, and shook his head. “Let it go.”
“Fuck you, Jed Clearwater,” I said.
“Anytime,” he said. “I stand ready.”
I couldn’t look at that smirk one second longer without slapping him, so I got up and stomped past him. “Put your dick away,” I snarled “It’s not getting any attention from me. Ever again.”
“Never? Really?” His voice was low and taunting. “You sure about that?”
“Not in this lifetime.” I grabbed the bag that held all the stuff I’d pried out of my coat hem pocket, and slammed the bathroom door behind me.
The bathroom is still hot and swampy. The streaks of condensation that rolled down through the fog on the mirror showed my shocked eyes and hot-pink flush.
I looked as if I had just escaped from a burning building…and was actually considering running right back inside. The man was driving me out of my head.
I got into the shower, because why the hell not.
Though when I got out, I had to get right back into the same stale, filthy clothes the luckless Mickey would never wear, which kind of canceled out the shower.
Thinking of him made me feel guilty as hell, but I was not the greedy, murdering filth who had set this chain of events in motion. I was just trying to help.
I had failed, yes. Quite spectacularly. But that was my only crime.
I washed my hair, brushed my teeth, and pulled on the oversized, belted pants, the sloppy T-shirt, toweling my hair into a wild snarl of blonde tangles.
When I came out, I was startled to see him already dressed.
Or, more specifically, to see him dressed like that. In a costly, well-cut suit. Yowza.
It looked incredible on him. How could it not, with that face, that body?
His hair was still wet, smoothed back and gathered into a short ponytail, and he’d trimmed and shaped the beard.
He’d stopped short of a tie, and there wasn’t much that could be done about the bruises and scrapes on his cheekbone, and part of his tattoo was visible over his collar on the side of his neck.
And even so, he looked stunning, and memorable.
Like a dangerous, drop-dead elegant billionaire mobster.
“Whoa, Jed,” I said. “What are you all gussied up for?”
“I’m going to talk to Grifo,” he said.
“That’s the first piece of actual hard information you’ve given me today,” I said. “You know, I was thinking. Maybe we should attend that gala.”
“And how would we manage that?”
I shrugged. “Easy,” I said. “We donate to their cause. It’s what, ten thousand a head? For a crappy meal and a bunch of boring speeches?”
“Jesus,” he muttered. “Highway robbery.” He sat on the bed, opening his laptop. “I found the address of Grifo’s practice. Come here for a second. I’ll show you.”
I hesitated out of pure stubbornness, but curiosity got the better of me. I went over to him, peering down at the laptop’s screen. “If you’re going to dress like that, we’ll have to stop at the mall so I can pick up some decent stuff, too.”
“I don’t think so.” He grabbed my wrist. Snick.
Handcuffs? The fuck? I looked at him in disbelief. Inhaled to scream.
Suddenly, his huge hand was over my mouth, and I was lifted off my feet. A sudden twirl, and flop, I was flat on my back in the big bed with the wrought-iron headboard. His hand lifted from my mouth to grab my other wrist. Snick.
Now both of my arms were handcuffed to the headboard. I craned my neck to look, flailing uselessly. The cuffs were hooked through a loop of wrought iron.
He straddled me, which squished out what breath I had left. Not enough to scream with, not with him pinning me down. My eyes had filled with tears, to my utter dismay. My breath was hitching. Goddamn him.
He slid off me quickly and lay there beside me. “I am really sorry about this,” he said urgently. “I swear to God, I am. I do not like doing this to you.”
I sucked in air. “Help! Help me!” I yelled.
“No one will hear you,” he said. “The cabin is too far from the others, even if they were inhabited, which they’re not.
I checked. That’s why I requested this one.
I picked this place for the iron bedframes, and the cabins with plenty of space around them.
Also because it was off-season, and there’s a forest. I needed a place I could hide you where you wouldn’t be able to hurt yourself. ”
“You arrogant fucking jerk.” I yanked at my bonds, rattling them wildly. “You cannot leave me here handcuffed! Let me go. I promise, I won’t bug you, I won’t follow you. I’ll sit here, on my hands. Just don’t do this to me. It’s wrong!”
“It’s the only thing,” he said. “I should only be a couple of hours at the most. I have to go to this guy’s private practice and see if I can talk to him. Or failing that, at least get some info from the people who worked with him.”
“Hours?” My voice cracked in outrage. “You’re leaving me like this for hours?”
“I’ve set it up very carefully. If the worst should happen, and someone killed me, two things will happen. If I don’t cancel it deliberately, a timed email will go out in eight hours to the local police, alerting them of your location.”
“Eight fucking hours? Are you kidding me?”
“I’ll be back in two, three hours at the max. Also, the housekeeper will be here first thing in the morning to get her tip, so you’re one hundred percent covered either way. I built in some redundancy, but you won’t need it. I’ll be back. Really soon.”
“I can’t do this, Jed!” My voice shook. “I can’t be tied up! I can’t do it!”
“I’m sorry, Freya,” he repeated. “It won’t be long. I was just waiting until you went into the bathroom to pee. You know, after all that coffee.”
Somehow, that condescending courtesy pissed me off even more. “You asshole!” I yanked and struggled against the cuffs.
“Freya. Don’t fight. You’ll hurt your wrists—”
“Fuck you!” I yelled, trying to knee him, but he just rolled onto my leg.
“I hate doing this,” he said. “I’m not trying to punish you.
But you don’t take orders, and you don’t listen to reason.
I don’t have anyone to watch you and keep you safe, and I can’t wait until I do.
I don’t have time to coax and plead or wrangle you.
I just have to keep you alive until I can get you back to your brother. ”
“Safe? You think this is safe?” My voice cracked in raw panic. “Staking me out like a fucking goat for any asshole who comes along?”
“No one will find you,” he soothed. “No one knows you’re here.
You’ll be locked in with all of my alarms connected to my phone.
I’ll be monitoring you. I’ll know if anyone gets near you, even a rabbit or a fox.
I’ll send someone if there’s a problem. And I’ll come running back as soon as I can, I swear. ”
“Fuck you, Jed Clearwater!” I thrashed, trying to kick him. “Let… me…loose!”
“Goddamnit, Freya. Stop it. You’ll hurt yourself!”
“You can’t chain me up!” I yelled. “I can’t do this! I can’t stand it!”
He rolled on top of me, forcing all the air out of my chest. I tried to kick him, but ended up wound around him, with his big, solid body between my legs.
The shudder of sexual awareness made us both immobile. I tried to stop crying, avoiding eye contact, but just like that, my panic instantly transmitted into desperate heat.
And I hated myself for it. Goddamn him, for shoving it in my face like that. Humiliating me. I was so afraid of the fucked up, damaged parts of myself, messing with me. Making it so easy for him to manipulate me.
I was usually the boss bitch of the situation. I pulled all the strings, ran the whole show. I organized my whole life around that premise. That I had to be in control.
I knew I was just compensating. Trying to correct for that monstrous shitshow with Uncle Orren and Aunt Jean. As if I could ever correct for something like that.
So I was warped for life, yes, fine. I’d made as much peace with it as I could.
But I couldn’t do my usual compensatory tricks with Jed. I couldn’t pull strings with him. I tried to, and things moved, but never in the direction I intended. I couldn’t make anything go where I wanted it to go. Jed was uncontrollable.
Kind of funny, how that was the exact same problem he had with me.
And now I was chained up again, just like when I was seven years old, in the dark basement room, and it was flooding back into me, as if it had never gone away.
My aunt and uncle. The panic, the desperation.
Hating on myself because they hated me. I would have done anything to please them or appease them.
I just wanted to be good, so they would stop hurting me. I would be so good. I would be perfect.
That was the fucked up part. It could sink me if it mixed up with my feelings for Jed. I had no business letting myself fall in love, or even in lust. I was too messed up to ever get it right. I would just hurt myself, and the more I cared, the more it would hurt.
Now I was sobbing, and I couldn’t stop. Goddammit.
“Freya.” Jed’s tone sounded sobered, nervous. “What the fuck?”
“That’s my line, asshole,” I snapped, snuffling madly. It sucked, having no way to blow my nose. “Ask yourself that question.”
“I know cuffing you is horrible, and I expected you to tell me to fuck myself, but you’re freaking me out. There’s something else going on here.”
“No, you’re just an asshole,” I snapped. “You simply don’t understand how obscene and controlling this is, you filthy son of a bitch, because you are shit-stupid.”
“I never claimed to be a genius,” he said. “But I know better than to take Ethan Master’s baby sister on a mission.”
“I could help you,” I snarled. “I am a fucking resource for you, not a bag of sand tied to your foot. I’m smart, I would see things you might not see, I know things that you might not know, and none of that will be available to you, you brain-dead son of a bitch!”
I made the huge mistake of meeting his eyes, and suddenly my nipples were hypersensitive against the fabric of my T-shirt, aching to touch his naked chest.
But I didn’t want sex mixed up with the locked-in-the-dark feelings. No, no, no.
I twisted, struggling under him. He leaned down and kissed me hard, and then rolled off and got up. He straightened his clothes and stared at me, looking worried.
“I don’t like upsetting you,” he said. “I hate hurting you. I don’t lack empathy, Freya. Sometimes I wish I did. Things would be a whole lot easier.”
“Piss off, Jed. You feel bad for treating me this way? Aw, boo-hoo for you. I don’t give a damn about your feelings.”
“I have to do what I have to do. I just hate it that you ran into that wall.”
Oh, puh-leeze. I would have spit at the guy, if I could have reached him. “Spare me the sermon, you self-righteous scumbag.”
“Okay. I’m gone. We’ll finish working this out later,” he said.
“Oh no, we won’t. We are so very done, Jed.”
“Freya, please,” he said wearily. He slid a pistol into the holster he wore beneath his suit jacket, then shrugged on a black wool overcoat. He pulled out his wallet, peeled out two fifties, and tucked them under the base of the lamp on the dresser. “For the housekeeper,” he said. “Just in case.”
I turned my face away. He went in to the front room, but as he opened the door, panic exploded inside me. “Wait!”
He turned back, looking through the open bathroom door. “What?”
“The light,” I said. “Turn it on. Don’t leave me in the dark. Please.”
He came back to the door of the bedroom, and flipped the switch of the overhead lamp. “I should be back long before it gets dark,” he said.
“Whatever,” I forced out, through lips that shook. “Just…just leave it on.”
I heard the door shut, and the locks engage, one after the other. Then a hollow thud as the Jeep door closed. The sound of the engine roaring to life.
Gravel crunched, lights flickered outside, the sound retreated…and he was gone.
He’d left me to it. Alone with my demons.
The square of gray, rainy sky through the window didn’t help.
The dim, watery bulb of the overhead light didn’t help, either, because the darkness was inside me.
Memories, rushing back, of being huddled in the dark, chained up like a miserable animal in the pitch-black basement room.
Rocking to soothe myself. Filthy clothes.
The smelly pee and poo bucket. Nasty, spoiled food.
I had stayed down there for weeks at a time. No way to gauge how many weeks, or how many times. There was no day or night down there. It was all darkness.
It had started out normal, if anything could be called normal after Mom and Dad’s car accident. The three of us, sent to stay with Uncle Orren and Aunt Jean. It wasn’t home, and never would be, but we were too shocked and busy grieving to notice.
Then things got tense. Ethan and Shane quickly began to chafe at the strange, senseless rules of the place. They started mouthing off. And just like that, Uncle Orren had arranged for my big brothers to be taken off to the local reformatory.
They were gone, and it was just me, miserably afraid and alone.
I tried to run away, after a few weeks. That was when they put me in the basement for the first time. After that, the basement became the go-to punishment. Always for longer and longer times. Because they discovered that they liked it.
They said it was to make me pray for forgiveness. To make me reflect upon my sinful ways. My impure impulses. My evil feelings. I needed to pray for goodness to come into my heart and drive away the selfishness, the wickedness.
All I had to cling to was the hope that Ethan and Shane would come and save me. But they were locked up, Jean said. And they would stay locked up.
They’re trash. You’re all trash, like your worthless mother, and that turd she married. Zero plus zero will always equal zero. You godless little freak.
Jean would never stop ranting at me. Not until I had proved her right, and turned into a piece of garbage. Something nasty to bury at the bottom of a dark hole. Stinking, rotting, bad through and through. Because Jean was still in there, deep inside my head.
And she would never stop trying to stuff me back down into the dark.
Stay in the moment. Just breathe. Stay in the moment. You’re all grown up now, and Aunt Jean and Uncle Orren are gone. This will end. You can take it. Breathe.
I used all my usual tricks and techniques to coax myself back up from that old dark pit and back to the light, and then I heard it. Pop.
The lightbulb had just burned out.