5. Waking up in wonderland – Aurora
5
WAKING UP IN WONDERLAND
AURORA
I meant to go see Elijah. I really did. Not for him to clean and dress my wounds, though.
He seems like the least intimidating of the three to ask for a phone charger, but sitting down on the bed in Seven’s silky T-shirt and baggy sweats for a ‘quick sec’ led to at least five hours in a total coma.
It’s impossible to tell without the clock on my phone, but judging by the light filtering into the room, it isn’t long after dawn. The house is still quiet, save for Ellie making little sounds that tell me she needs to tinkle and the soft scrape of her claws on the door.
“Give me a sec, Ellie,” I whisper, gesturing for her to back away as I climb from the warm bed and pad across the floor.
Soundlessly twisting the handle, I peek out into the hall. It’s dark. Doesn’t seem like anyone is around.
“Okay, the coast is clear.”
I pause before letting her out, noticing the laundry basket on the floor to the left of the door.
Is that my shirt?
I lift the scrap of aged black fabric from the pile, looking for the faded dancing skeletons on the front.
It is mine.
I carefully sift through a few more layers of folded clothing, finding that it’s actually full of my clothes. All of it freshly washed, dried, and folded into neat piles. And is that…
My charger.
I snatch up the basket and bring it into the room, plucking out the charger and rushing to plug it in behind the nightstand. I perch at the edge of the bed to connect it to my phone, and wait.
It blinks with the red battery symbol and goes black again.
“Come on,” I mutter, bouncing my knee.
Ellie whines, making a soft growl that tells me she’s annoyed I’ve sat back down again.
“All right,” I sigh. “Fine. Just let me change.”
Really, all I want to do is pull up my location on a map. I have no idea exactly how far I drove from Amherst last night. Or where I let these guys take me.
Elijah. Atticus. Seven. I remind myself of their names. I’ve always been bad with names, and offending any of these overly muscled, heavily tattooed, and intimidating men seems like it wouldn’t be in my best interest.
Elijah seemed chill at least. Sweet, even. I’m willing to bet he’s the one who did my laundry.
Atticus seemed like the one to watch. Quick to anger. Short fuse. I’ll be careful around him.
Seven…
He equally scared the shit out of me and intrigued me in a way I can’t describe. When we were alone in the foyer, I wasn’t sure…
Yeah. I’ll need to be careful around that one, too.
Fuck, I really hope I didn’t make a huge-ass mistake coming here.
Please, I pray to the universe. Just give me a little break here, would you?
I pull the first things from the basket I see, jean shorts and my skeleton tee. I’ve worn neither in years. Jesse did not like me wearing short shorts.
He liked me in bright colors. Liked me as a blonde. Liked me conservative .
And Jesse got what Jesse wanted.
He thought I threw all these clothes out when we moved in together, but I shoved them into the back of my closet.
They were the only ones I wanted when I left.
For a second, I wonder if I should keep the sweats on. Keep myself covered up. I don’t know these guys. What if they’re creeps?
I shake my head. You know what? If they are, it’ll be better to smoke them out as quickly as possible.
My phone lights up as I change, and I almost trip in my haste to grab it, but recoil as all the messages and missed calls that came in while it was dead light up the screen.
Him.
It will be him.
Just waking up with a mean headache and an even meaner attitude—enraged to find me and Ellie and the car gone.
I tap the ‘X’ to get rid of all notifications at once and then tap the map icon, but it loads with my pulsing blue dot in the middle of empty gray space. I try to zoom out and a notification fills my screen.
Can’t connect to Maps. Try again in a few minutes.
“What the fuck?”
There’s a symbol in the top right corner of my screen that I’ve never seen before, but the lost-looking satellite can only mean one thing: no service.
By the look of it, there’s Wi-Fi, but it has a password.
Shit.
I set it back down to charge and slip on my shoes. No problem. I’ll just get the password. Easy. Nothing to freak out about. It’s fine. Everything is fine.
“Come on, girl. Let’s go.”
Ellie lets out an excited bark, and I hush her, signaling for her to stay close and be quiet as we creep out of the room, retracing our steps to the front door.
In the light of early morning, it’s so much bigger than I thought, and I already thought the place was outrageously massive. The staircase leading down to the foyer is wide enough for at least four people to walk up shoulder to shoulder without stepping on each other’s toes.
The decor in the entryway and living room speak of hours spent at estate auctions and in small shops where the price tags give normal people heart attacks. Inspecting a painting by the door, I find I can actually see the individual brush strokes. It’s not a print. It’s real.
God , actually, all of the art on the walls look like they belong in the fucking Louvre.
Who the hell are these guys?
The heavy front door doesn’t make so much as a creak as we step out into the crisp morning air and I sigh as the first rays of sunlight kiss my cheeks. The long road that I remember Eli saying was actually their driveway winds downward through the trees.
Wasn’t there a gate? I think there was. And I didn’t see this road on the map at all.
Jesse won’t find me here.
I don’t think anyone will if I don’t want them to.
It’s somehow both comforting and disconcerting at the same time.
Ellie barks at me to follow her, tail wagging as she stomps her front paws and takes off around the side of the house, following along a flagstone pathway.
“ Ellie .”
My rib cage aches with every step, and I definitely feel where the airbag punched me in the chest. The skin that was uncovered at my collar is angry and red.
My legs feel stiff, too.
All around, I’m a fucking wreck, but Ellie seems to be completely fine, and it’s a more than acceptable trade.
When Jesse kicked her, I thought…
I don’t even want to rethink what I thought.
But seeing her bounding through the nettle-covered grass, sniffing every little thing she can get her nose close enough to, makes the pain bearable.
“Not too far, Ellie,” I call after her when she starts to get hard to see through the brush.
She’s a smart girl. She never goes far, even when she’s off her leash, but this is a new place. There could be a drop-off somewhere or bear traps or poison ivy. This isn’t our property. Even if Ellie seems to know exactly where she’s going as her ears prick and she zooms past me toward the rear of the house.
I sigh, pressing a hand to the ache in my side as I hurry to follow her. I stop dead as I come around the side of the house, finding an oasis in the backyard.
“ Wow .”
The patio is huge and completely made of stone the color of sand. But even though there seems to be no less than two lounge areas, a dining area, an outdoor kitchen—and is that a sauna?—it’s the pool I can’t look away from.
It’s pristine. A perfect rectangle that looks like it’s carved right into the stone. The water is so blue and crystal clear.
And Ellie is about to dive right into it with her nettle-covered paws.
“Ellie!”
She stops just short of jumping over the edge, letting out a whine.
“Ellie, no .”
She sits down with a look in her eyes that tells me she is not impressed with my pool block. I’ve never seen a dog with such an expressive face. It’s almost human. I think that’s why Jesse hated her most.
It’s why I love her best.
“Thought I heard someone out here.”
I whirl, almost slipping down the steps, but he’s so quick, snatching my forearm to keep me upright and guide me away from the edge with a sharpness in his honey brown eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter as Elijah lets me go and shakes out his hand as if he’s hurt it.
His lips quirk up in a half grin. “For what?”
“I was just—I mean, Ellie needed to?—”
He lifts a brow, and I know I’m rambling and probably sound like a complete idiot, but I can’t seem to make the psychobabble stop.
“You don’t need to explain yourself,” he says, saving me. “I heard Eleven and thought I’d come see how you slept.”
“I’m sorry if she woke you up.”
He shakes his head and his deep chestnut hair catches the light, making it shine with strands of the richest auburn.
“She didn’t,” he says with an easy shrug.
I don’t know how I didn’t notice before—how beautiful this man is. His wavy dark hair hangs just past his ears, and the way his olive skin stands out against the relaxed ivory button-down shirt he’s wearing makes him look like Italian nobility. But it’s his light brown eyes, five-o-clock shadow, and crooked grin that place him firmly in American blue blood territory.
I straighten and quickly wipe the look of awe from my face, trying to divert his attention anywhere else. “Um, this is probably the most beautiful pool I’ve ever seen.”
Stepping closer to the crystalline water, I bend down to dip my fingers in. It’s heated to perfection—because of course it is.
“Yeah, Atticus is anal about keeping it pristine.”
If it weren’t for the very real way my body reacts to Elijah watching me, I’d have to wonder if I actually died on the road last night. Which would make this some strange sort of heaven?
I chuckle to myself as he adds, “If you want a morning swim, I can grab some towels.”
Fuck yes, I want a morning swim. But I don’t even have a bathing suit, and he’s probably just being nice. I bet he’s actually really busy. They must have to work hard to afford all of this. Not for the first time, I wonder what it is they do all the way out here, but I feel like now isn’t the right time to ask.
“That sounds amazing, but I think I should probably figure out what my jobs are for the day.”
Shit. I sigh. “And probably figure out what to do about my car. I can’t just leave it on the side of the road.”
“Atticus already called the local garage. It was towed there last night.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry about the towing fees. The guy who owns the garage is a friend who owed us a favor.”
I tuck some loose hair behind my ear, aware all at once that I didn’t even brush it before taking Ellie outside. Or wash my face. I probably look like absolute shit. Great.
“It’s good it’s off the road,” I reply, trying to nonchalantly drag my fingers through my hair and smooth it out. “But I really doubt it’s worth fixing.”
I don’t bother repeating that I can’t afford to fix it anyway.
“We’ll get a quote from our guy anyway, then you can decide. Sound good?”
I nod and force myself to stop trying to fix my damn hair.
There’s a charged silence between us as Ellie comes padding over to my side and cocks her head at Elijah as if to say, Why are you just standing there?
He grins warmly at her. “Think she’s hungry?” he asks. “Atticus was starting breakfast when I came out.”
Is that an invitation?
“She has her kibble,” I tell him, grimacing as I continue. “And if I can just get my suitcase back, I think there were a couple protein bars in there I could?—”
“Aurora,” he interrupts. “It’s just breakfast. Besides, I’m pretty sure Atticus still has your bag in quarantine.”
“Oh?”
“He’s kind of a germaphobe.”
Huh . That actually makes sense. “So that’s the vibe I was getting.”
“Very perceptive,” he praises, and I shiver.
“Come on. I’ll give you a quick tour on the way to the kitchen.”
I follow Elijah with Ellie on our heels as he leads us back into the house. The moment we enter, my mouth waters from the glorious smell of breakfast cooking. I’m so fucking hungry that I don’t think I’ll remember any of Elijah’s short tour of the main floor later because all I can think about the whole time is bacon .