Chapter Twenty-Six
Noa
“She is a bitch,” Lance said, nodding. “Thanks for remembering. Though, is she as much of a bitch as your mom? I mean, who just abandons her daughter for her whole life?”
He was trying to hurt me.
It was an old game.
And it never worked.
Because I’d worked through my feelings about my mother not wanting to be a mother a long time ago.
Lance had never tried to heal any of his wounds. He just kept pouring salt in them, letting them fester and rot him from the inside out.
Okay.
Maybe I hadn’t healed completely. Because I did still have a Lance-shaped wound in me somewhere. I hadn’t realized it was still there, eating at me, until I saw him again.
He looked a lot as I remembered: the black hair and eyes, the height, the cleft chin, the nose not perfectly straight…
because I’d punched it the last time I’d seen him.
The years had filled him out, though—broadened his shoulders, filled out his muscle mass, etched his jaw and cheekbones more sharply.
“I seem to remember your mother abandoning you too,” I reminded him.
Was it smart to goad your kidnapper?
No.
But when that kidnapper was Lance? Oh, yes, yes you did. He had it coming. And more.
“Or do you not remember her dumping you on my father and me when you were seventeen? Because she… oh what did she say? Oh, right. That she ‘just couldn’t take you anymore.’” The little smirk he’d shot me fell from his face.
“See, my mom never really knew me. She left me because she had other plans for her life. Your mom left you because she had met you… and she just didn’t love you. ”
“You stupid bitch—”
He took a threatening step toward me.
“Careful,” I said, shooting him a small smile. “I think we both know that when I’m not drugged, I can take you.”
“When we were kids,” he clarified. He had a point there. We hadn’t sparred since he was seventeen and I was fifteen. He’d put on a lot of muscle since then. And likely had more training. “You know I can take you down now.”
“You could try.”
Lord knew, I was the one with the most to lose here. And my father always made it clear that the person who was being attacked had a lot more motivation to fight to the death than the attacker.
Besides, I don’t think he wanted to kill me.
I mean, eventually, absolutely.
But this whole charade of chasing me, kidnapping me, then setting up clues and tools for makeshift weapons in the trash can? This wasn’t just about killing me. This was about proving some point. Then likely tormenting me. And finally, yes, killing me.
But he was a cat with a mouse.
He wanted to toy with me first.
It gave me time.
To get past him. To catch him unaware and take him down. Or for Caymen and the club to find me.
That last one seemed increasingly less likely. I mean, if this was linked to the current deal, or jobs I’d done recently, I imagined there was some thread they could find that led back to me.
But Lance?
Lance was so far in my past that I barely ever thought about him anymore.
My father and I had been in Michigan for another of his jobs. It was one of the longer ones, but it was over the summer, so I’d avoided yet another school enrollment.
And one day, there was a knock at the door.
There was Sherry, Lance’s mom, and a gangly, sullen teenaged Lance. With a duffle bag in his hand.
“I can’t take him anymore,” she said as soon as she saw my father. “He’s yours now.”
Sherry had been my uncle’s wife when he passed away. Lance was hers from a previous relationship, but my uncle had been happy to raise him like his own son. For the short time he was able to.
I knew my father kept in touch with Sherry for a long time. I suspected he sent her money, even though she got a nice life insurance settlement from my uncle’s death.
I didn’t know they were still in touch. Or that he would be willing to take on her son when she decided she was done being a mother. But that’s exactly what he’d done.
As for me, I’d been thrilled.
With Lance only being two years older than me, I thought we’d have a lot in common and could keep each other company, since my father was gone so much.
That first day all but dashed those hopes. Lance had been moody and quiet. As soon as my father offered him up his bedroom, with my father sleeping on the couch, he’d gone in there and didn’t come out until dinner. Where he gave one-word answers or grunts.
Slowly but surely, though, my father worked on him. He was good with people like that. He could bring them out of their shells, could get any information out of them that he wanted. And those were experienced criminals, more often than not. So a grumpy teenager? Easy work.
Pretty quickly, Lance was being taught all the things I’d learned growing up. But when I tried to help him when I caught him practicing, he’d flip out and tell me that he didn’t need help from an ‘arrogant little girl.’
Did I make things easier by replying, “Fine then, I hope you stab yourself in the foot?” No. Especially when just a few minutes later, that’s exactly what happened. I’d totally stood there, arms crossed, ‘arrogant’ smile on my lips as he hobbled past me to go get his cut cleaned up.
Unfortunately, that was how things were with us.
With more mature eyes, I could see that he was clinging to the only father figure he ever knew, that he wanted to prove himself, and make my father proud.
As a kid, all I saw was that he was constantly trying to one-up me, to prove he was better than I was.
And sometimes, the little ‘tests’ he threw at me were downright cruel, if not abusive.
Shame on me, in hindsight, for never telling my father. He would have put an end to it immediately, set Lance straight, told him that there was nothing to compete about. But at the time, I’d ruffled at his taunts of, “Fine, go cry to your father like the baby you are.”
Because he never got in trouble, it only continued.
Slowly but surely, I was becoming the sullen one.
I was getting the comments from my father.
I was being told to stop trying to ‘show off’ in front of my cousin.
When I’d been fed up enough to scream, “He’s not my cousin! ” I’d been sent right to my room.
Eventually, it was time for school.
I thought maybe that would help, that having more time away from him would let me compartmentalize everything.
The problem was that Lance was every bit the same asshole at school as he was at home. Only now, he had an audience. And, eventually, friends to help pile on.
It was no longer just teasing about being younger or not being as strong as he was or whatever petty crap he’d spewed at me when we were home. It was meaner, more personal. It was about my acne-prone face. It was about my flat chest. My big feet. My lack of friends.
My father worked hard my whole life to instill a seemingly ironclad sense of self, a previously unshakable confidence.
Lance chipped away at it bit by bit.
I shrank into myself, eyes on the floor when I walked the halls, sitting alone in the library at lunch so I couldn’t be targeted, darting out of school at the bell to run home before Lance and his friends could follow me.
But it all came to a head that following spring. My father had another time-consuming job involving a lot of travel, so he was coming home later and later.
Lance took advantage of that by having his buddies over to get trashed all day and half the night.
I’d started ferreting food away in my room and climbing out my bedroom window to go use the bathroom at the convenience store a few blocks away, just so I wouldn’t have to go out there and deal with any of them.
For a long time, that worked.
As long as I was out of sight, I was left alone.
Until one night.
When my door flew open.
And there was Lance, teetering on his feet, eyes blurry. But he wasn’t alone. Nope, he had his friend Blake with him.
“This fucking idiot just told us he thinks you’re hot. And I know you have a thing for him,” Lance said. “You two have fun.”
I knew the second I looked at Blake’s face what his intentions were. I also knew that they wouldn’t be any fun for me.
I scrambled toward my nightstand, trying to get any of the tools my father insisted I keep on me: knife, pepper spray, extendable baton.
But Blake was faster.
Almost like he knew what I was going for. Almost like Lance could have told him.
I barely got my fingers around the tube of pepper spray when his hand was on my wrist, squeezing so hard it felt like my bones crushed to dust.
He pried the bottle away and it clattered to the floor as he pushed me backward, pinning my legs against the bed.
I’d had a lot of sparring practice in my day, but this was the first genuinely violent experience I had where I didn’t know that I was going to be okay, that it was all a game of sorts.
This wasn’t a game.
And my body seemed to forget all its training as my heart banged against my ribcage, as my throat went tight, and my legs went rubbery.
“I’ve been wanting this for so long,” Blake said as his one hand continued to hold my wrist and the other went to the back of my neck, holding me still as his lips came down on mine. Hard. Bruising. Demanding things I didn’t want to give.
Something in me snapped then, using my training to break his grip on my wrist, then pinching my fingers around his throat until his mouth opened and closed like a fish and his other hand released me.
I turned and ran toward the door.
My hand went to the knob, but it wouldn’t turn. Because someone was holding it.
“Open the fucking door!” I screamed, pounding on it with one hand, then grabbing the knob with both and trying to force it open.
To no avail.
And then Blake’s hands were at my waist, dragging me backward and turning me so fast to toss me down on the bed that the whole world blurred.
His hands were gripping, grabbing, scraping.