11. Trapped
ELEVEN
TRAPPED
HAVEN
It happened again. I fell asleep in one place, and when I finally wake up, I have no fucking idea where I am.
It’s another bed. Another room. The walls are dark.
A rich, deep brown color that absorbs the yellow light from the only source of it in the room: a swinging lamp—all bulb, no shade—that’s hanging over my head.
There’s no window. It takes me a moment to notice there’s even a door.
It’s painted the same color as the walls, and if the light didn’t bounce off the dark metal knob, I don’t know if I would’ve seen it at all.
The bed has dark sheets, too. Two pillows and a wrought iron headboard.
That’s it. That’s all that’s in here—except for me. I’m in here, too, and it doesn’t take a stable genius to figure out how I got down here.
My first instinct is to make sure I’m still dressed.
Every time I woke up in my cell, I was terrified that I’d come to naked, feeling achy between my legs.
Thankfully, that’s one indignity that never happened—though I’m too bitter to be the teeniest bit grateful that Winter reined in his rabid guard dogs that much—but I have no idea what to expect from Connor Heyward.
I thought I knew him. The Order of the Owed is close-knit enough that the members all know each other, and their dirty laundry, too.
Connor is a jokester. A flirt. A smart ass.
He doesn’t take life seriously, and until he’s thirty and the King reminds him that he’ll lose all of his privileges if he doesn’t take an arranged bride, I had thought he’d never change.
I was wrong.
Who is this man? I don’t know him. Telling me he loves me. Chasing me out of the house. Constantly trying to feed me… constantly drugging me… I will admit that I always suspected that Connor had a dark side.
I’ve been completely blind-sided by just how insane he is.
Even worse, I still believe that I must be because why else would I be the tiniest bit flattered that, after all these years, he’s finally decided to act on the flippant promise he made when he was an eighteen-year-old boy?
No. No, Haven. Don’t be flattered. Be fucking horrified.
So he saved me. That doesn’t give him the right to keep me here.
He’s not a doctor. Definitely not a nurse, even if he’s decided to assign that role to himself.
He’s just nuts, and to make it all worse, Adrian Heller is as fucking useless as ever.
He stood there and let Loni leave us, never making a move to apologize or to stand up for her.
He let all of Harmony Heights believe that he had nothing to do with her when I know he’d been sleeping with her for most of senior year.
He let her take the fall for it, and I lost my best friend because of it.
Then his indifference toward our ‘engagement’ over the years left me untouchable.
No one even wanted to be my friend because I was supposedly Adrian’s, let alone a lover that could stand up to the Order and ask me to marry them, Offering or not.
Now, on top of all that, he had the absolute fucking gall to show up at Connor’s house, and since the Heirs are close after all these years, he obviously knows I’m here.
He’s probably also aware that having him this close panicked me enough to have me racing out the back door when I first heard his voice.
Connor, I could handle. Adrian? It was either run or lash out at him, and I chose to go…
only Connor caught me. He caught me, and Adrian left me here, and if that’s not proof that I’ve already got my one rescue, nothing is.
This has got to be another room in Connor’s house. Breathing in deep, trying to control my racing heart, I shudder. It smells like Connor. Like the mild cologne he always wears.
Like he’s slept down here before, too...
He’s not in the room now. As narrow and cramped as it is, I wouldn’t be able to miss him, and I don’t see him. Where is he? Based on how he’s been acting since he decided I’m his new roommate—his new prisoner—I can’t imagine he’s gone far.
I’m right.
Part of me expected the door to be locked.
After all, he did that to me last night.
And I get it. I do. I probably scared the shit out of him when I tried to jump from the balcony.
It’s just… I needed to prove to myself that I could get away.
Staying here with Connor… that’s a bad idea.
It would be too easy to shut down and let Connor take care of me.
I don’t think I’m capable of doing it, and if he chooses to… why not?
Why not? Because it’s Connor.
I’m not sure how yet, but he’s fucking with me.
Just like how he always did when we were in school together.
I don’t doubt that he feels sorry for me and wants to help, but what’s the payoff for him?
Why does he care? There has to be a reason, and since I can’t bring myself to believe him—to honestly accept that he thinks he’s in love with me—I thought I could get out of here before the hammer falls and I shatter more than I already have when it comes out that this…
all of this… is just Connor being Connor.
That’s not what happened. He caught me, and he pulled me over the rail, and he held me close until the urge to run died down, leaving me helpless but to do anything other than let him take care of me.
He made dinner. I ate it. Don’t know what happened next, but here I am, feeling fuzzy from whatever he gave me. And he had to have done something, too. How else could I have slept through being moved again after six weeks of captivity left me so skittish, I wake up at the drop of a pin?
Look at me now. It’s another cell. Another jail. Only, when I turn the knob, the door is not locked. It opens easily, and I pull the door in, poking my head out in time to watch Connor grab a small towel, wiping his hands clean on it.
His eyes light up when he notices me watching him. “Haven! Good morning, sweetpea!”
I ignore the ‘sweetpea’. To be fair, I also ignore Connor as I take in my surroundings.
Immediately, I get ‘basement’ vibes. Like the room attached to this one, it has dark walls; instead of paint, though, there’s wood paneling with cement floors. I see a window to my right, but it doesn’t look out. More like it looks up. It’s a window well, allowing a small trickle of light in.
There’s a television mounted on the opposite wall.
In front of it, a black leather three-seater sofa with the same fuzzy blue blanket that Connor wrapped around my shoulders yesterday folded up on the furthest seat.
I see a cherry wood coffee table a couple of feet away from the couch.
A remote is sitting on top of that. Probably for the television, I figure.
Directly across from the room I woke up in, an open door leads into a small bathroom.
I can make out a tub, a showerhead, and part of the toilet from my angle.
There are stairs leading up to the right of the bathroom.
Tucked beneath it, leading out midway into the space, the finished basement area has a cozy kitchenette, including a small circular table made of the same sort of wood as the coffee table, two chairs, and a narrow fridge that hums almost as loud as Connor is.
“Do you like it?” he asks. He throws his arms out. “It’s yours.”
Excuse me?
Frowning, I look at Connor.
It’s not easy. He has no right, looking as fresh and gorgeous as he does.
He’s shaved. His hair is newly damp and combed.
Since I saw him last, he traded a loose t-shirt for one of the pressed polo shirts he usually wears when I see him around town.
He has khaki pants on, plus a pair of brown loafers.
He looks like a trust fund kid ready for another day of spending money and schmoozing rather than watching me take in this room, telling me it’s mine.
Mine? How can it be mine?
“I was going to bring you down here last night, but you fell asleep right after dinner.”
I glare at him. His expression is so guileless, I know for damn sure that he did something to my food to ‘help’ me sleep.
He pretends not to notice. “In case you haven’t figured it out, this is the bottom floor of my home.
Our home. It has everything you can ever need while you get comfortable here.
” Lifting his hand, he ticks it all off on his fingers.
“A bathroom of your own. Television complete with all streaming services. A fridge. A hotplate. A sink. And your room… it’s actually a panic room.
For you, I mean that literally. When everything gets overwhelming and you need some space away from me, you can go in there.
Lock me out. Lock the whole fucking world out, Haven, if that’s what you want to do.
We’ll both know you’ll be safe in there, and right now, that’s the most important thing. ”
That’s what he thinks. Me? I’m blinking at him, trying to make sense of that. A panic room? In theory, that does sound perfect for me. Especially if it means that I can shut the door and lock Connor out. But that’s assuming I accept that I’m staying here—and I most definitely am not doing that.
I open my mouth. I want to tell him no. I want to tell him that he’s out of his mind. I want to scream at him, yell at him, say that I want to go… but nothing happens. I stamp my foot in frustration instead, and Connor frowns.
He frowns, and then he nods as though he just came to a decision.
“You must be hungry, darling. You slept through the night, and it’s past time for breakfast—”
Fuck, no. I point at Connor. I jerk my thumb at me. I cross my arms and open them repeatedly, the universal sign for: not gonna happen.
If I let him feed me again, who knows what will happen.
He’s drugged me twice now that I know of: once when he jabbed me with a sedative, and then with last night’s dinner.
Considering I woke up in his bed with the same heavy-headed feeling right after he brought me here, I wouldn’t put it past him to have sedated me then, too. No. Uh-uh.