Chapter 19
For the entire first day after I get back to my apartment with my wilting plants and glaring landlady, I sleep. It’s crazy how exhausted I am, even though I’d basically spent the last night at Jed’s sleeping and eating grilled cheese.
After he’d made my wish come true and disrespectfully wrecked me, of course.
But the only times I wake up for the rest of the day are to scarf down Lunchables and brush my hair. Though I’m pretty sure I’d fallen asleep for the second task, judging by the fact I’d woken up with the brush on my pillow and my hair still tangled.
For two days after that, I try to remember what it’s like to be a normal human, and fail miserably.
Though, I manage to write a reasonably convincing email to the preserve giving them an excuse for why the photos are late.
They even believe it, and give me an extra twenty-four hours to get my work submitted to them.
It’s not quite as much as I’d like, but if I have to spend all day editing and picking out the best photos, then I will.
All in the name of getting paid, at the very least.
When that’s finally done and sent, let myself be distracted by the thing I’ve been trying to avoid for the whole time I’ve been working. What I’ve set to the side, my stomach twisting into origami swans every single time my eye finds them by accident.
The pictures I took of Jed.
But finally, when there’s nothing else left to do and I can’t give myself any other excuses, I draw my laptop up onto my knees and lean back in my recliner, eyes fixed on the two photos I’d taken before I left his cabin.
Somehow, he looks better than I remembered him.
And that’s saying something, since in my memory, Jed is perfection personified.
I feel almost as if I could reach out to the pictures and feel the silkiness of his hair, though I know I’ll just hit the glass of my laptop screen instead.
In the first, he’s looking away from me.
Gazing up at his ceiling with the length of his neck and upper body on display.
He looks so thoughtful and so…sad. But resigned, in a lot of ways.
Like he’s losing something important to him, but he knew it was coming all along.
And that makes my heart twist into knots, just like my stomach. I hate the feeling of being almost unable to breathe when I look at him; it just gets worse when I open the other picture and it covers the first.
In this one, Jed had been looking directly at me. His blue eyes were sweet, lashes sweeping across them with that small start of a smile on his lips. Gorgeous could never begin to cover how he looks. Especially when he’s looking at me like this.
“You’re a murderer,” I tell the picture, though my heart screams in disagreement with my dismissal. “I can’t. I literally can’t get past that.” That’s what I say, but everything in me tends to disagree.
It’s not like he’d done anything wrong, after all. Kidnapping me, for as long as that had lasted, had been to protect him and his friends. And for all that I was a ‘hostage,’ it had barely felt like it. But God, here I am making excuses for him, instead of being happy that I’m free and clear.
But I’m not happy. That’s the problem.
Every morning I’ve woken up, disappointment sets in when I realize I’m back in my apartment.
And not just because my fridge is full of Lunchables, instead of real food.
Every time I bury my face in my pillow, I remember that it doesn’t smell like Jed; it’s always such a hit to my gut that I have a hard time going to sleep.
It might be wrong as hell, but I can’t control how I feel when I’m half-asleep and wishing for more than I have.
“What’s wrong with me?” I mutter, slamming my laptop shut and banging my head back against the headrest a couple times.
Not that it does much, given how overstuffed the chair is.
“You have got to get over this, Saylor. You cannot be in love with a serial killer.” Especially one that wields a chainsaw for fun, like something out of the goriest horror movies known to man.
My phone ringing makes me jump, and for one wild moment I hope to God that somehow Jed grabbed my number before he returned it to me and is calling to ask me out. Or, hell, to tell me he’s tracked me down and he’s outside.
Unfortunately, it’s my step-mother. And if anything in the world could make me feel worse than I already do, it’s her voice when I accept the call and hear her say, “You missed dinner with your father and me this week, Saylor.”
Oh. Yeah. How could I have forgotten? But I can’t exactly tell her what happened. I definitely don’t even want to. Still, I flex my legs out on the recliner, stretching my toes as far as they’ll go before I answer.
“I was busy,” I tell her, flipping down the footrest of the recliner and getting to my feet.
She’s officially ruined the mood I was in, which wasn’t a great one anyway, and dragged me back to a reality I’d rather stay away from.
“I was working for the preserve and I forgot.” It’s only partially a lie.
Not that I care about being truthful to her.
I’ve never liked my step-mother, Brenda, anyway.
Missing dinner with them doesn’t upset me, since she would have been there.
The only thing I feel even a little bad about is that I didn’t get to see my dad.
And, thanks to how much I dislike her, visits have already dropped in frequency to become once a month or so.
“You could have at least called us.” It’s obvious she isn’t going to let this go, but I busy myself with looking for my laptop charger.
Her words don’t hurt me nearly as much as they used to, thankfully.
But she is always good at searching for something to dig under my skin while we talk. I have no doubt today will be the same.
“I was really tied up. I couldn’t get away,” I mutter, gently dropping my laptop onto the desk in my room.
My bedroom is small, and mostly dominated by plants, but I still have a small workstation set up for when I actually feel like doing work at a desk like an adult, instead of in a recliner or in bed half asleep.
Sure enough, my charger is here, and I slide it into the port as I make sure not to bang my camera off of its charger.
“What, were you being held hostage?” Brenda snorts derisively in my ear.
“Yeah, something like that.” She’s closer to the mark than she can ever know, and I can’t help my wry grin that she can’t see.
“Hands tied tight, the whole nine yards. Haven’t been home in days.
” The truth will just irritate her, so I sprinkle it in where I can while I tidy up my apartment.
This way, I can be productive while she nitpicks at me.
Which, of course, she does. Once she’s moved past how inconsiderate I’ve been, she moves onto the other easy things.
How she’s seen some of my peers from high school.
How good they’re looking, and how they’ve settled down to have families.
She, of course, makes sure to let me know I’m probably not going to be able to land the same kind of fairy tale ending as them, but that she’s sure I’ll figure something out.
I brace myself, knowing that what comes next is going to be about my weight and my looks. Except, when she starts on her tangent about this new diet she’s seen so much about…I don’t hear her.
Not really, at least. Instead, I hear Jed’s voice in my ear, whispering about how he likes every part of me. Hadn’t he been so honest, and so earnest, when he’d stroked his fingers along my sides; along my curves that my step-mother is so keen on shaming me for?
“Did you hear me, Saylor?” The crack of Brenda’s voice drags me out of my thoughts, and I let go of my t-shirt that I’ve been twisting around my fingers.
“Sure,” I tell her easily, though the truth is I haven’t been hearing her. Not whatsoever. Because Jed’s voice is more prevalent, even as a remembered-whisper. “I’ll look into that.”
A knock on the door makes me look up in surprise, and stupidly, I again hope that it’s Jed. I hope he put a tracker in my car, or just used his super-serial killer powers to track me down. More than anything, I silently beg for it to be him.
“Hey, I gotta go.” My words cut hers off, and I can all but hear her hackles raise from my side of the call. “But umm, I’ll call Dad and set up another dinner. I’ll apologize to him for missing last week.” Because no way in hell will I ever apologize to her.
I don’t even let her get a word in. I barely hear her start by the time I’ve hung up the phone, my steps taking me across the small apartment to the door.
Please be Jed.
I suck in a breath, grabbing the handle with the fingers of my other hand crossed tightly enough to ache.
Please, please be Jed—
I open the door quickly, still so hopeful that it hurts, only for the thought to stop dead and fizzle out in my skull.
Because it isn’t Jed standing at the door, waiting to take me back to his cabin or literally anywhere else.
It’s the same police officers from his cabin in the woods. Only now, they’re looking a lot less friendly, and a lot more wary as they stand at my door.
“Can we come in?” Officer Rayez asks, that false smile crossing her lips like it had back at Jed’s cabin. If this is her attempt to look friendly, then someone should really tell her how bad of a job she’s doing with it.
“Sure.” I know the disappointment in my voice is audible, but I don’t know what to do to change that. Hell, I don’t give a damn at this point. Let her see how disappointed I am to waste my day with these two instead of doing something productive.
Like finding a way to either move on, or send a bat-signal to Jed to let him know I fucked up.