Chapter 44 #2
He starts laughing. “People don’t notice me.
I’m invisible,” he says. “I sat in on your Communication class one day last semester, and you didn’t look at me once.
I waited for you to see me, to react, but you didn’t.
I thought maybe you were different, that I’d give you a second chance to prove you weren’t like the others, but no. ”
My mouth drops open. He must mean my large lecture class.
In fairness, there were three hundred students in it, and I only vaguely recognized most of them.
I remembered those who sat in the first few rows, but my memory got murkier the further up in the lecture hall I went. If he sat up near the back…
I remember the quiz without a name on it. I never found its owner.
“What’s wrong with you women?” he asks in exasperation.
“Do you know how many dates I’ve gone on lately?
I can’t get past a first date. I try to be polite and respectful, but it’s the same story with all of you.
‘Sorry, I didn’t feel a connection.’ But that guy, the hockey player, spends his nights getting paid to get into fights, and you think that’s great.
Then you’re surprised when guys like that turn around and hit you. ”
“Ash would never hurt me,” I say vehemently. I know that without a doubt. “Ash has done nothing but try to protect me since I met him. Protect me from you. That’s what a real man does, protects what’s his.”
And yes, I am Ash’s. I have been for a while. Mind, body, and soul.
Barry makes a face like he just put something bitter in his mouth. “It’s not enough that he gets to have all the really hot women,” he says. “He has to take the regular-looking ones away from the rest of us as well?”
Of all the things Barry’s said tonight, that one hits the hardest. He doesn’t even find me attractive. I’m just ‘regular-looking’ enough that he feels he has a shot, and I’m ashamed to realize that’s what breaks me.
Were the times Ash told me I was beautiful a lie? He said I needed to start believing he found me attractive, but even Barry is settling. It knocks the air from my lungs in a way not even the cold and the fear do.
“Way to make a girl feel special,” I say, when I rally enough to speak. “Did you ever think maybe that’s why you’re single?”
I shouldn’t have said it, but I couldn’t help it, and Barry’s face contorts in anger.
“Shut up!” he says. “Women have it so easy. If you want to have sex, all you have to do is open your legs and some guy will fall into your pussy. It doesn’t matter what you look like.
Do you know what you need if you want to get laid as a man?
You have to be tall. You have to be hot and have a great job.
You need a nice car, and apparently you need to grunt like a cave man and drag a woman off by her hair. ”
I really want to tell him how hard it was to get Drew to come fuck me, but I refrain. I’m not going to bare that part of my soul to this asshole.
“Having a personality and not blaming your problems on everyone else helps as well,” I snap, because I’m fucked anyway.
Barry growls again, then raises the pistol at me and pulls the trigger.
I flinch at the click and nearly vomit as my stomach heaves, but nothing happens, and we both look at the gun. We realize at the same time he needs to cock it again, and I launch myself at him on instinct.
I grab his gun hand and try to shove him into a tree, hoping to dislodge it. I succeed in pushing him against the tree, but he swings the hand with the gun and cold cocks me. I see the gun go flying from the impact just before stars pop in my vision.
Barry doesn’t try to retrieve it. He wraps his hands around my throat and falls on top of me while I’m still dazed. More stars swim before my eyes as my air is cut off, and I scratch and claw at Barry as I buck beneath him, desperate to dislodge him enough to suck in a breath.
In a last-ditch effort, I swing my fist up and clock him in the side of the head. Barry grunts in pain, and his hands ease from around my neck just enough for me to gasp in a sweet breath of air.
I’m about to hit him again when something barrels into him like a charging bull, and he’s knocked completely off me. I cough as I try to sit up, but I jump in surprise as a man drops down in a kneel next to me.
“You okay, ma’am?” he asks.
I look up at the man, but I don’t recognize him. Wait, yes I do. He’s the man from the gym that I later saw when I had dinner with my mother.
“Who are you?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer but looks past me and swears. He jumps up and runs over to where Ash is straddling Barry, punching him repeatedly.
“Mr. Gunnarsson!” the man says, trying to pull Ash off Barry. “Stop! He’s unconscious!”
He wraps himself around Ash’s arm to stay it, but it’s a few seconds more before Ash stops fighting the hold and lowers his arm.
“He’s down,” the man says. “Go check on your woman.”
Ash’s head jerks to me where I’m still lying on the ground. He throws himself off Barry and crawls over to me. He pulls me across his lap and wraps his arms around me, squeezing me so hard I almost can’t breathe.
“Fuck, Gray,” he whispers, his voice cracking, as he cradles me against him. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you? I’ll fucking kill him.”
I can’t answer past the lump in my throat. At some point in the near future, I’ll break down in tears, and once I start, I doubt I’ll stop, but for now my eyes are bone dry.
Ash grabs my face in his hands. “Baby, tell me you’re okay, or I swear to God, I’ll kill that fucker with my bare hands.”
I swallow. “I’m okay.” My voice is scratchy and barely a whisper, but I get the words out. I start to shake, partially from the cold, but mostly as the reality of what just happened sinks in.
“Jesus, you must be freezing,” Ash says.
He pulls his coat off and wraps it around me before pulling me back against him and rocking me in his lap. “Do you know him?”
I nod against Ash’s chest. “We went on a date. The night you gave me the shoulder massage.”
Ash stops rocking. “Why did he take you? What did he want?”
A humorless laugh jumps up my throat. “Revenge on womankind for his involuntary celibacy?”
Ash tenses. “He’s an incel?”
I nod.
“Boss, I gave the police our location,” the other man calls to Ash. “They should be here any minute.”
“Who’s that?” I ask Ash.
“That’s Sully,” Ash says. “He’s one of the guys I had following you the last few weeks.”
I frown. “You still had him following me?”
“Sort of,” Ash says. “I’d already paid him through tonight, so he was in the parking garage watching your car when this fucker came down with the laundry cart.
Sully didn’t think anything of it at first, and he wasn’t watching too closely until he looked up and saw this guy pull you out of the cart and dump you in his trunk.
He tried to stop him, but the guy got in his car and took off. ”
“Barry didn’t notice him in the garage?” I ask. “Barry is the guy’s name,” I explain at Ash’s questioning look.
“Tinted windows,” Ash says. “Sully gets paid to stay hidden. Anyway, he tried to tail the guy, but he lost him, so Sully called a friend who’s…um, handy with computers, and he tracked your phone. The guy, Barry, must’ve brought it with him, which is just dumb.”
We hear shouts in the distance and a dog barking.
“Sully called the police to tell them what he’d seen and to give them the car’s license plate. Then he called me, and I was able to catch up to him,” Ash goes on.
I’m still sitting across his lap on the ground, and he reaches up to stroke the side of my face as he nuzzles his nose into my hair.
“If I’d lost you, Gray…” I hear the choke in his voice as he trails off.
His own break snaps the thin tether of my control, and I start to cry.
And then I cry, and I cry, and I cry.