Chapter 15
I wake up with two immediate realizations.
One, my mouth tastes like I licked the inside of a hospital drawer.
Two, I have got to stop getting kidnapped.
I don’t open my eyes right away because this time is different. This time I am restrained. My shoulders ache, and my wrists feel the bite of something tight and scratchy like rope.
“Fantastic,” I slur. “I leave the house twice in one week, and this is what I get.”
My voice echoes slightly, like I’m in an empty room.
I crack one eye open, and yup. I’m tied to a chair in the center of an otherwise empty room with concrete walls, no windows, and overhead lights bright enough to feel as though I’m about to be interrogated by bad cop. My hands are tied behind the chair, ankles secured to the legs.
At least they didn’t duct tape me. I have standards.
Oh, and I have my shoes this time.
I don’t have my glasses, but at least my vision isn’t that bad. I can still make everything out, even if it is all a bit blurry.
I test the restraints, rolling my wrists and shifting my weight, but there’s no give. My head still feels like cotton, but the fog is lifting fast enough for dread to start stretching its legs.
“Okay,” I say to the empty room, assuming maybe I have an audience like I did last time. “New rule. If this becomes a twice-a-decade event, I get a punch card. Fifth kidnapping is a trip to the Taj Mahal instead of another concrete box.”
The door opens.
Three men walk in, and my spine straightens. The first two are exactly what you’d expect—tall, broad, wearing neutral black. One is bald, and the other has a beard like I could never dream of growing.
They stop about ten feet in front of me.
They step aside.
Then the world falls out from under me.
For a split second, my brain refuses to translate what my eyes are seeing. It stalls, reboots, searches for alternatives. Wrong face, wrong memory, trauma hallucination, drug residue, vision is even worse than I thought.
None of them are right.
Because it’s him.
It’s actually him.
Reese.
He stands a few feet behind them, just a little blurred around the edges, hands casually in the pockets of his black slacks like this is a board meeting and not my second abduction.
He looks older. Harder. There’s something colder in the set of his shoulders, in the line of his mouth.
His hair is a little shorter than it was the last time I saw him, his jaw sharper. His eyes—
Fuck.
My chest tightens so violently I forget how to breathe.
He’s alive.
He’s alive.
He’s alive.
The first instinct that hits me is so visceral it almost pulls me out of the chair I’m still tied to.
I want to stand up and grab him. I want to touch him.
Touch his face that is Reese’s but also isn’t with how the years have changed him.
Touch his arms that peek out from the rolled-up sleeves of his black dress shirt, the sleeve of tattoos I used to spend hours studying.
I want to touch all of him to prove that he’s solid. That he’s real. To prove I didn’t hallucinate seven years of grief.
“Hello, little menace.”
I fucking shatter.
It’s like another bullet I never saw coming, only this time it hits me.
It splits straight through my ribs and lodges somewhere catastrophic.
My lungs completely forget how to work, air catching and gasping out of me.
My vision blurs in a way that has nothing to do with drugs.
It’s not just that he’s alive. It’s that he sounds the same, like no time has passed.
Like he didn’t leave me with his blood on my hands.
Like I didn’t build a grave in my chest and live inside it.
I hate that my first instinct isn’t to scream. It’s to step into him and ask him to call me that again, a name that’s only existed in memory, one I tried to bury with him.
My throat burns, but I try to speak anyway.
“You—”
My voice cracks. That’s humiliating.
I swallow the razorblades and try again.
“You’re dead.”
The words come out flat, accusatory. His expression doesn’t shift, not a flicker of apology or relief or regret.
“I was.”
While his voice is the same, there’s an edge to it now, steel under velvet. It’s mesmerizing, almost beautiful in a dangerous kind of way. My heart lurches, like it’s foolishly chasing hope.
Then logic boots up.
Seven years.
Seven fucking years of believing he was dead, that he died in front of me. Seven years of bloody memories and grief and therapy sessions where I defended a dead man like he could still hear me. Seven years of building revenge and then tearing it down because it didn’t fix anything.
And he’s been alive this whole fucking time.
Alive.
Something inside me snaps into place, different than relief.
This is rage.
My jaw clenches. My chest begins to heave. My nostrils flare. Reese’s gaze tracks every micro-expression across my face, indifferent and assessing.
“Untie him.”
The guards or whatever they are don’t even hesitate. They move, and my eyes remain locked on Reese as one of them steps behind me, fingers working quickly at the knots. The rope loosens around my wrists, and sensation rushes back in painful pins and needles. My ankles are freed next.
I don’t stand immediately, keeping my gaze pinned on the dead man in front of me as I rub my wrists, buying myself a second to get my balance, both physically and mentally.
Then I push to my feet.
We’re almost the same height. I forgot that. Or maybe I never let myself remember.
I walk toward him slowly, no rush or flaunting or desperation. With every step, it feels as though the ground shakes and fractures deeper and deeper until I’m going to fall right through it.
I stop two feet in front of him. Up close, he’s unmistakably real, a warmth radiating off him. There’s a hard shell around him though, more jagged edges, and a noticeable scar at his temple I don’t remember being there before. There’s another beneath the stubble of his jaw.
That’s where I aim.
I swing, my fist hitting its target.
The crack of impact snaps through the room, sharp and satisfying. Pain explodes through my knuckles, but it was so fucking worth it when I see Reese’s head jerk slightly to the side, probably more from surprise than force. But I’ll take it.
Before I can even decide if I want to hit him again, cold metal presses against my temples on either side of my head.
Click.
Click.
I freeze as fear traces my veins, but I still refuse to take my eyes off Reese even as his guards hold their guns on me. Partly out of rage. Partly out of fear he’ll disappear again if I so much as blink.
And I haven’t made him pay nearly enough.
For a long moment, no one moves.
Then Reese exhales through his nose like I’m a mildly disappointing math problem. He lifts a hand. “Leave us.”
The command is quiet, and, again, they don’t hesitate. Maybe they’re not his guards at all. They don’t seem too concerned with his safety as much as they do obeying orders. Or anticipating them. Like they’re only around to do his dirty work if he’s too lazy.
The guns are lowered, and I finally take a breath. The men’s heavy steps echo off the concrete walls before the door shuts behind them.
And suddenly it’s just the two of us.
I’m not sure how much time passes where we do nothing but stand here and breathe and stare into each other’s eyes. My breaths are heavy, erratic, my chest heaving, full of agony and anger. His are calm, steady. Scary because they’re nothing but air.
He turns his head slightly, testing his jaw where I hit him. His tongue runs along the inside of his cheek. There’s a faint smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. He wipes it away with his thumb, his gaze briefly flicking down to the crimson drop before it’s back on me.
“You hit harder than you used to.”
“Oh, fantastic,” I say, voice hoarse. “Glad to know the kidnappee feedback will be glowing.”
Something flickers across his face, and it’s not amusement. The Reese I remember would’ve smirked, or at least pretended to be annoyed. But this isn’t pretend. It’s real. And it lands in my gut like a dropped weight.
This version of him studies me, eyes narrowed with impatience.
“Making jokes? Still?”
“Historically, it’s how I cope with being abducted.”
“I remember.”
The words land wrong. Like he wishes he didn’t remember.
Before I can let that shatter me in even worse ways, Reese steps forward. The movement is fast enough that instinct kicks in and I take a half-step back.
Seriously fuck him for bringing out the fear in me.
His hand shoots out and grabs my throat, not tight enough to crush, just enough to control.
He turns me ninety degrees and shoves me against the side wall, my back slamming against the concrete with a dull thud.
My hands come up automatically, gripping his wrist. He’s stronger than I remember, leaner maybe, but with the kind of strength that feels honed instead of brute.
His face is inches from mine, and up close, the differences are even more obvious. The faint pink lines of scars at his temple and his jaw. There’s also something colder and sharper living behind his silver eyes, like the edge of a knife that’s been frozen.
“You don’t get to joke,” he says quietly, still too eerily calm as he increases the pressure on my throat. “You don’t get to pretend this is funny.”
“Of course it’s not fucking funny!” My pulse slams against his fingers as my voice comes out strained but no less furious. “You let me think you were dead for seven fucking years! Fuck you, you fucking piece of—”
He squeezes, and all the air is severed from my brain.
And, yet, I still can’t look away.
That’s when I feel a warm, wet tear slide down my cheek.
Traitorous fucking tear.
Reese’s eyes track it, the crease between his brows deepening, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s remembering like I am.