1. Carsyn
ONE
CARSYN
I hate being awake while I’m dreaming. Or stuck, or whatever it’s called when you know you’re dreaming but you can’t seem to get your mind to break through the haze.
That’s where I am now. Dream limbo.
A breeze curls through the window, sending a flutter through the pale-yellow curtains. Algid air tickles the bottom of my bare feet, and I want to pull them under the cover of my warm comforter, but… I can’t move.
With each passing moment and every blink, the world rights itself, the discombobulated dream feeling fading as consciousness sorely ambles in .
If this isn’t a dream, where the fuck am I?
My head is turned on the pillow, facing the wall with the open window and yellow curtains. The curtains aren’t moving anymore. The breeze is gone. Narrowing my eyes to focus, I can lightly make out the landscape outside.
Pasture. Rolling pastures, malachite and fawn. Miles and miles of it.
No, I’m not home , because we don’t have curtains and all our grass is dead as of now.
Why am I waking up in a strange place? Why am I not waking up in my childhood room like I usually do? My attempt at problem solving makes my head ache, but the longer I stare out the window, the more I realize… I don’t know where the fuck I am.
That’s concerning.
I study the grass, then the birch framed window. This isn’t Kinleigh’s old place, either, since that got torn down recently. I wrack my brain as my eyes move around the portion of the room I’m facing, hunting for any familiarities. A coat that looks familiar, a pair of shoes tucked under a chair that I recognize, hell, even a set of keys would do.
But there’s nothing.
I keep wracking my brain, seemingly harder than I ever have from the way my temples throb, and the backs of my eyes sting.
Genevieve, a survivor friend that’s been staying with me, doesn’t even have a place of her own so that’s out. Nash, too. He’s been staying with me ever since Colton came home.
There’s a blue pillow lining the window seat, and a needlepoint of a home on the wall. In it, the roof is blue, with a little puff of gray above the red chimney. The words HOME SWEET HOME are stitched beneath the cottage in wooly blue thread. Wallpaper covers the walls, the pattern something straight from my grandma’s favorites, I swear. Little blue cornflowers and fine yellow pinstripes.
Wait, am I at my grandma’s?
No, Carsyn. Memaw has been gone for years. Panic burns in my toes, crawling its way up my legs until it rests heavily, with urgency, in my chest.
Where am I? Why can’t I move?
My head aches, and even my impending panic attack has me confused and dizzy.
How can I be dizzy if I’m lying down? That doesn’t make any kind of sense. I close my eyes, willing the seasick feeling to cease as I try and figure out just how much I drank last night and where the fuck I could possibly be.
I blink open one eye and find covers over my legs. Lifting my gaze to the window, the back end of a truck is visible.
A white truck I’ve never seen before. Or if I have, I can’t remember. Hell, I can’t do much right about now. My chest is sore and tight, almost like I got punched or something. Who punches a woman in the chest? Only another woman, I presume.
Did I get into a fight last night? I don’t remember that. Surely, I’d remember laying someone out. I give my best attempt to thrash, to wake up someone else in this house, hell, maybe even this room. I can’t see half of it, I may not be in bed alone.
Did I go home with someone last night? Comfort flutters inside me somewhere at the idea that maybe this is just a one-night stand with a really bad hangover.
But my attempt to thrash is unsuccessful. I lie motionless while my mind fights, throwing punches and roundhouse kicks.
I don’t think I went home with someone last night and…
I can’t move.
I can’t make myself do a damn thing. I can’t wiggle my toes; I can’t sit up. Hell, I can’t even turn my head more than a few inches. Tears slip out of my eyes as my situation sinks in, and I use those few inches to wipe my tears on the pillowcase. If I can’t move, I need to be able to see, and crying won’t help me. The cotton is soft, but it doesn’t smell like fabric softener.
It smells like cologne.
The hairs on my arms rise, and my stomach clenches.
The bar.
The bar comes rushing back like a goddamn freight train.
The man in the vest with that fucking barrel chest, and the nice hat and the keys. Keys to his truck.
Oh my god. I did go out. I went out and I went home with someone, too.
I remember taking off my pants because I was in a rush to be naked when he came back from the bathr— oh my god.
Oh. My. God.
He drugged me.
That good looking, expensive whiskey buying mother fucker drugged me.
He saw me going through his mail and he stuck me with a needle. No man brings a woman home and sticks her with a needle because he’s a good guy. A reaction to seeing someone going through your stuff is “let me take you home” or “maybe this isn’t a good idea” but it is never, logically, “let me drug you now.”
No. That’s fucking weird, and the biggest red flag of them all.
The man from last night was either going to harvest my organs or traffic me, or maybe both.
Wait, I was going through his mail?
Shock, panic, and likely whatever was in that needle he shoved into me—keep me still, though I still try like hell to kick and thrash. Fear floods my motionless body, a sheen of cold sweat breaking out along my exposed arms. Carefully, I attempt to take a deep breath. With every ounce of strength and gumption I can muster, I try to scream bloody murder at the top of my lungs, but nothing more than a hoarse cry shudders out.
This man is going to rape me, if he hasn’t already. Or worse, traffic me, the same way Kinney’s dad trafficked all those women. Oh my god. Oh my god. No! I haven’t been to a concert yet. I haven’t taken down Forrest Conway. I haven’t done anything but take care of Beckett Farms. I can’t die. It’s not my time.
All at once, like a damn ton of bricks, a man’s face flashes behind my eyes. With a big, thick beard and a hefty mustache resting on his upper lip, his green eyes shiny. The letter, the name on the letter.
Garrison Conway .
Still facing those yellow curtains, I lie there, gasping and choking on my shock as reality settles through the murk.
I’m captive.
I was foolish and went with a stranger, and now I’ve been drugged and I’m captive at the hands of Garrison fucking Conway.
Oh my god.
Though I can’t see, I know the bedroom door opens, because the hinges give it away. I know it’s him. Each step is heavy, and the scent of aftershave and coffee filling the room, permeating my heightened senses. It’s him alright.
Wearing fitted blue jeans with a long-sleeved oatmeal colored thermal tucked in, Garrison Conway sits on the edge of the bed. It annoys me that somehow, I manage to be both petrified of the man, but also aware of how broad his shoulders are, and how statuesque he is.
Probably got that thick build from carrying kicking and screaming victims, Carsyn, so remember that .
My eyes make it over his beard, which is richer and even fuller than I remember from last night. His green eyes are waiting for me as I peer up at him. “I dosed you with a paralytic, and I want you to know how it works.”
My heart races, reminding me of the numbing throb circling my chest. As if reading my mind, he nods slightly, indicating the very spot where he stuck me. “I gave it to you in your chest, so you probably feel like someone’s punched you.” He studies me for a moment, and I do my best to keep my eyes open, despite the fact that waves of fatigue wash over me. “Or like you got kicked by your horse. But that’ll ease up by this afternoon, tomorrow you won’t even know you were stuck there.”
I say nothing, because I can’t, and I don’t want him to know just how scared I really am. When hot tears fill my eyes, I turn my head the whole two inches I have within my freedom, and let the pillow absorb them. I do not want him to think I’m crying because I’m scared, even though that’s exactly why.
My mind jerks when he coasts his rough palm over my bare calf, beneath the blanket, giving me a tender squeeze. I’d flail and jerk if I could.
I’d do more than that if I could.
My jaw burns with the words overflowing on my tongue, words I can’t seem to push out. Garrison reaches out, stroking his thumb along my jaw, gently massaging my face. My entire body tenses, and yet, his touch releases something in me, some power to fight, some last-ditch effort to save myself. A familiar tickle heats my throat, leaving my tongue fuzzy and thick. He takes his hand away, and continues rubbing my leg beneath the blanket.
With a crooked smirk tilting his lips, he lifts half his ass off the bed, fishing around in his pocket. He produces a set of silver keys, and when he brings them to my wrists, I realize, he didn’t just drug me, but I’m shackled to this bed, too.
“Paired with the alcohol, you're likely feeling lethargic,” he says, still smoothing his hand up and down my leg. “Still, the point of the medicine was to calm you down a little, so we can talk.”
I clear my throat, happy tears building behind my eyes when I hear myself out loud. Thank God I’m regaining function. I twist my head as much as I can, as much as his drugs allow me, and blink at Garrison, his colluding eyes already fixed on mine. Filled with a temporary burst of exhilaration at finding my voice, I croak, “ So talk .”