by Skye Warren
“Is…anyone in there?” he asked.
“You can’t use it,” I replied quickly, unable to say more.
He must have figured it out because he swallowed hard. “Ella…”
“Don’t.”
His eyes closed on a pained expression. Then he sat down beside me, his back against the wall beside the bathroom door. He was standing guard with me, keeping the truth out for a few extra seconds. “Thanks,” I whispered.
“Don’t,” he said.
I turned to him, really studying him for maybe the first time since I had been back. For maybe the first time ever. He looked like a regular teenage boy—cute, if I could be objective about it. Lanky in that way that would definitely fill out well over the next couple of years.
There hadn’t been a mark on him when we’d gotten back. No injuries. And he swore that Marco hadn’t hurt him that way. I still wasn’t sure whether I believed him. Marco had shown that he was not above using sex to get what he wanted, considering what had happened with Adrian. But then again, hurting Tyler wouldn’t have hurt Philip—he was only a hook used to pull Philip to him. So maybe he had made it out okay.
“How are you doing?” I asked softly.
He ran a hand over his face. “Not you too.”
I gave him a small smile. “Mom on your case?”
I knew how stifling her concern could be, but also how sweet. How important it had once been to me. So necessary that I’d once done anything to get it, beseeching and then rebelling.
“I know they’re just trying to help,” he said. “But I can’t talk about it.”
“Then don’t talk about it. You don’t owe anyone an explanation.”
He swallowed. “Actually I do. I owe you an explanation. And…an apology.”
My heart clenched at the raw guilt in his voice. “No, Tyler, you didn’t—”
“I did,” he nearly shouted. Then he lowered his voice. “I did, Ella. I made this happen.”
I studied him, the pain in his expression, the handsome face and skin that had been unbruised by this experience. There were questions, but I wouldn’t have forced him to answer them, knowing how painful that could be. He had a right to his secrets. A right to his pain, whatever form it had taken. Or so I’d thought. “Okay,” I said more slowly. “How?”
“I wasn’t—” His voice broke, but his expression grew determined. He took a deep breath. “I wasn’t kidnapped. At least, not against my will.”
He glanced at me warily, as if expecting me to suddenly burst out yelling. I didn’t understand enough for that. “What are you talking about? Why were you gone?”
“My friend Chris—you remember him? He started going to these underground parties. I went with him a few times, and I wasn’t really… I didn’t really fit into that scene.”
I stayed silent, remembering the boy I’d seen going into the Meat Market that night. Had that been him?
“And then one day I met this guy.” A short laugh. “He ran into me actually. Then he offered to buy me a shot to make up for it. He was older and confident and…and hot.”
I flinched, already imagining where this was going. A tale as old as time. “Marco?”
“Yeah. Yeah. At first I didn’t know who he was, that he had any idea who I was.”
“When did you find out?”
“One time when I was at his apartment I found some newspaper clippings about Philip Murphy. I still wouldn’t have put it together, but there were pictures of you. Photographs, taken from far away.”
“God, Tyler.”
“I know. I think up until that point…I mean, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand any of it. Maybe I didn’t want to understand. Because he explained it all to me, and I just…believed him.”
My throat was tight. “What did he say?”
“That Philip had taken what was his. I mean, that part wasn’t hard to believe. Everyone knows that Philip Murphy is a criminal. And I knew that Marco didn’t have… much. I mean, it seemed like a lot to someone like me, still living at home. His own apartment, a job. That kind of thing. But it wasn’t a stretch to imagine that Philip had hurt him the way he said.”
“Right,” I said, wishing I could totally believe it. But there were still too many questions, questions that I now had a right to ask. I just didn’t want to. “So you didn’t know. That’s…that’s okay, then. We’re okay.”
Tyler had been the only person really there for me. The way our mother now hounded Tyler about how he was doing, whether he was okay…she hadn’t done that for me. They’d pretended like I didn’t exist, the dark shadows under my eyes a threat to their happy existence. It had been a relief when I moved into the dorm. Without me around they could pretend that they had never owed a debt so big and so bad that armed men had dragged their daughter from a club, used me to satisfy the debt. Without me they could pretend that they had never adopted a daughter they didn’t end up wanting. Only Tyler had held me in the bathroom while I’d cried.
“No,” he said, sounding hoarse. “Because he also said that you… I had told him about you. Personal things. Secret things. How I had always been jealous of you.”
“Wait a minute. What?”
“God, Ella. You’re so strong, so confident. You can do whatever you want, and it doesn’t matter what our parents say or think. You’re just you.”
The words hit me like bricks, pushing the breath right out of me. That he could look at me and see something good, something strong, when I’d thought I was weak all along. Weak and hungry for love.
“And me,” he continued, sharp with self-derision. “I don’t even know who I am or what I am. And if I so much as stand up, Mom and Dad would clap for me—like I’m some kind of idiot who needs all this extra support just to…just to exist.”
So my parents’ favoritism had managed to fuck up both of us. Awesome. “Tyler, you’re young. You don’t have to know everything you’re doing right now.”
“Only two years younger than you,” he reminded, and then he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I mean, you’re amazing, but I should have just—I should have just left it at that. And not compared us. Marco had this whole thing about how you were screwing me over, just like Philip had screwed him over. And I knew, I knew even then that it was wrong, but I was just so wrapped up in him that I would have believed anything.”
I knew how love could make you stupid. How sex could make you stupid. It was pretty much in the definitions. “So you…went along with it? His plan?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did. I didn’t know that he planned to hurt Philip. He never showed me a gun until… First he said we would just lay low, like some kind of backward Atlas Shrugged.” He laughed roughly. “As if we were running the world. Everyone would notice we were gone, and they’d miss us. And meanwhile we could hole up in some kind of twisted honeymoon, having sex and smoking pot and—”
He sighed with his eyes shut, defeat written in tired lines across his young face.
“It’s okay,” I said softly.
“How can you say that?” He looked affronted, and it charmed me to realize he was offended on behalf of me. “I went along with the stupid plan, knowing that you and my parents would worry about me. That was the idea, that you’d go to Philip for help—and then Marco would make you pay to get me back, money that would replace what he lost, what he should have had all along. It was fucked up.”
“It was fucked up,” I agreed softly, but I had seen too many fucked-up things in the world for this to shock me.
“And then the days kept passing, and I started waking up from this hazy drugged state—and realizing that this wasn’t okay. This wasn’t okay at all, and I needed to go home and set things right. Only, he wouldn’t let me leave.”
Like when Philip had locked me in his bedroom. Neither had a great deal of respect for other people’s personal freedoms. Though there was an important difference. Philip had kept me in that bedroom to protect me, to shield me from a dangerous meeting where I could hav
e gotten hurt.
“He wasn’t right in the head,” I said softly, repeating Philip’s words.
“No,” Tyler said, a quiet grief underlying his words. “He wasn’t.”
I stood and opened the bathroom door, knowing enough time had passed. I crossed the small room and picked up the little plastic test. Sure enough, bars had appeared in the clear window. Not pregnant.
One sob shook my body, from my shoulders down to my weak knees. Then another. I sank to the floor, face buried in my hands—and just like years ago, my brother held me, his embrace less awkward this time, tight and comforting and knowing, because now he had felt grief too.
I cried for the things I had lost, an entire life of normalcy that I had dreamed of since I found out I was adopted. I cried for the things I had gained—a family of my own. And I cried for the man who had given it to me, a man who valued family above all else, a man who had betrayed his own blood in order to save me. A man who had gone, disappeared, who cared enough to kill for me but not enough to stay.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
SLOAN MET ME outside the sociology building and fell into step beside me as I crossed the courtyard.
“How was the final?” he asked.
“I’ve discovered the secret to knowing the material like the back of my hand,” I joked. “Just take every class twice.”
His expression was sympathetic. “I’m sure you would have aced it then too.”
“Thanks,” I said, grateful. “It wasn’t bad though. Templeton is a good professor. I was thinking of applying to him for my undergraduate research class.”
“What topic?” he asked.
I cleared my throat. “Well, there are a few that I’m considering. But maybe…analyzing rehabilitation effectiveness at incarceration facilities.”
“Oh,” he said, knowing firsthand how close I had come to the criminal world. He had watched me walked out of our dorm at gunpoint. And he had been the first one to come visit me at my parent’s house when he heard I was returned, a bouquet of daisies clenched in his hand and a heartfelt apology. He thought he should have fought against Philip, but I set him straight, glad that he hadn’t. We had been surrounded by armed men. He would only have gotten himself killed.
“What did Professor Roswell say about your paper?” I asked.
He had already taken his undergraduate research course this semester while I was busy retaking my entire class load. A flush crept up his neck, which told me her reaction had been good. “She said it was better than half the drivel that gets published these days.”
“Whoa, high praise.”
He laughed, looking pleased. “You helped a lot, so part of that praise goes to you.”
I had given him an anonymous interview about the effects of captivity and trauma. His area of interest was the victims of human trafficking, which probably accounted for more of his interest in me than he would want to admit. But I supported his research—victims needed an advocate as gentle as him.
And as for me, I wasn’t fascinated with the victims. I was fascinated with the criminals.
Which was why he and I would never work. I nodded toward the street. “I’m this way.”
He studied the dark street, long shadows falling in late afternoon. “I can walk you home.”
Home was now an apartment off campus. I had moved out of the dorm, because if I wasn’t safe there—and the situation had proved that, if nothing else—I may as well have my privacy. And it felt too hard to pretend I was a regular college student, interested in dorm parties and campus gossip. I still loved my classes, still wanted my degree, but I was irrevocably changed from what had happened.
“No, thank you,” I told him, gently but firmly.
He studied me for a moment and nodded. “See you next week.”
I smiled, more grateful for this quiet trust than his concern over what had happened. The world was a scary place, filled with dangerous people. More than most people, I knew that there was no place safe. But I couldn’t spend my life cowering in corners, using other people as shields.
At least that was what I told myself when I walked home and saw someone hiding in every shadow.
It’s just stress, I told myself. It would remain with me for some time, but everything was fine.
I passed dark alleys, trying to keep my gaze focused straight ahead, the way other people did, but inevitably I would glance to the side, studying the corners, looking for threats.
It was a relief when I reached the modest apartment building where I lived. It was close enough to campus that a number of students lived here, often grad students.
I climbed the outside steps, to be greeted by Misty. She was a gray-brown tabby who had hung around looking pitiful until I agreed to feed her. Sometimes I got her to come inside my apartment, and we had watched a few episodes of Agents of SHEILD together with her on my lap. But she was wild at heart, and she wanted to be free to wander the world while I was in class.
She meowed up at me plaintively and twined her slender body between my ankles.
I frowned at her bowl, which was half-full with dry food. Our routine was for me to put food out at night, usually just enough for her to eat. Which meant the bowl should be empty. “Are you feeling okay?” I murmured. “You didn’t eat your food.”
She just meowed in response.
I unlocked the door, and the cat rushed into the dark apartment. Strange.
I followed more slowly, dropping my tote bag with my notebook and tablet by the door. I headed to the kitchen and opened the fridge, thinking of grabbing an apple to tide me over until I could figure out a proper dinner.
Then I stopped, the air-conditioned air dry against my skin.
Something was different in the space. And Misty was not tripping me up.
“Misty?” I called, already feeling shy and a little scared.
There was a rustle from somewhere, and I tensed up. My gaze snapped to the pepper spray that I kept in my bag, which was now by the door. Too far away. I could run out of the door. I could scream.
“Hello, Ella,” came a voice from across the room.
*
MY EYES WIDENED. I had searched the corners of every dark alley, but not my own apartment. Slowly his silhouette formed—seated in the chair by the far wall. Philip.
The thunder of my pulse was almost as loud as my voice. “How did you get in?”
A soft laugh. “Is that all you want to ask me?”
God, I had so many questions. So many demands. So many things I would say if I let myself. I missed you. I want you. Don’t leave again. “What did you do to my cat?”
“I fed her.”
I blinked, not quite imagining Philip in a three-piece suit pouring cat food into a bowl. “Why?”
He stood, and the cat jumped off his lap—clearly not thrilled with the fact that he had decided to move. She must enjoy his lap more than mine, and I couldn’t really blame her. His lap was a pretty great place to be.
I felt silly and vulnerable with the fridge open, revealing a handful of fruits and a half gallon of milk—not much else. So I shut the door and immediately realized my mistake. That faint light had been the only thing letting me see. Now I was in the dark.
And yet I could see him approach me, feel him approach me.
He stood in front of me for a long moment, and I soaked up his presence, the masculine scent of him, his heat. Two fingers lifted my chin, and I stared up into the shadow of him. I searched out corners in alleyways, and I searched out corners in him now—looking for threats.
“Did you get my postcards?”
They were stacked up beside my bed, and I would touch their edges, imagining I felt his imprint there. “You’ve been traveling.”
Every postcard had come from Chicago before. Now they came from all over the country. All over the world. Europe first. Then South America. Japan. I could hardly imagine him flying to all those places with the speed that he did.
“I’ve been studying,” he said s
oftly.
“Studying what?”
“People. Like you.”
My heart caught in my throat. “And what did you learn?”
The hand lifting my head curved until he cupped the back of my neck. His head dipped until our breaths mingled. We breathed the same air; we occupied the same space and time, merged.
“I learned that connection is the only damn thing that matters in this cold world,” he murmured before pressing his lips to mine. He kissed me as if to prove his words, a research paper written with his tongue and his teeth, an argument he made, an invasion of my mouth.
“What else?” I whispered when he pulled back.
I felt him smile against me, and then he kissed me again, this time nibbling on my lip until I felt an answering clench lower in my body. “I learned that I could be surrounded by people, more people than I’d ever seen, but I could be completely alone.”
“Yes,” I whispered urgently, because that was my entire life, my whole life crowded but empty.
Alone.
My arms curled around his neck, and I pulled him down to me, hands clenched in the silky wool of his suit jacket. He answered immediately, one hand on my hip holding me close. Not alone right now.
And then I realized his neck was bare. “Your mother’s ring. It’s gone.”
“I don’t need it anymore,” he said. “I’ll never forget her. She’s already here.” He put his hand over his heart, and I couldn’t help it—I put my hand over his, feeling the intense heat of him. No gentle warmth with Philip. His love was pure lava, hot and thick.
Between our bodies I felt him—hot and thick, indeed. “What else?”
He bent until his lips were against my forehead. “I learned that you were with me, wherever I went. I couldn’t get away from you.”
My breath caught. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Bad?” he murmured, his hands lowering to my hips. He pushed me against him. “It’s the worst, kitten. I’m weak like this. Ruined. I need you too much.”
It was my turn to smile, though there were tears too. Happiness and sadness. Hope and despair, they came hand in hand. Light and dark. “What will you do about it?”