My mother’s voice is muffled on the other side of Olivia’s door. Not a good sign. Olivia has to be weaker than I thought to let my mother help her into bed. My neck tightens. Emily’s going to kill Olivia if she stays much longer.
I tap on the bathroom door and when there’s no response, I knock again. Still nothing. Damn, she probably has slit her wrists.
The voices from the other side of Olivia’s door go quiet. The last thing I want is Olivia barging out of her bedroom and taking over again. She needs sleep, not to be babysitting Emily. I brought this trouble into her home and I can handle it for a few more hours.
I try the knob and it doesn’t budge. Grabbing the skeleton key we store on top of the door frame in case Olivia passes out in the bathroom, I wiggle it around in the small hole until I hear the click of the lock giving. I’m slow opening the door, in case Emily is lost in her thoughts on the toilet.
Each push of the door is methodic and gradual. Empty floor. Closed toilet. Curtains blowing in the breeze and a wide-open window. My fingers curl until they form a fist. I’m going to wring Emily’s tiny, delicate, hot little neck.
Emily
WITH MY KNEES pulled to my chest, I sit on a wooden bench that rests below a darkened window of the house. According to Olivia, the room belonged to me, which doesn’t make sense on multiple levels. The impulse is to peer into the room to see if the answers I’m searching for are in there, but I don’t. I keep my back to the house and my eyes locked on the approaching sunrise.
I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours and my brain has disconnected from my emotions. I feel stretched and numb. Cold and hot. Wired and exhausted. I sort of welcome it. I’m officially too tired for fear.
Oz was right earlier. I definitely was sucked into a storm and I’m desperately trying to grab on to anything solid to prevent myself from plummeting into the vortex of the tornado.
There’s a moan in the wooden window frame a few feet down and out pops a jean-clad leg. It’s the same black boot that monopolized my space at the funeral home. Oz slides out of the house with more elegance than me. I ended up on my butt. He lands on both feet. Even with all that muscle, he’s graceful like a cat. Goody for him.
His eyes dart around and he does a double take when he spots me on the bench. He scans the yard and thick surrounding woods, then he strides over as if climbing out a bathroom window is normal. “And they say people from Kentucky are backward. We have a front door and one in the kitchen, or do you think you’re too good for either one?”
“Would they have let me out?”
“Onto the porch.”
“Sure they would have—with an armed guard.”
“Not armed guard—escort,” he corrects as he stands in front of me. “And if you had made a break for it, I would have had to tackle you and then we’d be in all sorts of trouble. Could you imagine me putting my hands on your body?”
He winks.
Winks.
Heat rushes up my neck and my earlobes burn.
“I...” Clear my throat so I can at least pretend that comment didn’t slip under my skin. “I have no idea what you’re suggesting.”
“Yeah, you do. Since you arrived at the funeral home, I’ve been looking at you and you’ve been looking at me. Too bad you didn’t go out the front door. Would have been fun, don’t you think? Me tackling you. Us rolling around. Tell me, Emily, are you the type of girl that doesn’t mind a good time?”
His strong body over mine. My hands messing through his hair. His hands touching my face. Holy hell, my nerve endings tingle.
The right side of his mouth tips up as if he can read my thoughts and his eyes wash over me like a lingering waterfall. That’s when it hits me, he’s playing a game with me. “You’re full of yourself.”
“Might be, but I’m not wrong, plus for thirty seconds you weren’t having a pity party. So what happened with your escape plans? Did your momma tell you that you can’t cross the street without holding her hand?”
I throw him a mock smirk, but oh how I wish there was a road to cross and that was my problem. Instead, there’s woods. Lots of woods plus lots of darkness. Woods and darkness terrify me. Bad things live in the woods. Evil things exist in the dark. The inside of that cabin didn’t feel any safer so I opted for the bench with the glow of the lights from the utility pole near the house.
For some, hell might be being buried alive in a coffin. For others, hell would be being covered to their heads in a tank full of spiders. For me, it’s this. Encircled and enshrouded by claustrophobic darkness and foreboding woods. Dead things lie in wait in that black void.
In that house, a woman is battling death and also promising to tear apart the foundation on which I stand. Inside isn’t an option. Neither is out. I’m here on this bench because I didn’t know where else to go.
Oz assesses me. The same way my parents used to for weeks after they found me in that hole at eight. “You suck at running away. I found you in less than ten seconds.”
“Are you going to continue to rub it in that I failed?”
“I was going to, but that question stole my thunder.” Oz eases beside me and I curl into a ball toward the corner. Even with that move, the heat from his thighs wiggles past my jean shorts and caresses my skin. I rub my hand along my cold arms. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I crave to crawl up next to him and live in that heat for rest of my life.
He sprawls the massive wingspan of his arms along the back of the bench then extends his long legs, kicking one booted foot on top of the other. His fingers “accidently” swipe across my bare shoulder and it causes a tickle in my bloodstream.
Oz commands awareness like no one I have ever met before. There’s no denying his presence. No denying that his body is close to perfect. No denying that since I laid eyes on him I’ve wondered what he looks like with his shirt off.
Completely impervious to how his nearness affects me, he stares straight ahead and watches the sunrise. “Ever seen one of these before?”
According to Olivia, yes, but I shake my head no. I’ve been up before dawn, but I’ve never sat and admired how the stars are chased away by the sun rising on the horizon.
“Me neither,” he says. “Mind if I watch it with you?”
“If I say no, will you leave?”
“No.” At least he’s honest. “But I’m trying to at least make you feel like you have a choice.”
“But I don’t.”
“But you don’t,” he repeats. “Just a few more hours, Emily, and you can go back to your life and I can go back to mine. We can both pretend we never met.”
That’s all I want. “You don’t like me, do you?”
“You make the people in my life sad and in the brief few hours I’ve known you, you keep racking up points in the heartache category. So, no, I’m not your biggest fan.”
I bite the inside of my lip and focus on my knees. It shouldn’t bother me what a punked-out moron thinks of me, but it does.
“Don’t look like that,” he pushes. “You could have killed me with some of the glares you’ve sent my way. Are you going to say you like me?”
He has been an ass, but he’s also saved me so instead of answering immediately, I look at him. Oz wears a black T-shirt with the word Conflict scrawled in some fancy script. His jeans are loose and he sports the same black studded belt from yesterday. His arms are chiseled like he works out often and he keeps a hand near the knife at his side. Oz shifts as if he’s uncomfortable.
“I don’t know you,” I finally answer.
Oz blinks like I said something profound, then returns his gaze to the east and appears to choose to ignore the past few exchanges. “You can go to sleep if you want. The window to that spare bedroom behind you is open. You can crawl in since you have an issue with doors.”
“Why were t
hose guys at my motel?”
“The bed, Emily. Do you want it or not?”
Like Cyrus earlier, he’s not going to answer. The bed is tempting, but... “No, thank you. I’m going to wait for my parents and then I’ll go to sleep.”
“They’re safe,” Oz says, and I choose to believe him because the hollowness that happens inside me at the thought of any other option is too harsh to bear.
“You could be kidnapping me and trying to do that thing where I grow to love my captors. I’ve seen it on TV before.”
“You caught us. We knew you were going to walk out of the motel at three in the morning and we created this situation to freak you out into loving us. That’s how fucked up we are.”
“Why were you there?”
“Maybe I was using a room.”
I flat-out frown at the thought and I don’t understand why. My fingers tap my thigh and the picture in my hand moves. I seriously hate Oz and Olivia, and I shouldn’t hate Olivia, because she’s dying. “How far along is Olivia’s cancer?”
“Too far.” His voice is why-the-hell-did-you-bring-that-up clipped and I try to pretend I don’t exist.
The chatter of bullfrogs, crickets and the wind. It’s what’s between us. That and the fact I asked about Olivia’s health.
“I promise if you go to sleep, nothing bad will happen to you,” Oz offers.
That’s where he’s wrong. If I go to sleep, I can’t stop the worst from occurring. Staying awake is the only way I can chase the nightmares away. I am, like I was for twelve hours when I was eight, left to fend for myself. I shiver with the memory.
A light breeze dances across the yard and the picture Olivia gave me drops to the wooden porch. Oz leans forward faster than me, swipes it up, then pauses. After a second, he hands me the photo and I shove it into my pocket.
“Where’d you get that?” he asks.
“Olivia.”
He’s silent and he’s watching me and I despise the expression that tells me he sees things and knows things he shouldn’t. “Don’t tell Eli Olivia gave you that.”
“Why?”
“How far down this rabbit hole do you want to go?”
I don’t want to even be in the same state as the hole. “Can we just watch the sunrise?”
“I mean it,” he says. “You’ve already caused this family a world of hurt. If you tell Eli she gave you this, it’ll end badly for Olivia.”
Anger wells up inside me to the point I feel like a volcano. Olivia, Olivia, Olivia. I am so sick of him mentioning Olivia. “Well, I guess your precious Olivia is safe because besides having this picture I don’t know anything!”
“Good,” he snaps.
“Good,” I shout back.
“Great!”
“Can we watch the freaking sunrise?” I seethe.
“That we can do.”
A rumble of engines from the road and my heart kicks into high gear. Thank God, this is over. I jump to my feet and race to the front steps. Six motorcycles growl into the clearing. All the riders appear the same: big men wearing black leather Reign of Terror vests.
Four of them break from the pack and head to an overly large garage on the other side of the yard. The other two park along the edge of the driveway. With their backs to the light, their faces are blacked out by shadow.
My fingers twist and untwist together as I strain to hear another engine—a more familiar one, one belonging to a car, but as each bike shuts down, I experience a loneliness in the silence.
There’s movement near me and sound...but not the sound I long to hear. The clink of men swinging off their bikes. Oz’s boots thumping on the wood to be closer to me. The squeak of the door opening behind me. Even the coolness of the morning tries to steal my attention from the road, but I won’t look away. They’re coming for me. My parents are coming for me.
“I thought you’d be asleep,” Eli says at the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m not.” A cloud moves and a ray of dull early-morning light strikes the road. No car. No hum of a smooth engine. No crackle of rocks under a tire. “How far behind are my mom and dad?”
Eli walks up the stairs and puts a firm hand on my arm. “They’re not coming, Emily.”
My words haunt me: You could be kidnapping me... Eli’s still talking. At least I believe he is, but all I hear is a low-pitched roar. They’re not coming. They’re not coming...
I spin, because if I do, then I’ll see something else. Hear something else. But I only see Oz. He lowers his head so that his hair hides his eyes. The roar is replaced by a high-pitched ringing and it grows louder and louder, drowning everything out. Almost everything. I can clearly hear the scream inside my head.
I spin again, but then think oddly how my feet didn’t move and how they are perfectly cemented to the ground and yet the world is twirling.
Twirling.
The last stars in the sky are twirling.
Heat creeps along my hairline while a cold clamminess claims my neck.
“Emily?” Eli’s voice breaks through the chaos. “Emily, are you okay?”
For a second, I’m weightless. Like if I was to stand on my tiptoes I could lift into the air and fly, but then a sharp tilt causes the wooden floor to rush toward my face.
The world goes dark.
Oz
WIND BLOWS IN from the north and a few pieces of Emily’s dark hair sweep across her face. One minute Emily’s a bright flame, then a gust snuffs out her light. Her body sways like a top at the tail end of a spin and I lunge forward.
Emily’s knees give out and her eyes roll back into her head. I catch her inches before she crashes onto the porch. She’s light as I swing her into my arms and her head circles onto my shoulder, reminding me of one of those rag dolls Violet used to play with when we were kids.
“Emily!” Eli’s on top of me, attempting to yank her out of my arms. “Open your eyes.”
Her eyelids flutter, but remain closed as her hand limply clutches my shirt. Eli rams his arms underneath mine and he makes Emily a rope in a tug-of-war. I should let her go. I should want to let her go, but then Emily goes and screws it up for me. “Oz.”
It was a damn whisper, but I heard my name on her lips and so did Eli. His eyes flash to mine and Cyrus’s words repeat in my mind. That girl trusts you. And screw us both for that.
“She’s exhausted,” I say. “Hasn’t slept at all tonight.”
Eli’s expression hardens as he glares at me. I’ve seen Eli throw a coma-inducing punch for less defiance and I readjust the sleeping girl in my arms. A reminder if he decks me now, he’ll be putting his daughter at risk.
Temporarily surrendering, Eli cups Emily’s face in his hands and angles her toward him. “Emily, please open your eyes.”
She does. It’s barely a crack and they’re completely glazed.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Eli affirms.
“I want my mom and dad,” she mumbles.
“You’ll see them tomorrow.” Eli pushes a strand of hair from her cheek. “You’re safe here. I promise.”
She rejects Eli by curling into me. Her head fits perfectly in the crook of my neck and I loathe the wave of protectiveness that rumbles through my body. Emily’s fingers tighten their grip near my shoulders and the impulse is to shield her from the guys gawking at this intimate scene. Yeah, this is club business, but Emily never asked for any of this.
Cyrus opens the door and I move past Eli. He’s hot on my heels. So close, his breath hits the back of my neck. Mom steps out of the kitchen and is down the hallway before me. She waves for me to enter the spare bedroom.
It’s the bedroom no one ever uses. First it belonged to Eli’s brother and then he died. Most can get over that, but people will crash on the couch and hardwood floor before sleeping
in the bedroom that Emily and her mother once claimed. The purple room with white bedding is cursed. No one wants anything to do with a traitor.
I lay Emily on the bed. Her arms fall over her head and her dark hair fans out on the pillow. Her eyes are shut and her breaths come out in a deep rhythmic pattern. I ease back as Eli spreads a blanket over Emily and removes the shoes from her feet, dropping each one to the floor.
Emily’s hand drifts to the edge of the bed and her fingers splay open. The picture Olivia gave her floats to the floor like a feather in the breeze. My heart pounds hard once. I go to retrieve it, but Mom snatches it with death written over her face. Her eyes meet mine and we stare at each other as if we’re looking down the business end of a rifle.
If Eli found that picture in Emily’s possession, he would have spiraled into dangerous quick.
“Where’d she get this?” Mom mouths.
I tilt my head toward Olivia’s bedroom and her eyes slam shut. As Eli straightens, Mom shoves the picture in her jeans pocket then spins on her heel and touches Eli’s arm to gain his attention. “Would you like me to stay with Emily?”
Eli draws a hand over his face and walks over to the window seat. He sags onto it and appears to age ten years.
Since Eli entered my life at eleven, he’s always been badass. All the stories I had been told before he returned to Snowflake made him larger than life. In reality, Eli is larger than life. Over six feet tall. Broad-shouldered. The Reign of Terror’s black leather cut strong on his back. I’ve seen him easily kick the shit out of any man stupid enough to stand in his way.
“Tell Cyrus I’ll update him soon, but I need to be in here,” Eli says. “Emily will need some things. Clothes, personal stuff. A burner phone. Can you handle that for me?”
“Of course,” Mom answers, and I don’t miss how she keeps a hand pressed over the pocket containing the picture. “Let’s go, Oz.”