by C. R. Jane
As if pulled by a string, I took a step forward, my gaze straining to look at the figure sitting in the car.
Caiden’s face appeared in the window as he leaned his head out the driver’s window and blew me a kiss.
I backed away quickly, as if I was in danger of him reaching out and grabbing me, even from that far away.
“Jackson,” I whispered, trembling as I grabbed onto his sleeve. Jackson looked over and saw Caiden as he pulled away, Caiden gifting him with a wave.
Caiden was playing on a whole other level.
I didn’t know if we could keep up.
Jackson and I wearily walked into the hotel room that he’d rented for us to stay for the night. His first credit card had been declined, his parent’s fulfilling their promise to cut him off. I was tired all the way to my bones…I was tired to my soul.
Caiden had sent a video to Jackson’s phone, obviously meant for me, of him jacking off into a pair of underwear that I clearly recognized as mine.
The police had made the night even better by telling us they had no way of proving Caiden had started the fire, due to the alibi his parents had given him and the condition of Jackson’s destroyed house.
To say we were stressed was an understatement for how we were feeling.
We showered the ash and smoke off in the shower, our hands trailing along each other’s skin in an effort to provide comfort.
I slid into bed, and Jackson collapsed next to me, his hand across his eyes.
Fear flickered as I tried to get a glimpse of his eyes. Sometimes, I forgot that he was a time bomb, and it was stressful events just like this that could trigger him.
He slid his hand off his face, and I sighed in relief as I got a glimpse of his cool, blue eyes. He was still with me. I wouldn’t have to be alone.
At least for now.
“Stay with me,” I pleaded to him when he looked at me questioningly.
Understanding filled his gaze. “Always,” he murmured, and even though I knew it was a promise that he couldn’t keep…I welcomed his answering kiss. So gentle, even when I tried to deepen it, he forced the pace, and it was slow, tender. Moving his body over me, he worshipped every inch of my body, with his mouth and tongue, hands and fingers, then finally, his body. Hard yet soft at the same time, he took me with a soothing glide, yet I screamed his name as I crashed around him. Tears streaked down the sides of my face and into my hair. I loved him. Forever and ever. No matter what happened, his kiss…his touch…him, he was all that mattered.
I listened to Jackson’s deep breaths in the dark, and my thoughts drifted to Caiden.
A tear slid down my face as I went through everything he had done.
I could now see all of Caiden’s demons, and it was truly the tragedy of a lifetime that they all looked like me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“I have to take that exam,” I told Jackson as I worried my lip. “And you have to go to that meeting with your coach.”
“I’ll skip it,” he said nonchalantly, even though I knew how important the meeting was.
“I’ll take the exam, and then Lane will walk with me to your practice. We’ve already mapped out our route.”
“No,” he said firmly.
“Jackson, I have to take that test. The professor already said he’d fail me if I didn’t show up. I missed five of his classes this semester, and he only allows one absence. I can’t afford to lose my scholarship.”
“I’ll bribe someone.”
I glared at him, and he groaned.
“The exam and that’s it,” he demanded.
I nodded, relieved that he’d agreed. I hadn’t told him that I was in danger of losing my scholarship, even if I took this exam. Everything that happened this semester hadn’t exactly been helpful in my academic life. And I didn’t want him to worry anymore about me.
An hour later, we parted ways. Jackson dropped me off at my class, not leaving the entryway until I’d sat down in my seat. The professor shot us both an exasperated look, and I was sure he thought that we were pathetic, love-struck teenagers that dramatically didn’t want to be parted.
If he only knew.
We started the test. I was exhausted from a sleepless night spent worrying, and I hadn’t spent nearly enough time studying…so it wasn’t going well.
The door opened, and I looked up as an administrative aid walked in and handed Professor Charles a note before leaving the room.
He frowned as he read it, and then he looked up, his gaze finding mine.
“Ms. James, please come here.”
I stood up shakily and walked to the front of the room. “You’ve been summoned to the dean’s office,” he said exasperatedly. “You’d better get going. I expect you back afterwards to finish your exam, no matter what else you have planned today or how late it is.”
“I’ll just go after,” I told him pleadingly, but he rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Just go, Ms. James, before you cause any more disturbances. I know you couldn’t care less about this class, based on your dismal attendance record, but I’ll not have you messing up exams for the students that do care.”
I heard students tittering behind me, and my cheeks flushed. If he only knew how much I did care.
I gave up and walked stiffly out the door, not looking at anyone.
I’d just stepped outside when I realized that I’d forgotten my phone by my desk, obviously not knowing that I was going to be forced to leave when I’d been called up to talk to the professor.
I poked my head back into the classroom to grab my phone.
“Why are you still here, Ms. James?” the professor asked snidely.
“I just need to grab—”
“Get to the office now,” he ordered.
I nodded weakly.
Telling myself everything would be fine, I took off for the dean’s office, hating how quiet the halls were with everyone in class.
I’d just stepped through the back doors of the English building, when a pair of hands grabbed me and a wet cloth was placed over my nose.
I struggled for a second before collapsing in my captor’s arms. My last image was of a red-haired girl peering out from the window by the door, a terrified look on her face.
A hand stroked my face softly, and I leaned into the warm touch, moaning softly.
“Wake up, Everly,” Caiden’s voice called out gently. “Wake up.”
Why was Caiden telling me to wake up? I was in bed with Jackson. I didn’t want to wake up.
“So tired,” I mumbled.
“Wake up,” Caiden repeated again.
My eyes cracked open, and I looked up from where I was lying to see Caiden hovering above my face, a euphoric look on his features.
“There’s my beautiful girl.”
I stared up at him, completely out of sorts, wondering why Caiden was here with me.
It took me a minute, and then everything rushed to focus. I had been called to the dean’s office, a pair of hands had grabbed me.
Caiden.
I began to struggle frantically. I was in a house that I didn’t recognize with Caiden, my legs tied together.
This was the stuff that nightmares were made of.
Caiden’s lips curled up in annoyance. “Stop struggling. You’re not going anywhere.”
I reared up, knocking my head against Caiden’s nose, and he cursed as he pulled away from me, holding his nose.
I rolled over and began to army crawl across the floor as best I could away from him, knowing that I wouldn’t get far but making the effort anyway.
I made it halfway across the polished wood floor before Caiden was on me, picking me up and tossing me on the gray leather couch pushed against one of the walls. I immediately started to struggle again, until Caiden slapped his hand harshly on the coffee table in front of the couch.
“I’m not going to hit you,” Caiden said calmly, the anger he was hiding displayed in the tick in his cheek. “You’re expecting m
e to hit you, and I’m showing you that I’ve changed so you’ll finally forgive me and we can be together.”
I stopped my useless movements and stared at him in shock. His eyes were slightly out of focus, and there was a flush to his cheeks.
“We can’t be together, Caiden,” I told him, even though I knew it would just make him mad.
“You keep saying that,” Caiden said with a chuckle. “You just needed to get away from Jackson. He’s been controlling you, warping your mind. You’re forgetting how good we were together.”
Oh, Caiden.
I decided to try and reason with him. “Caiden, you were sleeping with Melanie the whole time we were dating. We weren’t good together. I wasn’t giving you what you needed.”
“You’re the only thing I need,” he snapped harshly before taking a deep breath and pushing a hand through his hair as he struggled to control his temper. “Melanie didn’t mean anything. I just needed an outlet because I didn’t want to push you to do something you weren’t ready for. I was being a good boyfriend. I couldn’t care fucking less about Melanie. You are the only thing I care about.” His voice was emphatic, like he was desperate for me to believe him.
“What about your brother?” I pleaded with him. “You can’t keep this up. Don’t you care at all about him?”
“I don’t want to hear you talk about him, do you understand me?” he snarled, and I pushed back against the couch, fear snaking through my insides.
All right…talking about Jackson was not the right approach in this situation.
Caiden pulled a gun out from a bag on the coffee table and then sat in an armchair across from me and began to polish it, whistling that same tune that I’d heard him hum at my dorm. It was the perfect soundtrack for a madman. I tracked the gun as he moved it around, terror clenching at my throat.
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked quietly, giving up trying to get away for the moment.
“I once read about Stockholm syndrome. It’s a real thing, evidently. If I keep you with me long enough, you’ll fall back in love with me. You were in love with me once, you can be in love with me again.” He said all of this in a mild, reasonable voice that didn’t fit with the craziness he was spewing.
I shook at his words, tears beginning to stream down my face.
“Caiden, please. Don’t do this. Just think about what you’re doing,” I begged him, searching his face for some kind of sanity.
“I have thought about this. I’ve thought about this since the moment I met you when we were just kids. I thought about how much I loved you. How good our lives would be together.” He shook his head as if the memories were too much, clenching his teeth together like he was in agony.
He stood up, set the gun down, and pulled a small box from his pocket. My heart thudded out of my chest as I watched him open it up, revealing a beautiful diamond ring. He held it out to me, a cruel offering of a desperate love that I never wanted.
“I bought this that summer. I thought maybe it could be a promise ring until we were older. I carried it around with me everywhere, waiting for the right moment. And then you fucking broke up with me.”
He stared at me desperately. “I love you, Everly James. I love you more than life itself. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for us. Why can’t you just love me back?”
Love. What a strange concept. The greatest sins of humanity had been done in the name of love, yet we all craved it, were desperate for it. Myself included.
Caiden’s version of love had become so disfigured that I didn’t know what you could call it anymore.
Eyeing the gun that he’d set down on his armchair, cold realization filled me.
Caiden was going to kill me because of that love.
Jackson
My knee bounced anxiously as I listened to my coach and my agent talk about the NFL scouts that had inquired about me. Coach wanted to know how many years he was going to have me, and Tom, my douche bag agent, wanted to know when he could start making money off of me.
I wanted them both to fuck themselves.
I’d lived and breathed football my whole life, but right now…I couldn’t have cared less about anything to do with it.
My heart and mind were with a green-eyed beauty taking her English literature exam. I wondered how mad she would get if I appeared in her class before it was over. I was supposed to go to practice after this, but fuck that. Until this thing with my sociopath of a brother was figured out, everything else but Everly would have to wait.
A fist beat on the door just then, and Kyle popped his head in before Coach could tell him to come in.
“Jackson, I need to talk to you. Now,” he told me anxiously.
“Kyle, we’re in a meeting right now—” Coach tried to say, but I was already out of my seat and jogging towards Kyle. There were only two reasons why he would come find me right now since he knew I was in this meeting—Caiden or Everly.
“Parker,” Coach called after me, but I was already in the hallway, the office door closing behind me, not bothering to explain myself.
“Kasey saw Caiden take Everly,” Kyle said with no preamble. “She was in the English building, about to walk outside, when Caiden grabbed Everly and put some kind of cloth on her face that made her pass out. She ran and told a professor, but he didn’t seem too concerned. She called me because I’d told her you and Everly were together, and I had her call the police, but fuck man, this is bad.”
She was gone. The thought crippled my brain, even when I should’ve been absorbed in getting as much information about what Kasey, Kyle’s girlfriend, saw. Bile rose, burning my esophagus with the truth.
Caiden had her.
There was an aching emptiness in my heart. Tentacles of fear strangled the life out of me one breath at a time. I had never known its full strength before now, not even after the accident. Every memory with Everly became a blurred slide clicking into place, the vibrancy bled dry in comparison to the bright terror of this moment. I was paralyzed by my failure to protect her.
“Jackson, stay with me,” I faintly heard Kyle say frantically. Kyle knew about my bipolar, he knew that I would be worthless in helping Everly if I fell into an episode. I could feel it creeping in, and I began to take deep breaths, trying to get ahold of myself. I couldn’t control it, but I’d do everything I could to try.
Kyle put a hand to my shoulder. I hung my head, running a hand along the headache forming beneath it.
“Do you have any idea where he would have taken her?” Kyle asked.
I shook my head, shrugging his hand off and beginning to jog down the hallway and through the exit so I could get to my truck.
“You said the police were called?” I yelled out behind me.
“Yeah, but I don’t know if they’re taking it seriously or not.”
I swore, just betting they weren’t. As soon as Kasey had mentioned Caiden’s name, they’d probably stopped listening.
Fucking Caiden. I would kill him with my bare hands when I got ahold of him.
The fear came back, replacing the anger. Terror surfaced in my ragged pulse because I was afraid no matter how hard I looked, she wouldn’t come back to me. Caiden’s mind was so far beyond my comprehension at this point, I felt helpless to stop him.
Just then my phone in my pocket buzzed. I pulled it out, hoping it was something about Everly.
It was. Caiden had texted me.
Everly was sitting on a gray leather couch, her eyes a dark void as she stared at the camera. I could see that he’d bound her legs together.
Caiden had accompanied the picture with, My girlfriend sends her best.
Not thinking, I responded with Fuck you before throwing my phone in the passenger seat of my truck and beating my hands against my steering wheel in a fury.
Once I’d gotten at least a little ahold of myself, I grabbed my phone and turned on my truck, driving around desperately while I called as many people as possible, begging them if they knew anything about wh
ere Caiden would be.
Hours passed, and no one had seen him. I’d called the police station, and they’d asked if it had been twenty-four hours since Everly had disappeared. Fucking idiots.
Not knowing what to do, I called my parents.
“I knew you’d come crawling back after we canceled your credit cards,” my father coldly remarked when he answered the phone.
My mind raced as I debated exactly how to play this.
“You were right. I was out of control. I need help,” I told him.
A pleased hum came through the phone.
“I was hoping that I could start fixing things with Caiden first, and then I’ll come home, and we can go to the doctor,” I told him, every word tasting like acid in my mouth. I kept my words as innocent as possible, trying to channel my twin’s unparalleled manipulation tactics. “Do you know where he is?”
“Probably at his new place,” my father said in a pleased voice. The bastard was over the moon at my mea culpa.
“New place?” My heart clenched with this new information.
“You have a lot to work out with your brother if he didn’t tell you we got him a townhome, just down the street from yours. I would have liked you two to be able to live together, but we didn’t want your out of control behavior to stunt his recovery.”
“Of course,” I said, struggling to keep my voice mild, even though I was literally shaking as I did an illegal U-turn and raced towards my former residence.
“What’s the unit number? I want to stop by right now and say sorry.”
My father rattled off the number, and I thanked him profusely, promising that I would be right over as soon as I talked to Caiden.
Setting the phone down after we’d disconnected, I tried to control my shaking. It was a bit ironic that my father had unwittingly aided me in saving Everly. If he’d known my real intentions for needing Caiden’s address, he would have never given me the information.
Fucking bastard, I seethed, vowing that after this, I would never speak to my parents again.