by Callie Rae
I’ll find her.
“Yeah, I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have stepped up to you like that. You’re my brother, and I needed you to have my back,” I ruffle my hair and sit next to him on the bed, “I just . . . I need her, and if something bad happened to her . . .”
I choke on the words. I can’t think about it, and I definitely can’t say it. She’s out there somewhere, and she’s fine. She just needs to be found, like that day she wandered off and fell asleep on the bench at the bus stop. At least, that is what I am going to keep telling myself until I find her. I ruffle my hair and rub my hands over my face.
“I know.” Cason says as he places his hand on my shoulder, “And you know I always have your back. I need you to not doubt that, man.”
The doorbell rings, and I look up to Cason. “You expecting someone?”
“Nah, man.” He says with a shake of his head. He looks just as confused as I am. It’s way too early for someone to be gracing our doorstep.
We both head downstairs towards the front door, but Jade beats us to it. We find her standing in the door with a snarl on her face. Jade might not be a Callaway man, but she still has our blood. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of her, because she will bite.
“What do you want?” Jade asks through bared teeth.
“Where’s Cason? I need to talk to him.” A girl’s voice comes from the other side of the door. It’s obvious from her tone she couldn’t care less that Jade was about two seconds from pouncing.
“Narni?” Cason visibly perks up as he reaches for the door to open it wider. The girl that walked away from Cason last night is standing on our front porch. I wouldn’t have expected it from the female version of Cason.
Jade takes half a step back as an astonished, wide-eyed look mixes with the anger and annoyance on her face. “Are you for real?” she asks incredulously. She definitely does not approve of this.
“What?” Cason says to Jade as she rolls her eyes and purposely bumps her shoulder against his as she storms off. Oh, Cason buddy.
“Hey,” Narni says as she swipes at her hair nervously with her hands. “I, uh, need to talk to you.”
Her eyes reach mine, the fear in them distorting the tone in her voice from the casual nonchalance I just heard to something much more hesitant. “Both of you.”
Fuck. This isn’t going to be good.
Cason looks back at me, confused. I shrug my shoulders and walk out onto the front porch to face her.
“Ok. You have our attention,” I say as I stand right in front of her, feet spread, arms crossed and glaring down at her as she watches me apprehensively.
“I just . . . Crank and Goose told me what happened last night at the party.” She shuffles her feet. She’s uncomfortable. Good. She should be. I’m not playing games, and she better not be wasting my time. “About Fallon.”
“Yeah? And? Spit. It. Out,” I growl, stepping in to close the inch of space left between me and this chick.
“Chill, bro,” Cason says in a hiss as he wedges himself between us. He’s protecting her. My eyes dart to his, wondering what the fuck this is all about. Cason protects no one but his family—especially not some hook up.
“You know what? I shouldn’t have come. This wasn’t a good idea.” Narni throws her hands up and starts to back away. Cason reaches out to catch her by the arm, firmly keeping her in place.
“Why are you here, Narni?” he asks. His voice is soft with her, softer than I would have expected given it’s Fallon we’re discussing.
She looks back at Cason, her eyes searching his for something. She’s reading him, I realize. “Jordan didn’t know anything?”
Cason darts a quick look back to me before responding to Narni. “No. Why would Jordan know anything?”
“I thought . . . Maybe not . . .” she shakes her head as she tries to turn away from us again. But Cason still has a firm grip on her. “I thought I saw Jordan and Mira talking to Fallon last night.”
I cut my eyes to Cason again. Dread building in my gut. “You thought or you did?”
“I did. They were definitely talking,” she says as she runs an unsteady hand through her hair again.
“Cason . . .” I say cautiously. He doesn’t need me to finish. He knows what my next move is—because he’d do the same thing.
“On it. Narni . . . Just stay here. Don’t move.”
“Uh yeah, right.”
Cason sprints inside with his phone already to his ear before he even crossed the threshold to the front door. I stare at Narni.“Is that it?”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Yeah. What else would there be?”
“Just checking,” I say as I prop myself against the side of the house. “You don’t seem like the type to rat.”
“And you don’t seem like the type to let a rotten egg continue to stink, but yet here we are,” she says as she shrugs her shoulders.
My shoulders tense as I push off the siding and stand straight. I take a step in her direction, wondering what the fuck she’s talking about. “What does—”
Cason comes bundling out of the front door just in time to cut me short. “Let’s go.”
I began bounding down the porch stairs towards the driveway, feeling the adrenalin begin to course through my veins. Somebody better know something. “You too, girl,” I throw over my shoulder as I head towards the car.
“What? I’m not going,” she begins to say.
I spin and cut her off as I backtrack the few steps needed to get up into her face. “Right now, you seem to be the only person who knows anything about where my girl is. Until I can confirm you know nothing else in that pretty little head of yours or tell you otherwise, you will stick close. So you can either get in the car, or I can put you in there. I’m not giving you a choice.”
She swallows hard and glares at me as she flexes her jaw. I don’t know if it’s anger or fear warring through her right now, but I don’t fucking care. I don’t let up; I tower over her, waiting for her next move. After a few seconds of mulling it over she nods. Good. She understands.
“Come on! Let’s go!” Cason yells, putting an end to our standoff. I’m sure that was his intent.
Narni stands tall, confident. I have a feeling that if she didn’t want to go, she would fight me tooth and nail if I tried to force her. She quietly walks the rest of the way to meet Cason at the Jeep and climbs into the backseat.
She has no idea what I’m willing to do for my family. But she just may find out
It hurts—it all hurts. An ice pick is chipping away at my skull on the inside trying to find its way out. At least, that’s what it feels like as I pull myself out of the fog twisting around my brain, making me feel like I’m still dreaming. Maybe I am.
I don’t remember drinking that much last night.
I don’t know how I ever woke up on mornings like this without Jesse. Hangovers are so much more bearable with him by my side. I slide my hand towards him, slowly reaching out for the sweet warmth he gives me. I reach and reach until I’m stopped by something cold and hard, and definitely not what I was looking for.
I wince as soon as I touch the wall and breathe slowly, trying to wrap my head around what I’m feeling. It’s not Jesse, and it’s cold. Where the fuck am I? I’m scared to open my eyes. I’m scared of the little voice in the back of my head that tells me the moment I do I’m not going to like what I find. I slowly blink my eyes open, and as I do, the sting of the air hits my dry eyes, making the tears roll without permission. I’m greeted by a swinging lamp that only makes the hammering in my head ten times worse each time the light sways into my view.
My focus fluctuates in and out. But even though I can’t make out my surroundings quite yet, I know instinctively that this isn’t home. The smell is wrong, and from what I can make out, I’m in a dark, dank room with one little window. Like a basement—a very empty basement, except for me and whatever it is I’m lying on.
I grab onto a metal frame that is even colder than the wall and pull myself up. As soon as I’m upright a wave of nausea hits me, and the room sways. I hunch over and breathe through it until my world rights itself enough to open my eyes again. The panic starts in my toes, a lightness that begins until my whole body, my whole world, is cloaked in fear. I close my eyes again, trying to keep my breaths steady. I need to think back to last night. To what happened.
We were at the barn party. Jade was with Adam, and Cason and I were talking on the bench. My heart tears a little remembering that conversation. Then Jesse went to get another beer. Jade was sick. Wait. Jade wasn’t sick. Jordan told me Jade was sick. A cold, calculating voice saying, “Goodnight, Fallon.”
This isn’t a hangover.
Ice douses my veins as last night’s memories all hit me at once. Was it even last night?
Jordan is a traitor. Jade wasn’t sick. He tricked me. He’s helping Marcus.
The last thing I remember is nothing. Literally. My world went dark. And now I’m here. The thought that I was brought here by Marcus makes my stomach roll even more until I am full-on retching off the side of the makeshift cot under me. Nothing but bile comes up, making me gag harder and causing my head to pound and my stomach muscles to ache.
A door placed conveniently across the room—or maybe I’m conveniently placed away from it—opens. The hair on my body rises up as fear pounds in my blood. I scoot back into the corner, forcing the nausea under control as I wipe my mouth clean with the back of my hand. My eyes lock onto the only way in or out, waiting for him to appear in the doorframe.
I recognize his gate before I can see him clearly. His form comes into view, all five-foot-ten inches of the lanky devil, holding something in his hand that he rests on the floor on the side of the cot in front of me. He looks next to him where the bile is pooled and wrinkles his nose. It’s ridiculous this disgusts him, after every wicked thing he’s done. A little bile should be easy for him.
“Yeah, side effects of the drug. It’ll wear off soon enough,” Marcus says with a little chuckle that makes me wince further into the corner. The fact that he finds drugging his ex and the side effects from that drug amusing is disturbing. I can’t help but close my eyes and hope this is a dream. That I’m not locked away by the man I’ve feared and run from for the last year, and that he hasn’t caught up with me right when life was becoming somewhat normal and good.
“Ah, I see. You’re not entirely comfortable yet. No worries, that’ll wear off too.” His words come across as nonchalant as his posture. How can he think he can just force me to be what he wants? I need to get out of here. Think Fallon. I need a plan.
And my phone. My phone.
I slowly slide my hand to my back right pocket, where I always put my phone. Jesse gripes at me for it because I’m always sitting on it. The little trickle of hope in having my phone is lost when I reach my flat, empty pocket.
“Looking for this?” Marcus holds up my phone, and I sigh. “Come on, Fallon. I can’t have him finding you here.”
He takes the phone and drops it on the floor before stomping on it repeatedly. I twitch with every crunch of the glass and plastic as he destroys what might be my only way out of here. Once he’s done, he kicks the pieces of the phone over to the other side of the room. “There. That should do it.”
“What are you doing Marcus? Where am I?”
“Home,” he says gesturing with his hands to the house. As he drops his arms, he shrugs. “Well, part of it. I’ll let you see the rest when I can trust you not to run.”
“This is not my home. You’re fucking crazy if you think I’m staying here,” I grit out.
“It will be. It’ll be easier if you just accept it. I can give you a good life, Fallon. Besides, it’s not like you have much of a choice. I won’t let you leave,” he says sincerely, like what he’s saying isn’t out of the ordinary. Like this entire situation isn’t some part of the Marcus freak show.
But it is. This entire situation is my worst nightmare come to life. It’s the dream that wakes me up night after night. It’s the laugh that haunts me. It’s the face I see every time I close my eyes. But instead of waking up and it all being just a dream, I’ve woken up and it’s all real. Very real. If I couldn’t feel my pulse pounding in my ears right now from both fear and rage, I’d double check it to make sure I was alive.
“So what? You’re going to keep me here? Hide me away and pretend I’m here by choice? You know he’ll look for me. He won’t stop until he finds me. And then what are you going to do? You’re never going to get away with this,” I say, mustering the little bit of hope I can find in me. I can only pray that Jesse finds me, quickly.
“ENOUGH! You are mine. Not his. You were never his,” he yells. “It’s time that you figure that out. Do you think you just happened to accidentally find this town? Or Jesse? That wasn’t an accident. All it took was a bird twittering in the right ears. You’re here because I wanted you to be.”
I lean forward. “Figure this out.” I spit at him and it hits him square in the face.
His pulls back slightly, closing his eyes as if he’s gathering his patience. I watch him wipe the spit away with his hand slowly. So slow, in fact, that I jump forward, taking advantage of the moment and the element of surprise to run towards the door. And I almost make it; I’m nearly there when I feel his arms snake their way around my body. I’m airborne as he wrestles me, kicking and screaming, back to my corner, like a child in trouble. He tosses me down on the hard surface, knocking the air from my lungs on impact.
“If you want them to stay safe, you will behave. And I don’t just mean your mother. I mean them all,” he says breathlessly before backing away from me and exiting the room with a slam of the door and the click of a lock. I wince, knowing that lock is the only thing keeping me from running out of here.
His words begin to replay through my mind, and I freeze. He said them. He wouldn’t go after Cason and Jade too, would he? They aren’t a part of this.
What are you saying Fallon? He killed your child. Burned your house down with your mother inside. Of course he would. He would do anything to get his way.
Cason drove us. It took everything I had to relinquish being in command behind the wheel. Fallon missing has my control slipping. I can’t say it out loud, but I think Cason knows it. He can see it even if the others don’t.
I can’t be honest. If I falter . . . if I lose control, I don’t know if I could ever get it back.
I shake my head trying to rid myself of the thought.
No one can see me slipping. You can’t slip.
I gave Cason this one without a fight. Normally, driving calms me. The feel of the wheel under my fingers, the motion of making the car turn the way I direct it to, the speed . . .I’m in control of my destination, and with that the impossible can happen.. But without knowing where Fallon is, my control has begun to waver, and today I just need to focus on her.
I know that right now even driving wouldn’t calm me. I’ve had my eyes on Jordan for a while. His loyalties have been . . . questionable. In other words, he’s been toeing the line, and I’ve been waiting for him to cross it. Looks like he finally did, right under my fucking nose, and I was too fucking blind to see it. It’s just another way I’ve failed Fallon. If I’d have dealt him before now he would be one less person between me and her. But now it’s time to handle him. So yes, Cason can drive so I can hop out of this car the moment I see the prick’s face and bash it in. And that moment can’t come fast enough.
Cason pulls onto the road that leads up to the Depot, and I look over to him with a raised brow. “You think I’d meet this asshole on his turf? No fucking way,” Cason answers my unspoken question without taking his eyes off the road. When he glances at me, I see the fire licking its way in his eyes, and I know without a doubt that he isn’t letting go of Fallon either. If this goes south, it’ll go south on our terms, in our house.
“It
would be dumb if it wasn’t on your turf. He’d just call the cops—not that you don’t already own them too,” Narni pipes up from the backseat. I’d forgotten she was back there until now. She seems to be the observative type, watching in plain sight. Something about her doesn’t sit well with me.
Goose’s truck comes into view as we pull onto the track. Jordan is leaning against the side of the truck watching the road while Goose and Crank hang out on the tailgate, each with a beer in their hand.
I don’t wait for Cason put the car in park before I throw the door open. I vaguely hear him hiss as I practically jump out of the car, my fists ready to meet Jordan’s face.
Jordan straightens as I approach but I don’t stop until my hands are securely attached around the collar of the asshole’s shirt. I lift him up with ease. This lanky motherfucker . . .
“Where is she?” I shout as I slam him into the side of Goose’s truck. I’d worry about damaging the truck if I wasn’t about ready to drive Jordan’s head through it.
“What the fuck, man?” He grabs at my hands with wide eyes. He wasn’t expecting me to grab onto his shit. He doesn’t have a chance against me. Just the fact he wasn’t expecting this to happen is enough to put him at a serious disadvantage. He’s weak, and I’m here to show him just how weak he is.
“You gonna play it like that? Like you don’t know why the fuck I’m in your face?” My heart pounds in my chest as the rage starts to consume me. I’m seeing red, more so than ever before because it’s about Fallon. “You helped me search for her at that party, and you never said one damn word about being the last person to talk to her. I think it’s time you start fucking talking, or you won’t be so pretty when I’m done with you.”
Jordan looks to his buddies on the tailgate. They are watching but haven’t moved as they continue to sip on their beer. They won’t interfere; they are more loyal to me than this shitty punk who’s about to have his face pummeled in.