by Lily White
He was the prized Prince and I was the commoner, my life not worthy of his.
“I know you’re not, Del.” I hated to lie, but I did it anyway, just so I didn’t have to see her face when the truth came out. I wanted to remember her smiling. I was selfish like that. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
Shaking her head in disbelief, she stood from her bed and walked inside her closet to pack. I leaned my head against the wall and sat watching her, soaking in the last minutes I had as a free man taking care of my sister.
This was the hardest moment I’d ever faced in my life. Harder than losing my parents. Harder than seeing Deli broken and damaged in her hospital bed. At least, back then, I’d still had hope in my heart that everything hadn’t been lost.
That hope was gone now, scorched and shredded, the minutes ticking past within the sad reality that when the police found Jack’s body, it would be the end of me.
The end of me.
The end of every dream I had of leaving this place and finally carving out a life of my own.
The only prayer I had left when this was all said and done was that it wouldn’t be the end of my sister.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Michaela
Being bound and gagged has many disadvantages. It’s something you never really think about in life, a situation you never fully consider. Sure, you see it in the movies and think how much it would suck, but you don’t appreciate the practical aspects, like the inability to get up and go to the bathroom when you need to.
The sun had risen outside Holden’s window several hours before, the house as quiet as a tomb outside his door. He’d woken me when he peeked inside earlier, but since then I’d been alone and miserable, my bladder was screaming for relief.
Another fact I’d never considered about being bound and helpless was that every small movement caused the ropes to scrape your skin raw, the burning sensation crawling up my arms until I wanted to scream in response. I would have done just that if I wasn’t terrified that Holden had lost it and would come charging in to shut me up once and for all.
It must have been mid-morning by the time he came through the door, his hair a mess and the skin beneath his eyes bruised and darkened. He was dressed in clean clothes and he’d washed the blood from his face and hands, but the scrape was still obvious on his forehead, his knuckles wrapped in gauze.
“Do you need to use the bathroom?” he asked.
Yes! Oh God, yes! I would have yelled the answer if I weren’t gagged.
He shuffled over on exhausted steps, his hands gentle as he worked at the knot binding my ankles. Once they were free, he examined the skin, my breath hissing against the gag from the burn.
“Damn. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Mumbling from behind the gag, I hoped to grab his attention. There was actual regret behind his eyes when he turned to look at me. “I have a first aid kit in the kitchen. We can bandage you up when you’re done using the bathroom.” He held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Confusion pulled my brows together and I mumbled again. Shaking his head, he ripped the gag from my mouth and tossed it aside. “How many fingers?”
I had to clear my throat to answer. “Two, why?”
Grabbing my arm, he pulled me into a sitting position, his eyes averted when he guided my legs over the side and explained, “I’m just making sure you don’t have a concussion.”
“I’m not sure that’s how it works.”
He shrugged a huge shoulder, “I’m not a doctor.”
I must have weighed nothing to him because he gripped my arm and lifted me to my feet one handed, balancing me in place until he was sure I was steady on my feet. “Are you going to untie my hands?”
“We’re not to that point yet.”
“How will I wipe?”
“You’ll figure it out,” he said, walking me to the adjacent bathroom and pushing open the door. Tucking me inside, he flipped on a light and shut the door. His presence lingered just outside, a shadow spilling across the floor from beneath the door. I guess he would have to listen to me pee, because he hadn’t moved far enough away to keep from hearing everything I did in here.
After finishing my business and getting inventive to use the toilet paper, I walked the short distance to look at my reflection in the mirror. I looked like hell, my skin mottled and red over my cheekbone, the beginning of a nasty bruise. Droplets of blood splattered my face, but I couldn’t determine where they came from. My skin wasn’t broken.
Turning on the water, I did my best to splash some over my face to wipe away the dirt that smudged it. There wasn’t much to be done about the leaves and twigs clinging to my hair, not with my hands bound.
Stepping out of the bathroom, I almost collided with Holden’s chest, my neck craning so I could look up at him.
“Are you hungry?”
Normally, my stomach would have been growling by that point in the morning, but I couldn’t think of food with the ball of dread tumbling around inside it. “Not really. I’m too scared to eat.”
His eyes met mine. “Scared of what? Me?”
Taking a chance with my life, I nodded. “You kind of kidnapped me.”
The skin wrinkled between his eyes. “You kind of left me with no choice. You jumped me with your psychopath for a boyfriend.”
“I didn’t jump you. I tried to stop him.”
Recognition filtered through his gaze, a memory bubbling to the surface then floating away again. Noticing the confusion, I asked, “Don’t you remember what happened?”
“Not really,” he answered absently. Gripping my bicep again, he walked me out of the room, through his house and to the kitchen, shoving me down into a chair by the table before walking away to look through a cabinet.
“What do you mean ‘not really’? If you can’t remember anything then how do you know Jack is dead?” A glimmer of hope shot through me, the feeling mixed with disappointment that Holden may have been wrong about Jack. On one hand, I prayed there was someone out there who knew Holden had me, and on the other, I dreaded the thought that I would have to go back to Jack again as his miserable, perfectly complacent girlfriend.
Holden pulled a first aid kit from the cabinet, flipped the lid and fished around in it to find the supplies he needed. “I know Jack is dead because I saw the body. I hid the body, in fact, nestled it among the other stray trash where it belongs.” His eyes lifted to study me. “Why do you ask?”
He didn’t wait for my answer. Turning away, he opened a drawer, pulled a plastic baggie from inside and went to work filling it with ice from the freezer. It didn’t matter that he turned before I could respond. I didn’t have an answer to give him. How could I admit openly that I preferred Jack was dead? It was a horrible thought, but yet I found myself thinking it.
Stalking toward me with his supplies in hand, Holden set everything on the table beside me, offering me the bag of ice. I was still eyeing it when he barked out, “It’s for your cheek. Just take it so I can stop feeling so bad about the swelling.”
Taking the ice, I held it to my cheek with both hands. “You didn’t cause the swelling. That was Jack.”
“He wouldn’t have hit you if you weren’t trying to pull him off me.” Genuine regret filtered through his expression. It shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did. I wasn’t used to people feeling sorry for the way I was treated.
Whispering, I said, “You didn’t do this, Holden.”
He kneeled down in front of me, his fingers gently probing the rope burn on my ankles. His skin was warm against mine, rough like he worked with his hands often. “I know it’s not my fault. It’s your fault for waiting by the tracks to jump me. I’ve never done anything to either of you, and you’ve taken everything from me.”
Peering up, the hatred had returned to his tired gaze. “I’ve done nothing to you. Not a damn thing. I’ve barely spoken two words to you since we were kids.”
Swallowing hard, I br
eathed deeply. “Jack was waiting for you because he’s still mad you broke his nose in the cafeteria. He wanted revenge.”
Holden’s shoulders shook with a bark of humorless laughter. “Hitting me with a car wasn’t enough revenge? Was he upset he didn’t kill me along with my parents?”
Shame blanketed me. “I’m sorry about your mom and dad. Nobody meant for that to happen.”
He was smoothing a salve over my ankles by the time he muttered, “Yeah, well, decisions have consequences.”
My thoughts wandered back to the events of the night, each soul-wrenching detail sharp and in focus. “My cheek wasn’t damaged when Jack hit me in the woods. Well, I mean, that probably didn’t help, but-“
My voice drifted off when his blue eyes lifted to me again. Even kneeling down and hunched over, he was intimidating, a sleeping dragon that could open its eyes at any time while you searched for the hidden treasure. I was haunted by those eyes, always had been, even in high school.
“But?”
“But, he hit me the first time in his car. I was complaining and trying to get him to leave you alone.”
Brows pulling together, he returned to bandaging my ankles. “Why would you put up with a guy like that? I would think with all the prim and proper rules of hoity-toity etiquette in your world, respecting women would be a rule for the men.”
“Apparently Jack missed that rule. As well as my dad, or my brother.” A sigh blew over my lips, sorrow crashing against me. “Maybe it’s not a rule after all. Nobody seems to know it.”
His head shook in disbelief. “Deli was jealous of the kids on your side of Tranquil Falls. I always told her not to be, always reminded her that the grass isn’t necessarily greener on the better manicured lawns. What you’re telling me confirms I was right to say it.”
Finished with the bandages, he packed up his supplies and moved away. I hated the distance, hated the loss of his presence close by. Although fear had held me in its wicked grasp for the morning hours, Holden had a way of muting it - even when he was the one who had tied me up in the first place. It was an odd realization, one I tucked away to consider later.
“Delilah’s really alive? She made it? Is she here?”
A feral smile stretched his lips, there one second, gone the next. It wasn’t a friendly expression, wasn’t exactly sane, but I didn’t sense he meant any harm by it. “Delilah is alive, no thanks to you or Jack. But there are different degrees of alive, aren’t there?”
Planting his hands on the counter, he stared at me. “If you mean alive in the sense that her heart is beating and her lungs draw in air, but she’s too broken to step outside, and believes her parents are coming home one day, then yes. She’s alive. If you mean, she dances and smiles and enjoys the same hobbies she used to enjoy, or if you mean she goes to school and does stupid girl sleepovers, or goes to movies or even out to dinner once in a while without fear of missing her parents and not being around when they return home, then no. In that case, Deli died two years ago. Very much thanks to you and Jack.”
Turning his eyes away, he sorted the items in the first aid kit, his voice low when he added, “Not that we can afford all those fun activities for her. I’m a horrible caregiver.”
My heart dropped to my stomach, the harrowing truth of Delilah’s life slapping me in the face. Delilah was such a pretty girl. I liked her more than all of my friends. She was real, not some fake persona she tugged on each morning along with a shirt and pants. She was also the best dancer I’d ever seen. Better than all the girls on the team, though nobody would dare admit it. “She doesn’t know your parents are dead? She’s never been to their graves?”
“She doesn’t go outside, remember?”
“Is she here now?”
His shoulders withered, the tension melting away before my eyes. “No. She left this morning to go see our uncle for the holidays. It’s the first time she’s been away from the house since she returned from the hospital. I’m proud of her for it.”
“I’m sorry, Holden. I didn’t know. The last time I saw her, she was screaming at me.”
His stare pierced me. “When did that happen?”
“When you were in the hospital. I tried to come see you, but Delilah chased me out. I’d never heard her scream before, had never seen her so angry. She kept insisting I was small. I didn’t know what she meant. But you called me small, too.”
Grinning, he replied, “That’s because you’re small.”
I knew it was an insult, knew he was smiling to throw it at me. But despite his joy to call me some derogatory term that only he and his sister knew, I couldn’t help liking the way he smiled. “Are you happy to insult me?”
“No,” he answered, leaning against the counter at his back and crossing his arms over his chest. The material of his t-shirt stretched taut over his biceps. “I’m happy that Deli used the term correctly.”
I gave him a few seconds to explain, but he remained silent. “Are you going to let me in on the secret?”
“Not now. We’re not there yet.”
Not there yet...
Our unfortunate circumstances were slammed to the forefront of my thoughts, trepidation creeping along my spine with tiny icy fingers. “How long are you planning on keeping me, Holden? We can’t stay like this forever.”
Holden flinched as if slapped by the same circumstances, by the reminder that our being here together wasn’t normal. Rubbing at the back of his neck, he averted his gaze, focused those hypnotic blue eyes on the counter in front of him. “I’m not sure. I want to take care of a few things. Make sure Deli has somewhere to go. That she has someone who can take care of her.”
“Why?” I asked, genuinely confused as to why he felt the need to make the arrangements of a dying man.
Slowly, his gaze lifted, raw truth revealed in the way he stared at me, in the tone of his deep voice. “I killed a man, Michaela. I killed your boyfriend, Jack. And I don’t remember doing it.”
Tears welled in my eyes, but not for Jack. Never for him. “I can help. I can tell the police what I know, that Jack was waiting for you-“
“Did you see me kill him?”
Shaking my head, I admitted, “No. He hit me when I tried to help you. I don’t remember anything after that.” I remembered what happened before Holden walked home, remembered what Jack had done to me in the car to amuse himself while we waited. I wished I didn’t remember those details.
Holden’s silence dragged my attention back to him, to the dark hole of a man that was the same, yet different, than the person I’d known when we were kids, than the person he’d been in high school. Our eyes locked, the weight of our situation settling over my shoulders as heavily as it rode him.
“That’s as much as I remember, as well,” he confessed on a soft voice. “But the moment he hit you, I must have snapped. Must have lost it. Because I can’t remember what happened later, not until I was leaning against a tree and Jack was lying at my feet, dead.”
“Maybe if we just told them it was an accident-“
“The front of his skull was caved in, Michaela. His face was caved in. Do you understand? That wasn’t an accident. I may not remember doing it, but I could tell by looking at him that I hit him over and over, probably kept hitting him after he was already dead. The police won’t look at that as an accident. Jack died painfully. And I don’t regret that fact.”
My gorge rose, my hands pressing against my stomach in response to the pain. “Can I have some water?” Something. I needed something to fill the emptiness of my gut, to ease the dread still spinning and tumbling down in there.
Snatching a glass from a drying rack, Holden pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and filled it. His steps shook the floor when he walked to hand it to me. I swallowed it down, my eyes closing at the instant relief of cold liquid traveling down my throat. Pulling the glass away, my eyes widened to see Holden studying me.
“Feel better?”
Nodding in response, I handed the glass
back to him. “Yes. Thank you.”
He was placing the glass in the sink when I offered to help. “Maybe if I tell them what I know? He went to that diner specifically to mess with you. Clive called him the day before and said he saw you working there. It wasn’t a coincidence that Jack and I showed up. After we were kicked out, we were headed to a party on our side of Tranquil Falls, but we reached the same curve where he hit you two years ago and he spun the car around, sped back to hide near the tracks so he could wait for you. The police have to see that for what it was. Jack caused this fight. You were only defending yourself.”
“It won’t matter.”
Anger flared through me, not at Holden. Even if he had taken me from the scene and tied me up, I wasn’t angry at him. I knew he’d panicked, and I was oddly thankful that he hadn’t left me lying there in the freezing cold, in a path traveled by the homeless and the drug dealers that lived in the abandoned houses. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment, that by taking me, Holden most likely saved my life. I couldn’t simply let him go to jail for something that wasn’t his fault. “It will matter because I’ll tell them what happened.”
The flash of a smile stretched his face again. It was a nervous expression, a tiny hint of his thoughts spilling out into the open before he could hide them again. Not happy. Not in a situation like this. “I can’t trust that, Michaela. Not you. Not ever.”
“Why?”
His eyes pinned me. “Let me ask you this: Two years ago, when Jack hit me with his car, did you tell the police he intentionally gunned his engine toward the curve? Did you happen to mention he was racing toward me on purpose?”
My argument died in my throat. No. I hadn’t said a word to the police about it because Jack had threatened me. His family, and mine, had told me in no uncertain terms what would happen if I said anything.
“That’s what I thought,” he said, filling the heavy silence. “You didn’t tell the truth when he almost killed me back then. What would possibly make me think you’ll tell the truth now?”
Slamming the lid closed on the first aid kit, he almost ripped the cabinet door from the hinges when he opened it to put the kit away. With his back to me, he spread his arms to the side, planting his palms on the counter to hold his weight. His head hung low, his broad shoulders taking up too much space. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Justice doesn’t exist for people like me, Michaela. I can’t afford it, and the system is designed to throw people like me away because we can’t pay for the fancy lawyers with their fancy legal pads and fancy pens. I’ll get stuck with some wet behind the ears public defender who doesn’t give a damn what happens to me. Someone who will bend to the will of Jack’s family because he is the golden boy when it comes to the law.”