by Skye Warren
We spot the unmarked cars right away, and the guys go to work.
A few shots. A few tires out. They drop back.
After that, the transport is a sitting duck, there to be picked off, but we have to be fast to avoid a chase.
Stone forces it off the road. The key is to get the vehicle disabled right away. He and Cruz jump out and run around to the sides, shooting wild for shock value, pulling the guards out and roughing them up. But all I can think about is Abby, frightened, not knowing what’s going on.
Once the drivers are handled, Stone torches the rear door and I sledgehammer it open. And there she is. Alone. Hands cuffed. Prison orange.
I get in. “Baby.”
She stands. “Grayson,” she says, a sob in her voice. “You came.”
“Of course I came.” I grab her face and kiss her wild, like the starving man that I am. “I didn’t know you were here. I thought you were home.”
“No time,” Stone says.
“Abby,” I say. “Do you want this? Do you want to come with me?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Look where I am.”
“No, I don’t want to be a better choice than prison. We can find a way to get you out, baby—I’ll go down for Dorman before I let you serve. What I’m asking is, do you want to come with me? Be with me? Like we were.”
“Yes,” she says, sounding happy, almost laughing. “Yes!”
Sirens in the distance. Cruz jingles a fistful of keys. I pull her into my arms and jump down. Stone has the door open. I carry her into the backseat and belt us in, with her on my lap still, because I’m not letting her go. Stone’s driving, and Cruz’s riding shotgun.
“Shit’s gonna get rough,” I say.
She looks into my eyes. She trusts me to protect her, and I will. She clings to my shirt with her cuffed hands as Stone peels out, fast as fuck.
“Three minutes,” Cruz says. “We might be good.” Meaning, we might have avoided a chase.
“That’s called motherfucking planning, brother,” Stone says.
Abby’s not listening. “I couldn’t call you,” she says. She’s babbling, crying.
“I know, baby.” I brush aside her hair.
“They were tapping my phone, following me. But I knew you didn’t do it.”
I set my forehead against hers, feeling like shit for not trusting her. “I gotcha now,” I say.
Forty-Three
~Abigail~
I’m sitting in the turret room. Grayson pulled down the boards and put in a screen window so that the summer breeze can blow through.
From here, I can see blocks and blocks of boarded-up ruins across the neighborhood, some looking decayed, others like an angry god smashed a fist through them. Greenery pokes out in unexpected places, nature trying to reclaim this space but turning it into something else instead. The beauty here is wild and dark. And it’s ours.
At first it seemed so strange that such an outwardly ruined place as the Bradford could feel cozy inside, but after four months, it no longer seems strange at all. It just feels like home.
I’ve put pillows along the edge of one side of this circular room, and I can curl up here for hours, pausing from the pages of my book to watch squirrels dart between the scrub trees. I also set up a desk and chair so I can work.
Back in my old dorm room, the only green I ever saw was the little patch of scrubby grass in the courtyard. Here, vines have grown up the walls of the buildings all around, thick like a blanket. Even the Bradford Hotel is covered with them. This place is overrun by nature—including the wild men who live here.
They’re beautiful too, with the same primal strength as these stone walls.
Nate goes back and forth between here and his farm. He’s tried to build a whole life there, but he can’t quite leave the crew behind. I like to talk to him when he’s here. I think he is relieved when I chat with him. He’s still not comfortable with Grayson keeping me captive.
What I don’t tell him is that I don’t want to escape.
Stone still gives me this look sometimes, like he wants me gone. But we’ve formed a kind of truce. I think the murderous look in his eyes isn’t really about me, anyway. Nowadays he’s obsessed with finding the other boys. We all are, but it’s a long road, full of dead ends.
Grayson and I have a nice, big private bedroom of our own on the fourth floor, and now there’s this turret room, my library.
Well, I had to keep the books somewhere.
I hear footsteps behind me, and a smile tugs at my lips. A book lands on the nearby cushion. Pleasure fills me at the sight of the old, loose binding. One shelf is already full of the books Grayson has brought me.
“What’s this one?” I ask.
“Open it,” he says with a new kind of tension in his voice. I glance at him curiously. He stares down at me, brown eyes wary.
So far he’s brought me Hemingway and Steinbeck—the classics. He’s brought my childhood favorites by Madeline L’Engle and Cynthia Voigt. He brought me new paperback thrillers and murder mysteries, hundreds upon hundreds of pages flush with ink. I’ve loved every single one, so I don’t know why he’s nervous now. I pick up the book and look at the cover. Nothing but faded cloth. No title. No author. That isn’t too surprising. Sometimes with old books, the ink will fade.
I open the cover. There’s nothing inside. No title page.
Turn the page. Still nothing.
It’s blank.
I look up at him, the question in my eyes. “What’s it for?”
“It’s yours.” He clears his throat. He looks down, and when his gaze meets mine again, his eyes pierce me. I remember the way he looked at me that first day, in the hallway of the prison, as if he could see inside me, straight to the heart. He terrified me then. He still scares me, but in a different way.
“I don’t…”
He shakes his head, gaze locked on mine. “It’s your book, Abby. Your story to tell.”
He wants me to write down my story. And he won’t settle for anything fake, just like I wouldn’t for him. He wants it real. Raw.
He always does.
* * *
I stare at the empty book, lying on the floor. Days pass before I pick it up and move it to my desk. Another week passes by before I open it and look at the first blank page. Two more weeks pass before I manage to write a paragraph.
Then the floodgates open.
I have too much to say, about my mother. About all the times I waited for her and she never came for me. About the forgotten birthdays, but there was also the soggy mush of a birthday cake she made me when I was six. Or the five-dollar bill she would leave on the counter every time she left for a bender because, even when she abandoned me for the drugs, she wanted me to eat. About the way she looked when my stepfather lay dying on the floor, both pleading and resigned.
My hand can hardly keep up with demand, and soon enough, half the book is full. I read a few snippets to Grayson one day in bed. It feels weird but kind of good too.
“These are amazing,” he says.
“You’re an easy audience.”
He grabs my hair and makes me look him in the eye. “They’re fucking amazing.”
I smile.
“Remember that intro story you wrote for the journal?” he asks.
I nod.
“It was such bullshit,” he says.
“What?” I give him a punch in his non-wounded shoulder, and he grabs my wrist and flips me over, pinning me under him.
“Total bullshit. Some shit about college class.”
I look up at him, feeling so perfectly helpless and enclosed. I think I’ll never get sick of him. “The journal was for the prisoners.”
A smile quirks his lips. “What do you think you are? I’m keeping you here. You can’t leave.”
He’s just smug enough to make me hate him sometimes. But he’s right about one thing. I’m one of them. Not only because I’m here, with Grayson. I was in jail too, even if Grayson busted me out on tran
sport.
“It was a bullshit vignette,” he continues, goading me. “You make all of us spill our guts, and you write about not being able to decide what to wear to class?”
“Excuse me,” I say. I’m annoyed because I know he’s right.
“You should change it.”
“What? It’s already published. It’s on the site. I can’t just go in and change it. Even if I wanted to, I don’t have the passwords.”
“Knox could crack into it.”
“You’re serious?”
“It’s a rush to have a piece up there—a real piece, I mean,” he says, “I think it’s always been leading to this. You teaching that memoir class. You didn’t just show up to teach us. You needed to learn how to do it, from us.”
Smug.
I don’t hate him though. I love him. And I kind of love the idea.
“You want to do it,” he says. “I can tell.”
It’s more than wanting to. It’s like I’ve always needed to tell my story, just like those inmates needed to. But I could never open up to anyone. Only when I got taken hostage at gunpoint did the story start to spill out.
But that was only Grayson. This would be public. I pick up the book he gave me. “I’d have to choose one of the things I wrote in here. And make it nice.”
“So do it.”
The idea grows on me over the following days. Knox even gets me the password—he can do things like that. Right after they grabbed me from the transport, he made it so I could email Esther to let her know I was okay without it being traceable. Maybe if I change my story in the journal to be an honest and raw one like the guys, I’ll have him help me email her again. Anonymously, so no one can track me.
The problem is my piece, finding just the right nugget to polish. One seems too rambly, another is just wrong. One feels too painful, another not true enough. None are right. I don’t know why I can’t find one. Maybe I’m scared.
Weeks go by, and I’m at my desk in front of the window, having put aside another vignette, when Grayson comes in. There’s this look in his eye, and I know I’m in for it. He’s a force of nature, a tornado, and I’m about to get swept away.
“It’s been six weeks,” he says, his voice deceptively calm.
“I know; I know.” I’ve been stalling.
With rough, possessive movements, he takes my hair out of its bun. My heart races as he pushes it over my shoulder. I close my eyes and let him arrange me how he likes. He gets horny when I do anything that looks academic.
I have new glasses on. I should’ve taken them off when I heard him coming. I’m trying to work.
“I don’t understand how you can be taking so long,” he growls.
I swallow. I don’t either.
“You filled all those pages, and you can’t use anything?”
“None of it seems right.”
He twists his hand in my hair.
“Don’t,” I say.
“Don’t what?” With an evil gleam in his eye, he hauls me up from my keyboard. It hurts.
“I need to work on it,” I whisper, knowing that’s exactly the wrong thing to say. I’ve been working on it, but I’m not finishing it.
He pushes me into the wall. The air thumps out of me. He watches my eyes as he trails his fingers down my neck, my throat, controlling even my gaze.
“Please,” I say as he nuzzles my neck with his stubbly chin, hard enough to leave marks.
“I think you’re hiding up here. You don’t get to hide with me,” he rasps, pulling up my shirt.
“I’m not hiding,” I say, trying to wriggle out of his grip, knowing I sort of am. I can’t let him take me over. I’m pleading now. “I have to do this. I have to work.”
“If you were working, you’d be done. Why is it taking you forever for something us guys did in a few weeks?”
“I don’t know!” I wouldn’t have let them get away with excuses—and he’s not letting me either.
He pulls away and eyes me suspiciously. Then he pins my wrists above my head with one hand and just rips off my shirt, baring my breasts to the cool breeze. I feel way too exposed, way too vulnerable.
I close my eyes, heart pounding. “Grayson.”
He palms my breast, moving against me, hot breath on my neck. I stay stiff, but he doesn’t care. He presses his fingers down into my waistband, finding my clit. Forcing me to feel his finger, rubbing relentlessly.
“Grayson,” I plead, starting to melt into him.
“I have to fuck you,” he grates.
Yes.
I pant as he turns me around. I cling to the corner table just to keep myself up. He shoves his hand under my skirt.
My panties are satin and lace, a sugary confection from the large drawer. The panties and bras and lingerie arrive in hordes to our anonymous post office box. Grayson and his tribe are very inventive criminals and never seem to want for money, though I don’t know where he gets the time to order it all. There’s almost been something new to wear each day. I guess when I said he should have nice things, he took it to heart.
I’m his nice thing, his possession, and he dresses me up in every color and style and fabric he can find.
He pulls my panties down my legs and tosses the expensive scrap of fabric onto the bare wooden floor and slides his fingers along the wetness waiting for him.
Forty-Four
~Grayson~
I know she’s working on changing her piece in the journal. I know I should leave her alone, but I can’t. I have to fuck her. This is how it is between us. She’s mine to do what I want with, and I can’t leave her alone.
Can’t stop fucking her.
But it’s more than that—seeing her in her library room so worried and wound up, she reminded me of the girl I saw in the prison waiting room that day, and it felt all wrong in my gut. Not beautiful and smart like I know she is, but timid. Too composed. Hiding from everything like she isn’t worth anything. Like she can’t let people see her.
If I was a good man, I’d let her hide. I’d let her look out the window while I fucked her, the view pretty and vacant. Her skirt is flipped up, exposing her bare ass. I could jack myself off inside her cunt and then let her get back to her journal. But I’m not a good man, and I’m not going to let her hide.
It doesn’t matter that she’d rather look at the sky so she wouldn’t have to face me. I flip her over against the desk—I want to see her eyes when I take her. She’s my sky, and I’ll watch her as I come.
She fights against me a little, and I grip her hard. I touch her the way that makes her boneless.
“Grayson…” Her breath speeds up, and her eyes fill with desire behind her glasses.
That look brings me to my knees. I kneel and press a kiss in the center of her cunt, right where it’s open and wet. She sucks in a breath. I know she wants more, but she won’t ask for it. I slide my tongue through her folds, learning the shape of her like I do every time. She shudders beneath me, quivering on the tip of my tongue.
Until I lick her clit. Then her whole body goes rigid. She moans something like my name. So I lick her again, and again, until I hear her clearly. Grayson, please. Grayson, please.
“What do you need, baby?”
She makes a sound like a tortured animal. I nip at her clit with the front edge of my teeth. She had to know this was coming, but she still cries out in surprise.
She likes me to nip her, to bite her, to hurt her a little—to make her feel. Her mom ignored and neglected her, but I’m the opposite; I can never get enough of her, and she knows it. Her cries echo through the room, through the open window, through the neighborhood of wrecked, unruly buildings.
My dick is hard, punching through denim. I pull myself free and clamp down on her thighs, positioning her, controlling her. I always move her body just how I want it, so I can fuck her how I want to. I used to hate when she called me a caveman, but not anymore. Yeah, I dragged her by her hair into my cave, and I’m not letting her go. I plunge inside—and
fuck, yeah, it’s sweet relief.
She pulses around me, reeling from the intensity.
She whimpers. “Grayson…”
Blood thunders in my ears as I suck air through my nostrils. It’s all too much, and the only way I can bring myself back down is to lick and suck and bite at her breasts, leaving them pink.
“More,” she grates out.
I shake my head with her nipple still caught lightly between my teeth. I’m holding on like an animal with its prey. She can never get free from me. And she can never hide from me, not in her journal or her books. Not anywhere.
My balls draw up. I’m seconds away from coming. I won’t be able to hold back, so I make the most of it. I grasp her hips and she wraps her legs around me. Then I lift and rock her hips in both my hands, jacking myself off with her cunt in the coldest, rudest way possible.
She’s spasming around me. Her cunt is milking my dick. Her arms are clawing me, holding me tight. Even her mouth has latched on to the skin at my neck, sucking me—and I’m not even sure she knows it. She’s a feral thing in my arms, drawing me into her pleasure, drowning me in it. I shout as my cock releases into her, mixing with her wetness. I grasp her ass even tighter and use her body to wring the last drops of come and pleasure from my body.
I collapse over her, planting sloppy kisses on her neck, her ear. Then I pull myself up and look down at her.
She hated me once, but it’s not hate I see in her eyes now. Not even fear.
It’s love.
I don’t deserve her love, but I have it anyway. I don’t deserve her at all, but she’s mine. Beautiful, smart. And so fucking strong.
It’s like the universe gave her to me to make up for all the other shit. And I think if I had to go through it again, knowing she’d be there at the end, she’d be my prize, I’d do it. I’d do anything to have her look at me that way.