Crash

by Drew Jordan

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I whispered to him. “Share something with me.”

  “I’m sharing my house. My life. What else could you want?”

  “Just a little something. Anything. A story, a picture of you. Something that makes you sad, or makes you laugh.”

  “Funny story? Okay, here’s something funny. The last person who used this tub drowned in it.”

  As his words sank in, fear gripped me as tightly as he did. “Was it an accident or did someone do it on purpose?”

  “What difference does it make? The end result is the same. She’s dead.”

  We stared at each other, my breathing shallow, heart racing. He smiled, and it was evil. The smile of a man who knows he has the upper hand. There was no way to pull myself out of his hold, with his fingers wrapped around my hair, locking my head in his grip. How easy it would be for him to drown me. He wouldn’t even have to break a sweat or strain. Just lower his arm and hold. I could flail and kick but it wouldn’t get me out of the water or out of his control.

  “Who was she?”

  “Nobody.” He let go of me so quickly I slipped down and got a mouthful of tepid water. “Sit up for a second. I’m going to join you.”

  I sat up, lip trembling a little, teeth chattering. It wasn’t from the cold. I scooted forward, hugging my knees to my chest in an illusion of protection. But nothing could protect me.

  He shucked off his jeans and stepped into the tub. Once seated, he pulled me back so I was resting on his chest, floating between his legs. He kissed the back of my head and I sighed, relaxing back in to his arms. I would take comfort from the man I feared. It was better than nothing.

  And it wouldn’t be the first time.

  I raised my leg and stared at my toes. I needed to clip the nails and buff the calluses off. I needed some peach scented lotion to massage between my toes and into my heels. Toes were so odd. I wondered if they were really necessary. Like truly necessary. Or were they more of an add on, a frivolous accessory to the skeletal outfit. Trent was massaging my arms gently, his lips brushing over my hair, back and forth, back and forth.

  “You’re right. This feels amazing,” he said, with a deep sigh.

  “It feels even better now that you’re in it with me.” It did. He was warm and strong and he loved me. I bet he loved even my toes. It was a freeing feeling. That I could just be me, and Trent would still love me.

  I started to hum, a Taylor Swift song. I felt very pop song happy. There was a fear clawing at the back of my mind, but it only served to heighten my nerve endings, to make me feel more totally in the moment. “What are you doing tomorrow?” I asked, pausing in my song. “I’d like to help you if I can.”

  He kissed the top of my head. “I’m not used to having a partner. But I like it. I like that you’re willing to pitch in.”

  “I want to help. You work so hard.” It was sexy, how he survived by his intelligence and his physical strength without help from anyone. He was a man in the truest sense of the word. The hunter and gatherer. Who protected his home and his family. Me. He protected me.

  From everything else. I wasn’t sure who was supposed to protect me from him. Me, apparently.

  “I want to get a caribou before they’re gone. That’s meat for six months.”

  Fruit would be nice too but I wasn’t going to complain. “It seems like you have enough already to me.” There were carcasses dangling all over the yard.

  “It goes faster than you think.” He idly stroked my nipples.

  I closed my eyes and wondered if he tried to kill me, would I fight him? Or would I just go, quietly, without a sound? Accepting my fate. At the moment I wasn’t sure.

  I was tired. Tired of living on edge. Tired of fighting. Tired of bracing myself.

  For now, in the tub where someone had drowned, I just wanted to relax, and be a woman with her man.

  He pinched the bud of my nipple hard and I let a whisper of a groan slip out in total hot, wet, boneless pleasure.

  Still stiff, but feeling good after a night of hard, dreamless sleep, I followed Trent down the stairs of the cabin. He was taking me caribou hunting with him and I had to admit I was excited. Not excited to kill a caribou, but excited for the change of scenery, and to not be left alone all day long in the cabin. The walls closed in on me, and I could see how if you lived here for months, years, that you would want to spend a ton of time outdoors even in the cold. The sameness was claustrophobic. For me, anyway. I fantasized about painting the walls hot pink, with pops of turquoise in our bedding and throw pillows. I imagined a sofa, with turned legs, and a TV. But that was just copying my apartment in Seattle.

  Here it was wood and snow. Snow and wood. Dirt and trees. Wildlife and blood. So I should decorate in red, white, green, brown. Maybe then the cabin wouldn’t feel so cell-like. So stark.

  I breathed in the fresh air, even though it was cold. Sometimes the cabin got stuffy, and I eagerly left it, shutting the door behind me. This hunting venture would also give me a chance to see where I was. I’d never ventured past the riverbank on my own, and only once had I gone on the river with him when we’d retrieved the salmon. Alaska was huge and I had seen a microscopic pinhead of space in the vastness. I wanted to get my bearings and figure out where the next dropped pin settlement was.

  Because despite all my daydreams on decorating, I didn’t want to stay forever. Not as a prisoner. I wanted to be able to leave if I decided to. Before he drowned me.

  We walked for a long time. My breath was short and my nose went numb. We followed a trail along the river and I was amazed at how huge it was, even though it was covered in a layer of snow. I wanted to see it in summer, with the water rushing, the trees around it green, wildflowers blooming.

  “What temperature do you think it is right now?” I asked him when he paused for a second, eyes scanning the horizon.

  “Shh.” He held a finger up to his mouth, not looking at me. “I see tracks,” he murmured under his breath. “Moving north. Be quiet or you’ll spook the bull.”

  I nodded, heart starting to race, though I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t going to shoot a caribou. There was no reason for me to be nervous.

  He lifted his binoculars and scanned across the river. “There.” His binoculars went into his coat and he raised his gun.

  Not even seeing it, I took a step forward, scanning left and right. It bothered me that I couldn’t see the animal.

  “Get back, Laney,” he murmured.

  But I had seen a flash of something downriver. A glint of sun on metal. “What is that?” I asked, taking three more steps.

  Trent swore and jerked me back by the arm. “What the fuck are you doing? The bull just ran off, he saw you moving.”

  “But there are people down there.” I pointed left, in awe. This was the first sign of life from any one other than the stranger in two weeks. I was stunned, and not even sure how I felt. “Who is that?” I started walking even faster, curious. My ankle turned, but I still kept going.

  It was two men, walking on the other side of the river, guns in hand.

  “I don’t know who that is. I don’t get much traffic around here.” Trent raised his binoculars again and looked. When he did, they paused in their walk and looked over at us.

  “I think they see us,” I said, excited. I waved.

  He yanked my arm back down by my side. “Go back to the house. I don’t know who that is. It could be anybody. Bush people aren’t always sane, you know. Those guys could see you and have nothing but raping you on their minds. Though I could protect you. I just don’t want to get into it with anyone.”

  Oh, the irony. I almost laughed. Not that he had raped me, because I had been willing, but he had manipulated me, kept me prisoner. Tied me up and left me naked in his bed for hours. Locked me outside in the cold. So he was right in that bush people weren’t always sane, but the question was, did I stay where I was with what I knew, or risk a scenario that was worse? With him, I knew that
I could take the pain, and revel in the pleasure. I knew him, and his brand of insanity. I loved parts of him and how he loved me. Betraying him was ungrateful.

  Yet freedom was tantalizingly close, a temptation that was virtually impossible to resist.

  I couldn’t have both.

  So I took off running.

  Trent was yelling my name with ferocious anger.

  It occurred to me as my pathetic not-at-all-athletic legs strained to get a rhythm going, feet skittering on the slippery snow, that he could just shoot me. But that would be my answer- I had gone out fighting.

  But no shot rang out.

  Instead there was the ominous crack of thin ice, my legs going out from under me, and a cold so shocking, it felt like my body had been electrified. A thousand volts of pain burst through me in an explosion and all I could see was white. Blinding white, everywhere. Over me, around me.

  I thought I heard my name ringing out again, but maybe I was imagining it. Maybe I was yelling it myself in my own head.

  My legs were sucked down and I scratched at the ice, but I couldn’t get a grip.

  Then everything went dark and silent and murky and this time, my stepfather couldn’t save me.

  Not when he was as trapped as I was.

  Prisoners, all of us. Mom, Dean, and me.

  And all of it was my fault.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  For an endless minute I sank into the silent cold of the Yukon, body too shocked to protest, mind empty of all save one thought. I was going to die in Alaska. It seemed in that moment poetic, really. A rather remarkable death for an unremarkable woman. My lungs burned and my ears popped and I watched the hole grow smaller above me.

  Then he pulled me out.

  Using his bare hands, he hauled me heavy and limp, choking on the water, out of the hole, out of the river, and it was like being born, being ripped from a mother’s warm womb and exposed to the searing light and icy air. I lay sprawled across the powdery glass surface, yanking in air, teeth chattering. I hadn’t died, but he was going to kill me, and maybe that was an even more deserving death. Even without looking at his face, I could feel the waves of fury radiating off of him. There were voices, growing louder.

  “Holy shit! Is she all right? What happened?”

  “My wife isn’t a native,” Trent said. “She doesn’t always realize when the ice isn’t safe.”

  “Oh, man, that was scary as hell,” a higher-pitched voice than the first said. “Do you need help getting her home? How far are you from camp?”

  I stared at the glittering crystals of the ice surface and tried to control my shivering. I couldn’t seem to speak. Here was my chance for freedom. Here was what I had run for- the opportunity to tell someone I wasn’t with him of my own free will. But nothing came out of my mouth. I didn’t speak. I didn’t even look up at them. I didn’t correct his lie that I was his wife. I just lay on the ice, catatonic, relieved to be alive. There was still the urge to live, to breathe, to love. To right the wrongs of my life.

  Without him, I would be dead.

  Yet, without him, I would have been found, taken to Michael. Back in Seattle by now, or marrying Michael and settling into life as an Alaskan wife.

  I could still have that anyway.

  “I’ve got her,” he said. “Though if you can just watch a second and make sure we get off the ice okay, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Sure, sure, no problem.”

  Trent lifted me and my hair crackled as it tore off the ice, where it had already started to freeze. “Wrap your arms around my neck, doll,” he murmured.

  “Why did you save me?” I asked, staring up at him. It took a great deal of effort but I managed to lift my arms and secure them around his neck.

  “Because I don’t want you to die. Were you trying to die?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t want to die.” With a sigh, I closed my eyes and relaxed against his chest.

  As he carried me across the ice and I felt my soaked clothes stiffen on my skin, my hair brittle and frozen, I realized that his arms were always there to hold me. In my whole life, only Dean had saved me before the stranger. And that wasn’t even the same thing. My life had never been at risk. Dean had saved me from my mother, from loneliness. But the stranger had saved me from death. Not once. Not twice. But three times.

  His chest was solid. He was solid.

  While he might require obedience, he was never, ever going to let anything happen to me.

  Wasn’t that the devotion and love I’d been seeking my entire life?

  Hauling me out of the river could have pulled him down into it as well. He hadn’t had rope, or anything to brace him. Saving me he’d risked his own life, getting sucked down into that black ice hell, where our lungs would have slowly filled with water, our eyes locked, as we drifted away from each other into oblivion. But he hadn’t hesitated. He’d been right there, using his vast strength to haul my sorry ass out of the hole. Even after I’d run away from him.

  There were voices again and he yelled loudly, “All clear! Thanks for your help.”

  We must be on the bank then. He was walking faster, putting the two men behind us in the distance. I wondered if he cared that they knew where he lived now, or if they’d seen me. Not that they’d gotten a good view of me before I’d fallen into a hole like a complete idiot. But it would be noteworthy. A story they would tell to friends, people at the store, wherever they would go.

  Saw a girl fall in the ice. Scary as fucking hell, man. Her husband hauled her out like it was nothing.

  At the house, I tried to help him take my clothes off, but my fingers wouldn’t bend. Far too many times, he had been forced to undress me, defrost me. I vowed I wouldn’t let it happen again. I wasn’t helpless. I wasn’t stupid. I couldn’t stand the thought that he would think of me that way.

  “What were you doing?” he asked me, once I was stripped and wrapped in a blanket.

  “I’m not sure,” I answered truthfully. “But I just wanted to talk to someone else for a second.”

  That was a lie, and I knew it the minute the words passed my lips.

  “Are you lonely here?” he murmured, using a washcloth to attempt to dry off my hair. “I don’t mean for you to be lonely.”

  “I’m used to a lot of people being around me.” I leaned against the wall, raising my knees to my chest and pulling the blanket tighter around me.

  “You were running, Laney. Running across the ice.” He was sitting on the edge of the bed, studying me. “I know what you were doing. You were trying to escape. Like any prisoner, you were trying to escape.”

  My heart rate increased and I just watched him, waited. I couldn’t answer, because he already knew the answer and saying it out loud wasn’t going to make it more palatable for either of us. But he didn’t speak either. We were locked on each other, everything left unsaid, but everything so obvious. He knew the truth and I knew the truth. What did it mean? That, I didn’t know, and as each second passed, each breath expelled from my lungs, and each finger dug harder into my blanket, I felt him slipping away from me. Losing interest. No longer seeing me as special. It was there in the way his shoulders relaxed, the way his head tilted ever so slightly, as if he were viewing me differently. It was in the fact that he didn’t touch me at all. He sat back, removed from me, and he might even be falling out of love with me.

  That couldn’t be. It would destroy me. I needed to count on his obsession with me, his desire for me. If I didn’t have that, I truly had nothing.

  “I’ll let you go,” he said, finally, after the pause grew so great I thought I might scream or start confessing to things I wasn’t even guilty of. Beg him for forgiveness. “I’ll take you to town if that’s what you want, no strings attached. You can go see your friend or go home or do whatever you want.”

  “You don’t want me anymore?” I asked, voice small, hoarse. My chest felt tight and I willed him to fight for me.

 
“Of course I want you. But I was wrong about keeping you when it isn’t what you want. I’m… disappointed. But I want what’s best for you.”

  His dismissing me, dumping me off, returning me, was not what was best for me. I knew then, without a doubt, what was.

  It was him.

  I couldn’t lose his desire. His affection. His obsession.

  I needed his need, his deep, dark, driving need to claim me, take me, possess me.

  “I don’t want to go home. I want to stay here with you.” I reached for the headboard with shaky fingers, to where he kept the ropes. I looped them over my wrists and held them out to him to tighten. “I’m yours. Not a prisoner, but captured by you. Totally. For as long as you want me.”

  He didn’t question it. Or try to talk me out of it. Instead, he yanked the ropes tightly, his air expelling from his nostrils in a short burst. He was aroused and pleased. The desire, his interest were back, better than before. He looked like he wanted to whip me, flaying the flesh from my body, and consume me. Piece by piece. That was how much he wanted me and my skin flushed from excitement. He was going to take me because he owned me and I fucking loved it. I loved him.

  Pushing up at my elbows, he moved the ropes behind my head, so my wrists rested on the back of my neck. The position was a vulnerable one, my breasts thrust out, my arms straining. He could easily pop out my shoulders this way, or crack a bone. But that was the exciting part. He yanked me right up to his face and I refused to look away, our breath mingling.

  “I want you forever,” he said. “You’re mine. And if you stay now, if you agree to belong to me, there is no leaving.”

  My cheeks felt feverish, my body prickling with desire. “I don’t want to leave.”

  Without warning, he pulled the ropes, flipping me around and pushing me down into the mattress. I shifted my head to the right so I could breathe, but otherwise stayed loose. My shoulders drew back tightly, uncomfortable, but not painful.

  “I’m really pleased,” he murmured behind my ear. “And really fucking turned on by you. I’m not sure how much control I have right now.”