by Tara Brown
Books by Tara Brown also writing as
T. L. Brown, A. E. Watson, Erin Leigh, and Sophie Starr
Blood and Bone
Blood and Bone
The Devil’s Roses
Cursed
Bane
Witch
Hyde
Death
Blackwater
Midnight Coven
Redeemers
The Born Trilogy
Born
Born to Fight
Reborn
Imaginations
Imaginations
Duplicities
The Blood Trail Chronicles
Vengeance
Vanquished
The Light Series
The Light of the World
The Four Horsemen
The End of Days
The Single Lady Spy Series
The End of Me
The End of Games
The End of You—a Novella
The Lonely
The Lonely
Lost Boy
The Seventh Day
My Side
The Long Way Home
First Kiss
Sunder
In the Fading Light
For Love or Money
The Club
Sinderella
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Tara Brown
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503945456
ISBN-10: 1503945456
Cover design by Kerrie Robertson
This book is dedicated to the readers who like it better when I take things all the way the wrong way.
Thank you for letting me be me.
CONTENTS
1. THE IRON BUTTERFLY
2. THE LENGTHS I WOULD GO AND THE DISTANCE HE WOULD WALK
3. TALL, DARK, AND HANDSOME
4. WHY DO I HAVE TO BE THE BAD GUY?
5. PROFESSOR CHARMING
6. PROFESSOR HYDE
7. FIRST DAY OF SPRING
8. THE DUGOUT
9. HANDSOME PRINCE NUTBAG
10. THE FIRST SNOWFALL
11. POISONED PRINCESSES IN A ROW
12. LITTLE ORPHAN JANEY
13. BARONS AND DUKES AND SENATORS, OH MY!
14. YOU FORGOT THAT YOU STILL LOVE ME
15. BEDTIME STORIES
16. SEE A MAN ABOUT A BED
17. FREQUENT FLYER MILES
18. SURPRISE
19. ALONG CAME A SPIDER
20. DINNER AND A MOVIE
21. HOUSE OF HORRORS
22. THE LONG WAY HOME
23. SLIPPERY WHEN WET
24. A GLASS OF REGRETS
25. MERRY CHRISTMAS
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1. The Iron Butterfly
The mist swirls, attempting to blind me, but I don’t dare back down. I push through, sucking in air so heavy I can barely inhale all the way. Something in my back stings—my lungs maybe, from the thick, heady air of the sea. But that doesn’t seem like the answer. It doesn’t feel like sea air at all. It’s something else altogether.
And as if the air isn’t bad enough, the dense forest looks like a trap set just for me. My bare feet push for it, running toward the chaos of fallen trees, rocks, and holes. Branches stab, but I don’t feel them the way I should. Even my feet ignore the pain. My mind reels at that, and my fingers reach for the branches as I enter the silent woods.
My panicked breath and heaving chest are like percussion instruments in my ears, where blood is racing through at a rapid rate. The crunching of the sticks and branches seems to scream my trail. Even the rocks and dirt try to betray me by announcing where I’m running.
Light filters in through the green canopy as I slide over logs and branches to get deeper into the woods.
“Ashley! I know you think you can get away, but it’s a hundred miles in every direction! Princess, we can talk about this!”
I duck, hearing the shouted words, hiding behind a log and some ferns. I know my dark hair and filthy skin have to be shielding me from his eyes, but the shaking in my aching body and groggy mind seems to be making the woods move in an unnatural way. The trees vibrate with me, and the leaves crinkle and crunch even though nothing is moving, nothing but my beating heart.
“Ash, Princess, I’m not mad, I swear! Just come out and let me tend to your wounds! Come on, Princess, come back!”
His voice grates on my skin. It doesn’t matter if he whispers or shouts, the sound is the same. It nauseates me and haunts my mind. My memories are all groggy, as if they’re leftovers from a drug-laden haze. But his whispering breath on my rocking body is as clear in my mind as it is there in the woods. He fills me up, holding me down, and as much as I beg my brain to turn off, it catalogues every moment. I don’t know to what end.
I hold my breath as he enters the woods. “You’re bleeding! Let me make it better! The animals will track you!”
I tremble but I don’t move. I don’t dare run for it. I wait. He can’t see me, and I might have run in any direction for all he knows.
His breath and heavy steps fill the forest with echoing noises. It’s then I see the clouds rolling in behind us, over the mountain peaks. I realize the air is colder than I thought it was, and I am not on the coast at all. When I take a breath I realize the air isn’t heavy. I’m high in the mountains. The air is thin, and the ache in my chest and lungs is from the elevation. I’m not used to it. I’m usually at sea level when I am forced to exert myself.
I hold my breath, straining my lungs and making the pounding in my head worsen, but it isn’t worth it to let him find me. I force the image of him pinning me down, whispering his love for me. It stops the pain and pushes it away with intense amounts of fear.
“Ash!” His voice sounds farther away, but I don’t lift my head to look. I wait, because there is no way to be sure. My ears are still thick with the thin air and elevation.
A hot shiver breaks out, making me breathe again. The feeling of a fever and possibly a sickness of sorts starts to surface.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I don’t know how long I will last here in the woods, bleeding and cold. I do know I will die here, surrounded by trees and freezing, before I will let him find me.
His footsteps crunch, leading away from me, but his bellow is still audible: “When I find you, you’ll be punished for every day you hide! Make no mistake, Princess, I’ll find you!”
The name Princess makes me want to vomit. Not violently and noisily, but the retching is difficult at this elevation, regardless of not getting sick or making a sound. It makes me dizzier.
I sit, wondering if he’s messing with me, waiting for me to make the mistake of standing. But I’m not that dumb. Not to mention, my legs are not that strong. They’ve sort of failed me, in either paralyzing fear or crippling weakness. When I needed them to run they worked, but now they’re heavy like they’re soaked in concrete or caked in mud.
My brain whispers something about adrenaline and lactic acid, but I don’t care for the medical knowledge I have locked away from the three months of nursing courses I’ve taken.
I care about getting off this hill and finding help.
/> When I don’t hear him again I start to breathe normally. I don’t move until I hear the Jeep. He skids away, driving like a maniac. The maniac I didn’t know he was, in the beginning. Now I am painfully aware.
The adrenaline hits again.
I force myself to stand, emerging from the forest in a ragged run toward the barn. I turn as I leave the woods, pushing my feet and legs as I make my way to the road. The drive up here to the cabin revealed several other cabins along the way. If I can get to one before he finds me, I might make it.
I run into the ditch, splashing the frigid water up my legs as I make my way to the closest driveway. I’m out of breath and light-headed, but clear-minded enough to realize the closest cabin is a mistake. He’ll go there once he realizes I haven’t made it to the bottom of the hill.
I run past the second driveway, scrambling from the ditch and crossing it carefully. When I get to the third driveway I almost run up it, but my twin brother’s voice rings through my head. Three times lucky. I don’t know why; perhaps because I’m dehydrated and exhausted and my mental state is a mess.
The fourth driveway is a ways down the hill. The corners frighten me. I struggle to get past the ditches and rocks. My feet have stopped hurting, with the cold water making them numb.
Breathlessly and staggering with a limp from my muscles freezing up, I turn and back up the driveway, forcing myself to watch the road and woods, in case he’s there somehow. He’s smarter than I am. He’s a fucking professor, for God’s sake.
My legs buckle, dropping me like a sack of rocks to the gravel. I wince, feeling the jarring in my neck, but I grip the cold rocks and scramble back up.
A shrill noise rips through the air. I think it’s an animal dying, but I don’t know what kind it is. It sounds terrifying and close by. I hurry, limping brutally because the lower part of my left leg has gone totally numb.
The cabin is nicer than his, but has no barn for the ATVs and snowmobiles. I hurry to the back, trying every window and door until I run out. None are left open or unlocked. Defeated and exhausted, I slide down the back of the door, desperate to rest a minute and listen for him.
Every sound becomes louder as my breath softens in hesitation. I expect him to run from the woods any moment, leash and collar in hand. I expect him to make me beg and make me tell him I love him and he’s the man for me. I expect to die, crying and begging for it—not his love but death itself.
My eyes long to close, my body whispers Let’s give up as my heart aches from the memories that are filtering back in. Memories I will never be rid of or solve. I won’t ever know what it all meant to him, what I am to him. What I am representing or curing. What void I am filling.
A sound catches my cold ears. I glance up into the darkening sky as snowflakes begin to fall. A tear drips from my eye as I realize it’s the first snow of the season.
The sound gets louder as a vehicle makes its way up the hill.
For a moment, I ignore the sound of the tires skidding around the gravel corners, and stare up into the sky. The flakes swirl, taking my care and depth perception away. I tilt my head even more, letting the fat flakes fall in my mouth and land on my lashes.
I don’t close my eyes. I don’t try to block out the sound again as it gets closer. I stare up into the snow and force a memory, one of a time when I was happy. It was a moment, fleeting and precious. Her face makes me happy. She brings me joy as she becomes all I see in the swirling snow.
I close my eyes, waiting for the separation of Ashley’s mind from mine, or rather mine from hers. The forced abandonment of her leaves me feeling hollow and detached from the real world I live in. I feel even more so from the dream world inside of Ashley’s mind, as the forest becomes a room in a lovely house with floral and pastels and a French flair for decorating.
In the distance I can see Ashley still standing, waiting to tell me the rest of the story, shivering and cold. She looks confused and lost in the forest, as I become me, escaping the horrors that lie within her tale.
I blink three times as the wallpaper and pastels eat up the forest and all that exists around me is the country home in France. I lean forward in the armchair, taking a deep breath before lifting the lid of a jewelry box with four-leaf clovers on it, and peek inside, whispering, “Tell me about the swans, the way the swans circle the stars and shoot across the sky.” They are the words that send me all the way home. The key to escaping the dream world.
I sit back, letting the ceiling melt away and revealing the sky. Clouds move rapidly, fast-forwarding the time as I get lost in the stars and the blackness of the sky. Everything twirls in a circle, like a girl in a tutu spinning and dancing. My eyes lose focus, as a sickening wave of heat washes over me.
I am not her; she is not me. I am Jane. I am free of Ashley.
A slow and yet noisy breath leaves my parted lips as the coolness of the mountain vanishes and the warmth of the room I am in surrounds me. Still I shake and shiver because my body is in shock from detaching from the mind of the girl lying next to me. The girl who is sleeping as I roam about in her brain.
When I open my eyes, my mouth is still shivering from the cold of the mountaintop. I glance at Angie’s expectant face. “What in the bloody hell was the point of that? Ya just got in there, Jane.”
After a few moments my body starts to feel like it’s mine again, and I can use my mouth. “I need to know what the map looks like, Angie. Don’t be a pain in the ass,” I snap, and continue to take deep breaths. “I went in blind. We have nothing on this girl. All I knew going in was that she was missing and found on a riverbank. Now I know our guy might be a professor and he owns a Jeep and a family cabin.”
My heart rate lowers enough that I’m not just sweating for no reason, and I sigh. “She escaped, ran for her life. Hid behind a cabin until she thought it was safe. Then she ran through the woods to the lower cabins and found an old truck. She stole it and drove as far as she could before she crashed. His face is a blur in her mind. She never let me see it. He somehow brought her back to the cabin. I didn’t see much, but I know what I have to do.” I cough a little, certain I’ve crashed in the truck with her. “Don’t tell Dash I needed to go in twice, promise?”
She rolls her eyes. “Lucky number nine then, eh?”
I lift my thumb and close my eyes again.
2. The lengths I would go and the distance he would walk
Angie takes a deep breath over me and counts backward, sending me back in.
5
4
3
2
1
She becomes me and I become her in swirling motion, similar to water falling into a drain. It goes in a circle until you’re so dizzy you can’t tell up from down.
“Who’s a pretty girl? Where do you live?” I pet the ginger tabby, glancing around the small room. The odd little room is still hard for me to wrap my head around. I keep waiting for my bedroom back home to appear before my eyes.
The kitty rubs her face and whiskers on me, purring and mesmerizing me. Her eyes move to the mirror behind me. I glance over my shoulder, following her gaze. When our eyes meet in the mirror, my deep-brown stare narrows. She hisses and scratches my hand, turning and running from the dorm.
In the mirror the trickle of crimson blood seems brighter somehow than any single thing I can see. Everything fades as the blood catches my eyes, making my heart beat a little harder, a little faster. I could swear for a second I saw blue eyes, and one was dark and one was light.
“Ash?”
I lift my gaze in the mirror, smiling, half at myself and half at the girl looking perplexed. Her name is Michelle, and she’s my new roommate. She’s the angst-ridden, annoying type of girl I always avoid. They love drama and complaining and making everything a fucking mission. She is exactly the sort of girl who has a Facebook page to save the world, whereas the rest of us want to see puppies and recipes and selfies.
“Hey.”
She scowls. “What’s with the
cut? You need a bandage?” She sounds moodier than normal.
“No.” Slowly and purposely I lift the hand to my lips, closing my mouth around the wound. The cat that has run away reminds me that mine is still missing. My mom called yesterday to let me know Binx ran off when I left home. “You haven’t seen my cat, have you?” I nod at the photo of the black-and-white fluff ball in the frame on my desk.
She cocks a thin eyebrow, maybe too thin for her round face. “Dude, I already told you he couldn’t come here. You can’t have cats in the dorm. People have allergies and shit.”
Did she not just see the orange cat?
The conversation floats around in my foggy head. “Right, but I think he tried to follow me when I left. He isn’t at home. My mom called and said he ran away the day I left.”
She winces. “Cats are assholes; he probably hasn’t even noticed you’re gone. He probably left because he was finally free of the hugs and kisses. They’re selfish. They can’t even help themselves. You need to get a dog. Did you know that a dog would starve for days next to your dead body if it were trapped in the house with you when you die? Cats will start eating you before you’re even fully dead.”
Sadness creeps in, and I start wondering if she’s right. Did he run away, or did he escape? I shake my head, pushing the idea away. “Binx loves me. He’s had plenty of opportunities to kill me and he hasn’t.”
She nods, widening her eyes like she’s already tired of me, even though it’s only been a week as roomies. She mutters something under her breath, something about bullshit. A strange anger fills me up.
I get up, still sucking my wound, and grab my cell. When I lift it to text, I catch a glimpse of my face—my eyes. They’re cold, so very cold. I never noticed it before this moment, but they actually look broken. Dark eyes surrounded by thick black lashes, and worry. So much worry you’d have thought I smeared it on in the morning like black eyeliner on a metal rocker.
The image on the screen of the phone makes me stop to reflect on the idea of what I am truly about to do.
But his little face with his whiskers and unconditional love fills my mind. He loved me, absolutely loves me. He wouldn’t eat my dying body. I know that, and I hate her for saying it.