Ransom (Holding Ransom # 1)

by Mathew, Denise

  I shifted in his grasp, but he held me tight as if he couldn’t bear to let go. I would have been lying if I had said that it didn’t feel good to be held like that.

  “Then what happened?” I asked, ignoring Ransom’s need to keep his life and problems private.

  “A million buckets of shit have hit the biggest fan in the Universe, and it’s left quite a shit storm in it’s wake,” Ransom said with a brittle grin.

  I was as clueless as I had been before.

  “Meaning?” I probed.

  “Meaning that I’m a fugitive on the run and I have no idea when or if, I’ll ever be able to go home, or if there will even be a place to call home after all is said and done.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, not getting much of anything he had said. Ransom scooped me into his arms and stood up. He moved to the bed and laid me there tenderly as if I was made of lead crystal, then slipped into the space next to me. I was speechless at how comfortable he was around me. But in reality lying on a bed together, fully dressed was a far cry from having had passionate sex the night before. Everything between us was like a movie that started at the end, then played out in reverse.

  “The Coles Notes version is that my father’s a prick who hates me, and whose trying to pin the stage collapse, which so happens to have not been an accident after all, on me. And since I took off before he could get my ass tossed into jail he got the next best thing, my best friend Dave…”

  His gaze locked on the ceiling above as if there was something interesting there. But when I followed his stare there was nothing special to see, just a plain white-spackled surface.

  “Shit,” I said in a rush of breath.

  It was the only thing I had. If what he had said was true, it made my so-called crappy life look like a vanilla ice cream cone on a hot summer day.

  “I think that sums it up nicely,” he said, bringing his eyes to mine.

  It seemed impossible that something as simple as a look could completely throw me for a loop, but the more time I spent with Ransom, when if tallied was almost no time at all, the more I felt connected to him. Sometimes he made me feel like I had always known him, but had forgotten him and now my memory was gradually coming back. It was a little too Harlequin romancy for me, yet true all the same.

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked, as if the question was perfectly reasonable.

  He sighed hugely. “That’s the million dollar question now isn’t it,” he said returning his stare to the ceiling. “Should I turn myself into the police and go down for something I didn’t do, or should I hide away and let my friend rot in jail, waiting for Sanford to come up with a plan.”

  “Who is Sanford,” I said, feeling as if I had started reading a book in the middle.

  Ransom shook his head then crossed his arms over his wide chest.

  “I shouldn’t be spilling my guts like this to you. You don’t need to be involved with this shit, you hardly know me and I’d say that we’re even now.”

  “I want to know,” I said without really planning to. “I want to help you.”

  Ransom gave me a sidelong look that said he was surprised by my statement.

  “I’m bad news,” he said simply.

  “I have a place,” I blurted out. “If you need to disappear for a little while, then we could go there.”

  His eyes seemed to bore into me like he couldn’t quite believe that I was for real. Ransom pushed up onto one arm, twisting his body toward me.

  “There is no we. I’m going to leave in the morning and that will be that. You’ll never have to see me again.”

  His words indicated that the subject was non-negotiable.

  I mimed his move, turning toward him, until our bodies were almost touching. The rational part of my brain screamed for me to let the subject go, let Ransom go. The obsessed part of me couldn’t let Ransom and the chance to see Gabriel Sanders slip through my fingers, though I wasn’t sure if seeing Gabriel was the only reason I wanted to help Ransom anymore.

  “How are you going to travel, where are you going to stay so you keep under the radar? Being out of the mix is a costly proposition, do you have the cash to back it up?”

  Ransom shook his head. “Sanford said he’d spot me some cash, but I don’t want to take it because if I do what he says and run, I’ll be using money that he needs to spring Dave on bail.”

  He covered his head with his palms as if it hurt to think. Ransom fell back against the mattress, the force of his weight made the whole bed bounce.

  “It’s all so fucked up it’s hard to see straight.”

  I could feel that I was making headway, so preceded to move in for the kill. “Like I said before, I have a cottage, or at least my dad owns one. It’s the other side of Lexington about an hour from town. It’s a summer place just off the beach and it’ll be deserted now. It’s got running water, electricity and even a fireplace when it gets cold. I’d need to get a clunker or a rental so we could get the supplies we need…”

  “Once again with the we,” Ransom said in a clipped tone that was laced with suspicion. “And I ask you again, why would you want to help me? You don’t know me.”

  “I slept with you last night, so I’d say I know you a bit more intimately than the average person,” I said, my tone raising in volume. “But more than that I could do with a bit of disappearing too. I’m supposed to go to college, supposed to be a marine biologist, supposed to be this and that, and fit into the boxes that I set up for myself before…”

  I froze, more than a little astonished that I had actually started to tell him about Mom. The last thing I wanted to do was to talk about her because if I did he would know that I was broken, damaged beyond repair. Now I was just a girl who he’d met, average, and normal, but if he knew…

  “Before what?” he asked, honing in on exactly what I had wanted him to ignore.

  “Nothing, forget it,” I said, closing my eyes as if the act would wipe away my slip up.

  “You expect me to just follow along with you, do what you want and not ask you why you want to, as you said, disappear for a while? What are you running from Lexie, what did you mean by before?”

  And there it was, the moment of truth. Just like Ransom I had two paths I could take, one would keep my secret tight in a box and away from him, but it would also mean that he would never come with me. The other path was to spill everything, tell him about Mom and let the cards fall where they would. One way would have probably got me what I wanted, needed even, the other was disaster. I felt the emotions of it, the moment when everything you had built your life on came crashing down on you in an avalanche of fear. It worked through me, like poison, green and putrid. My breathing hitched. I found it difficult to form the words, though I already knew what I had to do.

  “Before I killed my mother,” I hollered.

  I hadn’t expected the words to come out like that. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping the tears that were waiting to be unleashed would get trapped behind my eyelids. I felt a wave of unimaginable sadness crest over me, almost as horrible as the day I had been told that Mom was dead. For the first time since she had died I hadn’t just thought it, I had said it aloud, admitted the crime that I was responsible for.

  Saying the words gave them power, like the last ingredient needed to bring Frankenstein to life. My guilt was a monster that had just been jolted to life and I wanted it to go back in the box where it could be ignored, a place tucked away where I could forget about it, somewhere it had no power over me. But that was the biggest lie I had ever told myself, because it had never been in a box or away from me at all. It had been there, the blackness that covered my soul, that said I was a horrible person. Who, other than a miserable excuse for a human being, would have done that to their mother. Killed her, ended her future so they could flirt with a guy who never gave a shit about them in the first place.

  “I can’t do this. I can’t go back,” I moaned.

  “Lexie.”

  I h
eard his voice as if it was far in the distance, as if I had been transported away from the room, away from the town, away from the planet we called Earth, where lies didn’t kill, life always had a happy ending, and where death was just a word.

  “Lexie, I’m sorry. It’ll be okay, I promise it’ll be okay.”

  And for the second time I felt Ransom’s arms around me, saving me, taking me out of the sludge and blackness and into the light. In my heart I wondered if he could fix me. That the pain of his life could meet mine and like two fires that were raging toward each other, they would burn themselves out. It would all burn out.

  I clung to his shirt, in all that he was, and every tear that I had stored for what seemed a lifetime, poured from me until I had nothing left to give. And when I was spent, I let myself fall into the space that was quiet and empty. A place where there were no mistakes, no lies, and nothing that was done couldn’t be undone.

  25. RANSOM

  I woke with a start. For a second I didn’t know where I was. The glowing red numbers of the digital clock on the bedside said it was 2:00 a.m. Then it all came back to me, the accident, the hotel room and Lexie.

  Lexie.

  I couldn’t see her in the dark, but felt the steady stream of warm air from her lungs as she slept. I disengaged my body from hers, needing to piss so bad that I was sure my back teeth were floating.

  I stumbled to the bathroom, feeling like I had been through hell and back. A dull ache worked at the back of my brain as if I still had a hangover. I was starving, and couldn’t recall the last time I had eaten. My stomach growled loudly as if in response to my thoughts. When I flicked on the light in the bathroom I noticed that I looked as bad as I felt. There was a few days growth of dark stubble on my chin and my hair, that was due for a cut, looked as if someone had gelled half of it like a punk rocker then had run out of goop part way through. My eyes were bloodshot, as if I hadn’t slept in days.

  As I gazed at my reflection all the memories of the evening spun to the surface like a water spout. I was still off kilter after my talk with Sanford, but I had to admit, Lexie’s confession that she’d killed her mother had thrown me. I hadn’t been able to get any of the story from her only tears and more crying, until like a candle that had gone to the quick, she had just burnt out. I was sorry that I had pushed her to the edge until she had no choice but to jump, but I had never expected her to implode like she had. If I had thought I had a lot of shit to cope with, Lexie seemed to be following a close second, maybe she was even ahead of me.

  The whole concept of your mother being dead when you hadn’t even started your life was fucked up. Nobody knew as well as I did how that kind of thing could screw you up for life. It sure as hell had done a number on me, in more ways than even I knew. But wrapping my head around the concept of Lexie having played a part in her mother’s death, was too much for me to focus on. I couldn’t begin to understand what she was dealing with, but I knew it was the kind of thing that left scars that no one could see but you. I couldn’t fathom what she had done to her mother, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know. All I did know was that she seemed to need me as much as I needed her.

  I shook my head, splashing cold water on my face. I never believed in fate and shit like that usually, but what were the chances that I would save Lexie from being raped only to steal her virginity, then find her again when I needed to escape. Now I had just discovered that we had both lost our mothers. You couldn’t make that kind of stuff up.

  It didn’t seem possible that I had met Lexie a little over twenty-four-hours before, and now I was giving some real thought to taking her up on her offer to stay in the cottage with her. I reasoned that I would crash there until I came up with a better plan, one that made sense and wasn’t rushed. Every part of me wanted to trust in what Sanford said, believe that he could somehow salvage everything, but it was hard to see that far ahead when Dave was sitting in jail.

  I didn’t want to admit that for reasons that were purely selfish, it bothered me that he was in jail. With me on the run, Dave was my eyes and ears on how Gabriel was doing, and with him holed up in a cell he would be out of the loop. A pang of regret pierced my heart. It was insane that Gabriel was fighting one of the biggest battles of his existence, and I wasn’t there to help him through it all.

  From the day he had been born until the day of the accident, I had been Gab’s protector. If I was being honest I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to do with my days without him to take care of. It wasn’t until right then, that I had come to the stark realization that nothing in my life had ever been apart from Gabriel. The shows and everything that went with his persona, the boy wonder, had been my only reality.

  Given the choice, I would never have abandoned him, I would probably have been there doing the job, being his brother, protector and whatever else he needed until one of us had died. It wasn’t like I hadn’t imagined a different life, something other than the shows, and all the other shit that made us who we were, but if I was being completely honest, I had never truly believed or even tried to make anything change. Yet now all the things that had been my life were gone, ripped away like an old bandaid. I felt raw, lost and maybe even a little scared because I had no idea what tomorrow would bring.

  “Ransom?” Lexie’s voice came through the door.

  “Yeah,” I said, running my wet hands through my hair until it lay flat on my head. The icy water had perked me up a bit though the headache persisted.

  I opened the door. Lexie stood there, her long hair was mussed, and she had a red line of sleep down the left side of her face. Her eyes were half-closed and the purple t-shirt that she was wearing, had slipped down to reveal the smooth skin of her shoulder. I swore under my breath because I didn’t want to appreciate the flash of skin, and think about seeing more of it. She wasn’t my kind, what had happened between us had been a blip of stupidity. There was no way I would allow it to happen again. But I couldn’t help but remember the feel of her breasts in my hands, and the way she had responded so enthusiastically to my touch. Even though I had thought it had been a dream, it was a memory that had been seared into my mind.

  “I’ve got to pee,” Lexie said, effectively making whatever wave of longing that I’d had, fizzle. I half-grinned and swept my arm out like I was a game show host.

  “Have at it,” I said, and stepped to the side.

  Obviously she really had to go, since she was already unzipping her jeans. I left quickly, oddly embarrassed to see her begin to undress. It was the dumbest feeling in the world, but also completely true. I closed the door after me and made my way through the darkened room until I reached the back wall. When I felt the lamp, I flicked on the light. The room was instantly cast in a soft yellow glow. Not in the least bit tired, but hungry beyond belief, I grabbed a bag of Doritos from the snack section, ripped them open and started eating them with the gusto of a person who had been marooned on a deserted island for a month.

  “I’m starving,” Lexie said, striding toward me.

  She dug her hand inside the bag, fishing out a fist full of chips. From the speed at which she shoved them into her mouth, she was as hungry as I was. It seemed that we were in a race to finish the bag. The sound of loud crunching filled the air until we had wiped out the contents. Lexie grabbed for another bag of chips, still licking the Day Glo colored cheese from her fingertips. More crunching ensued until we had polished off that bag too.

  Lexie plopped on the foot of the bed closest to me.

  “I’m sorry for acting like a screwed up whiner,” she said plainly.

  I cocked my head, surprised at her words and how she had minimized what had seemed like quite a traumatic experience.

  “You’re not any more screwed up or whiny than I am, so…” My voice trailed off yet my focus remained locked on her.

  She shrugged then sighed. “I have no idea what came over me, you know I don’t really spill my guts like that…ever,” she said.

  Her eyes grazed
the room, as if she was embarrassed to look at me. I hated that she seemed to regret telling me what she had.

  “Well neither do I,” I said.

  She let her eyes come to rest on me again.

  “You and I both needed to unload a whole ton of crap, feeling guilty about confessing that we don’t have perfect lives, just minimizes that we had the guts to say any of it.”

  I was mystified that I had actually said what I had, especially since it was exactly how I felt. Lexie looked at me strangely, as if she couldn’t quite understand what I had said. I felt the same way. I had never been the kind of guy who talked about feelings and all that shit, but for some reason with Lexie, I had opened up the gates to more stuff than I had ever told anyone else in my life. I wasn’t sure if it was because I inexplicably trusted her, or if I was too confused and messed up to care, either way it felt good to get it out, to speak the words that I always kept locked inside.

  “Yeah I guess,” she agreed, crossing her arms over her chest.

  The silence stretched between us, but our eyes remained connected, as if neither of us knew what to say next, and was expecting the other one to speak up.

  “I think I’m going to take you up on your offer,” I said, deciding at that very instant that it was the right course of action.

  “Huh?” she asked, baffled by my rapid shift in subject.

  “That is if the cottage offer still stands, I understand if you don’t want to…”

  “No, of course it still stands,” she jumped in.

  Lexie scratched her head, as if deep in thought. The only thing I have to figure out is where to get a car so we can get around.”

  “We can get a rental, I’ll toss in half,” I said, leaning closer to Lexie. She appeared to be too lost in thought to realize the move. This close, I got a whiff of her sweet scent that smelled soapy clean. It amazed me how girls always managed to smell good, while us guys only needed one workout to smell like a gym sock that had been forgotten at the bottom of your workout bag.