They were one trap I was in no danger of falling for.
What was his angle? Going through the trouble of locating my parents, making sure I was alone, hiding who he was from me so much that I’d thought I’d known? My stomach flooded with heat at a thought. Maybe Denny had a debt to repay, and I was supposed to be it? He’d wasted no time knocking up Kenna. His debt may be paid, but he’d failed to collect mine. Why me? What door had I left open for him to slip in through?
Or had my dreams been the perfect beginning to this nightmare?
“What are you watching?”
I glanced up sharply, so stuck in my own thoughts I hadn’t known Dash had sat beside me. “Nothing yet.” I cleared my throat. “How did Denny find me?”
He sighed, and reached over to take the remote from me. “Does it matter why at this point?”
“It does to me.” I moved close to him, letting the warmth from his body chase away the cold in mine. “What if going back to the beginning can show us the way out now?”
In response, he put on The Wizard of Oz, and wrapped his arm around me as Dorothy took me away. She always took me away. I blocked the memories aside, and rested my head on Dash’s shoulder. Snoring met me on the second go-around. My own followed partly into the third replay. I fell asleep in the middle of her beautiful nightmare, as I wondered how a person could dream such a dream, when her fears were stronger than anything.
The need to pee roused me.
But everything in my body was like stone. I couldn’t move. Exhaustion weighed me down as I tried to struggle to my feet. My brain tried to get my attention, but my bladder had it more. I crawled, groaning, to my bathroom, and managed to get my pants down just as the pee slid down my thighs. Before I could reach the toilet paper, I had passed out again. The only thing that kept me from staying that way, was the feeling of falling. My knees hit the cold hard floor with a painful thud.
My eyes struggled to open.
My bones felt like weights.
I tried to look around. There was something wrong.
Something was wrong.
But my brain slugged away from common sense and the scent of rotten eggs.
I felt my thoughts drift, and my lungs struggle. A tiny shred of panic broke through. With it a second of thought. The stench of rotten things and gas permeated the entire room. The more I breathed in, the harder it was to move. I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe.
Dash.
I had to get to Dash.
My body was too heavy for me to stand. I crawled as my vision blurred, and the overwhelming need for a clean breath consumed me. I wanted air. As I passed by the A/C vent, the intense stench of sulfur blew directly onto my face. It sent pure terror through me. We had to get out of here.
I forced myself to move faster, using the door jambs, and the walls to pull me along. The harder I pushed, the more air I breathed. I pulled my shirt over my mouth, but the air in my lungs felt strangled. I wasn’t breathing in oxygen. I was breathing in gas. Dash was breathing in gas. He already slept like a rock.
I fought to get to the couch where he laid slumped over.
“Dash,” I tried, but my voice sounded far away to my own ears. I stared at his chest. It was barely moving. His body looked loose and slumped in on itself. I managed to get to his head. I shoved at him as hard as I could. “Dash.”
He made no move. His chest barely rose. He needed oxygen.
I looked around helplessly as my own lungs began to fail. He’d never wake up. I spied the glass windows. “Dash.” I needed him to wake.
We couldn’t stay here.
Gas was flammable.
We were in a tower as the A/C vents blew more and more poison into the kingdom. Thoughts of us falling to sleep forever attacked me. In a flurry of panic, I pried his eyelids open. The lifeless gold in them shattered my heart. “My king,” I sobbed, rubbing his hair. “Keep breathing.” I plugged his nose and placed my lips on his, blowing the last of my oxygen into his lungs. The more I blew, the groggier I felt. But his chest rose and fell faster. The clearer his lungs became, the more he roused. “You have to wake up. I can’t breathe.” The harder I breathed, the worse it got. Tears trailed down my face. “I love you,” I promised. “It was always you.”
I felt my body fall away from him just as he groaned.
“Ki—”
“Gas,” I managed, falling to the floor.
“—nley?”
I told you, I thought heartbreakingly. I’d never leave.
“—love you,” I managed, fading away from the one man I’d wanted to keep. I’d done what I could.
I’d given him my last breath.
***
“Wake up.”
A strangled noise filtered into the pounding in my skull. “You have to wake up. Take a breath. I can’t carry you down the stairs.”
I could smell something beautiful. Something clean and dry. Air. My lungs pulled in a grateful breath, but my body was immovable.
“I can only crawl,” the deep voice begged. “They’re going to blow it up. We have to go.” Sobbing sounded.
Deep heart wrenching sobs.
I felt my body become weightless. The colder it got, the more air there was. I fought to take in my surroundings.
“You should have left.” Tears moistened my face. “Not sacrifice yourself. How could you be so stupid, my queen?”
A groan sounded the moment before we tumbled. Pain rammed into my back. It forced me to pull in a huge lungful of air, and with it, a rush of clarity. I spotted Dash crumpled on the stairs. I heard a loud bang from somewhere in the tower. And … voices? There were people on the second floor.
Gas.
Sixteen minutes.
“I can walk.”
“Why did you do that?”
I shook my head. “We have to get out of here.”
Together we helped the other stand. Then we tripped and stumbled down the stairs. I’d lost count. Parts of me still felt sick. And other parts were acutely aware of the fact that if we didn’t get out of here, we never would.
“Faster,” I begged, my feet picking up speed. Behind me, so did his.
When we got to the bottom I didn’t stop. I flew at the door and wrenched it open just as Dash puked in the small doorway. The frosted window door was where it always was. I grabbed his arm and pulled him along, my eyes blurring. Everything in my wanted to sleep, but there was still gas in our system, and I didn’t know how long it would take to leave our blood. I wrenched the door open and waited for him to run through before I let it go.
Silently, we made our way along the glass wall for the second hidden door. He engaged the button and it slid closed quietly behind us. I followed after him to the stairs and down them to the parking garage.
“Get in,” he grunted, pulling open the driver side door on the SUV. He took my hand and helped me inside, waiting for me to crawl to the passenger side before he took his own seat. “Under your chair.” He grabbed something from under his, plunging a black beanie over his head.
My fingers fumbled, snagging something soft and fabric. I plunged my own beanie on over my hair and quickly tucked any stray blonde hairs beneath. The windshield wasn’t tinted, but the other windows were. He touched something on his steering wheel. The garage in front of us slid open alarmingly fast. We were facing a brick building. There was garbage on the corner and a back door a way down. Dash started the SUV and pressed down on the gas, shooting us into the alley way.
Before we hit the wall, he turned the wheel, pointing us at the street.
He’d practiced.
I held on when he slipped smoothly into traffic. We were nondescript. Blending in with all of the other expensive SUV’s on the street. He’d thought of everything.
Except the air ducts.
I turned around in my chair and looked up at the tower through the tinted windows. I heard the explosion seconds before the kingdom erupted. Fire exploded where the windows had been. Glass
rained down from 110 floors up. Smoke billowed out like dark ominous clouds. Around us, terror ensued.
The world stopped.
Dash and I kept driving as the remnants of our kingdom fell from the clouds.
27.
Makes Our Love Vulnerable
My entire body felt cold.
My breathing was shallow already, but the smoke in the distance made it impossible to breathe.
“They tried to blow us up.” They were going to blow us up.
“They blew us up,” he corrected, coughing raucously as he tried to keep up with traffic. Everyone was racing away from downtown.
My hands shook; I shoved them under my legs to keep them from ripping at my door. I’d hop out of this moving car and never look back. My brain couldn’t wrap itself around what had just happened. Hours—who knew how long we’d slept—we’d been on the couch. Now we were on the road as the smoke trailed into the sky. There were fire trucks in the distance and choppers in the air.
“They’ll know we weren’t in there. They won’t find our bodies.”
He took a second to respond. His own breathing was erratic and soggy sounding. “Who’s they? As far as everyone else was concerned there was no one inside of that building. My father’s men will do their best to cover it up. The MK’s will figure out we weren’t in there, but that could take weeks. Shit,” he cursed, punching the steering wheel.
“That’s good, isn’t it? We could take off by then.”
“They’ll have scouts on the highways. We can’t risk leaving until they’re gone.”
“There’s like ten major roads into and out of Chicago. They can’t possibly be at every one.”
He looked over his shoulder before shooting into the furthest right lane. “Toll booths.”
We were trapped in this city. Unless … “Why can’t we ditch the car and walk?”
“Where are we going?”
I tried to stave off my growing frustrations. But my hands were still shaking, my heart was pounding, and I had never been more afraid in my life than as I watched the same building I’d lain in explode. “I don’t know, Dash. Does it matter?”
“The only place I’m going is a place I know. A place I can scope.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “Seattle?” I guessed.
He didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. He wasn’t going to risk a new idea when he’d had every facet of this one planned out.
“Are there MK’s in Seattle?”
“Two.”
I frowned through my panic. “Only Brogan and Fillan?”
“It’s not our territory.”
I gagged.
“Don’t puke,” he barked, increasing his speed and shooting his gaze at the rearview mirror.
“There are gangs in Seattle?” I squeaked.
“One.”
Now I understood why he’d chosen Seattle, why Brogan and Fillan couldn’t leave. The MK’s wouldn’t look for us where they weren’t allowed.
“We can exist there if we’re careful. Washington and Oregon are two states no MK would step foot in. California has their own gangs. The neighboring states around Illinois are overrun with MK’s. The eastern United States aren’t our territory, but they’ll know who I am. It was too risky. Southern US has their own gangs as well. Oregon’s too close to California. Washington is our only choice.”
“Won’t they know that?” If he had figured it out, won’t they have done the same?
“Why do you think we can’t take the highways?” His gaze returned to the rearview mirror. “There’s no way we can fly. My father’s men wouldn’t let us get close enough to even consider it.”
“What about Canada?”
“Kinley,” he snapped, glaring at me with redness and fear burning his eyes. “There’s no way I haven’t thought of. Let me do this.”
I looked away. I had to. My nerves were raw and my emotions rawer. The kingdom had been blown up and we had been so close to being inside when it had. His nerves were the same. The lifelessness was in his eyes; I closed mine in horror.
“One minute later and we’d be up there.” His voice shook. “Your stunt could have killed you.”
I licked at the salt on my lips.
“What were you thinking?” he shouted, his hand shaking on the steering wheel. “You run. You’re always supposed to run. Not give me your last fucking breath!”
I watched my reflection fall apart.
He grabbed my arm, forcing me to look at him as he snapped. “Why did you do that?”
So I snapped too. I yanked my arm free. “Because what is there without you? What is there in here without you?” I patted my chest, right over my heart.
“And me?” he demanded, growling. “What about me? What if I woke up and you didn’t?” The fearful rage on his face scared me. “This was to save you. Not me. Don’t do that ever again. If it comes to you and me, you choose you. Every single time.” He grabbed my chin and turned my face to his. “Do you hear me?”
I didn’t mind this lie. “Yes.”
Releasing me, he sat back, and gave one last glance into the rear view mirror before he turned right suddenly. He turned down each new street with practiced turns. The area looked forgotten. The last street he turned down, most of the houses looked abandoned. The paint was peeling and the lawns were brown and muddy. There were no cars in any driveways, and the street ended in a cul-de-sac. He stopped halfway down the street at a house that looked like it was falling apart. He tapped another button on the steering wheel and the garage opened swiftly. He drove immediately into the garage, and didn’t let out his breath until the garage had closed.
And then he lost it.
He put his face in his hands and cursed and screamed. I brought my feet on the seat and hugged myself as I took in my surroundings. I had a feeling I’d better start doing it more often, and not when I was in front of something. I had to see that something before it was there. Fortunately, there wasn’t much to look at. The garage was empty save for a door on the side and one on our left, with a short set of steps beneath it.
“Let’s go.” He slammed his car door behind him, but not before I saw him drag the bottom of his shirt over his tear soaked eyes.
I got out and followed him to the door on our left. There was a small keypad over the door. He punched in a number and the door unlocked. “It’s the month and year we met,” he mumbled tiredly, grabbing my hand and pulling me after him. “I bought this lot with cash under an alias. It should be safe here. If not, there’s an escape route.” He pulled me past a small kitchen, and into a short hall with dirty brown carpet. We stopped at a furnished living room the size of my right foot. The blinds over the sliding glass door were pulled, same as the windows. He let me go, walked over to a coffee table, and grabbed the edge, hoisting the cheap table aside. There was an uneven pattern in the carpet. He grabbed the edge, pried the edge up, and revealed a dark hole the size of his body. “Hop down, pull the table back over, and make sure the panel closes. There are three tunnels. Take the one on your left. It will bring you to the house next door. There’s another car in the garage. Keys are in the visor. If you can’t get out of the street, take the middle tunnel. It will spit you out right by the train station. Don’t take the train. There’s a car in the parking garage on the IN-G level. Don’t take the right tunnel. It leads to the sewer.” When he finished, he reclosed the escape, and fell onto the threadbare corduroy sofa. “Kinley.” He looked up at me, feeling everything I did. He opened his arms. “Please come here.”
I fell onto his lap and melted against him. We clung to the other, holding what we almost lost. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, over and over again, until Dash pressed my mouth to his chest to hold my apologies in.
“It was only a matter of time. It happened a lot sooner than I anticipated, but I knew it would come.”
I believed him. The way out had no locks or secrets. He’d created it knowing that when we escaped, we’d do it together, and he could trust tha
t I wouldn’t take off. I wiped my face on his shirt. With my eyes closed, it was so easy to believe we were still in our kingdom. But when I opened them, I didn’t know, or want, these walls. The wallpaper was stained, there was no beauty. The couch looked like it was full of smoke. The furniture was worn and ill-placed. It wasn’t made with love. Not like the tower.
“How do you feel?” He pulled me back and looked me over. His touch examined my shoulders and down my arms.
“All we needed was fresh air.” I glanced down, and then looked at him sideways, unsure how he would like my next question. “How do you feel?”
His eyes hardened. “Don’t worry about me.”
My own did the same. “You don’t get it. I’m allowed to worry. I love you.” He turned away. “I love you.” I grabbed his face and forced his gaze on me. “I know it doesn’t make sense. I know that everyone you’ve loved who’s said that has left. But they’re gone and I’m here. Aren’t I?” I pressed my lips to his. Right now I needed to feel him. When he gave me a reluctant nod, I kissed him deeper, delving my tongue inside of his mouth. When his tongue met mine, the desire to be conjoined in every way possible erupted inside of me. “Aren’t I, my king?”
His arms came around me, and with a defeated growl, his tongue and kiss matched mine. “I was so scared.”
He wanted the same thing. Dash wanted to be with me.
I tangled my fingers in his hair as his ripped at my shirt. Heat raced across my skin. The danger was surrounding us, but as long as we were this close, this connected, we were safe. The promise settled in heart. I had to keep this, him—I had to have my king. He pulled back for as long as it took him to yank my shirt off. My breasts sprang free. His large strong hands engulfed them as he retook my mouth. I caressed my tongue with his. He felt like heat and warmth, like the only person in this universe that I belonged with.
A Beautiful Nightmare: A Novel Page 26