The solid look in his eyes intensified. He slid one bra strap down her shoulder, eyeing her hungrily. He reminded her of Brad in so many ways, it made her sick. When she stopped to think about why, she began to understand herself in ways that made her head swim.
The truth was she wanted Jesse to force her.
It was comfortable that way, familiar, just like Brad. It was the only way she knew how things worked, and as he pulled down her other bra strap she felt a small whimper of delight building in her throat. Jesse was the only solid thing she had been able to hold onto for months. She didn’t want him to go away. Still, a question burned in her mind.
“Why won’t you hurt me?” she asked. “Is it because Eric told you not to?”
“What?” He leaned away. “No, that’s not why. I don’t hurt people if I can help it. I’m not like that.”
“Then why did you kidnap me? That’s not normal, you know.” Her body stiffened, guilt sweeping through her at the sound of her words. Jesse let her go and stepped away. His warmth melted from her skin, and suddenly she wanted her shirt back on. Her eyes drifted to a stack of books on her nightstand. On the very bottom was The Awakening, the book her mother had tried to get her to read. It was always on the bottom, and it would stay there.
She hung her head and closed her eyes. Her mother. Her dad. Brad. Home. She would have graduated high school next week. She would have made a decision about where to go to college. She would have kissed Brad when he gave her a bouquet of roses for her birthday.
Jesse was silent. She looked up to tell him she would rather be alone, but he was already gone.
THAT NIGHT when she went to bed she remembered Brad as she drifted off. College applications were scattered across his bed. They crumpled beneath her shoulders when he pushed her on top of them. His fingers ran through her hair as he kissed her. It was the last time she had been in his room, the last time he had unbuttoned her shirt just as Jesse had. He didn’t get far. She muttered that Berkeley was the only college she was willing to attend and his hands froze.
“Then why am I bothering with all of this?” He pointed to the applications on the bed. “You agreed weeks ago not to go to Berkeley. You told me you were thinking about Harvard.”
“No, I said Harvard sent me an acceptance letter and that my parents would pay for the tuition if I told them about it. But there’s no way I’m going there.”
“Yeah, and there’s no way I would be accepted even if you did,” he grumbled. “Your parents went there. Mine didn’t.”
“That’s not why I was accepted!”
“I know, but I’m sure it helped.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’ll go to the college we choose together, and that won’t be Berkeley.”
Oh, she would, would she? She rolled onto her side, turning her back to him, and stared down at one of the creased applications beneath her elbow. The reason she wanted to go to Berkeley was because Brad had told her that night on the beach that it was out of the question. It was because of Damien. It had to be. Brad could tell she was interested and would do anything to keep her away from him. He wasn’t stupid.
“That’s where I want to go,” she grumbled, picking at a thread on the sheets. “You can’t change my mind.” She couldn’t believe she was being stubborn.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. “I thought you would follow me anywhere. You said you would.” His eyes were jealous even then, as green and jealous as they were a month earlier at the party. Now they were getting angrier by the second.
“I’ve been thinking that maybe ... maybe ....” Her mouth was dry. She had belonged to him for so long, been his girl for what felt like forever. Was there more out there? Something she was missing? Somebody better?
“Maybe what?”
“Would you be mad if I said maybe we should date other people when we’re in college?” Her heart pounded. The anger in his eyes exploded and his grip on her arm tightened so much she was sure a bruise would form, but before she could pull away he slammed his fist against her cheek so fast it took her a full minute to realize what had happened. When she did, her reaction was unlike anything she had ever done before.
She left.
She stumbled off the bed, gave him a horrified glare, and marched out of his room, slamming the door behind her.
She didn’t cry until she was safely in her own bed. It wasn’t the physical pain that made her cry. It was because Brad’s anger was her fault. She had never shown defiance like that before, and it hurt that he hadn’t immediately followed after her. But she knew he would find a way to make everything better. Somehow. That was more frustrating than everything else combined.
She woke and realized she was still inside a prison with her kidnappers, sweat dripping down her chest. Brad was gone. He could never hit her again if she didn’t want him to. Then again, she missed the way he held her, the way he had come over the next morning and iced the bruise while she cried in his arms. He told her he would never hit her again, and even now a part of her believed him. But it didn’t matter if she never saw him again. The night they went to the park to capture the fog, he told her he would take her home as soon as she finished, but she had dared to stand her ground and tell him she would be fine on her own. So much for that faith in herself.
She turned to the stack of books on her nightstand, ready to turn on the lamp and lose herself in a novel. Something new caught her eye. Someone had left her a leather-bound notebook and ballpoint pen.
XIII
June
IT TOOK HER A MONTH TO OPEN THE journal. She didn’t want to write about how she had been kidnapped or how scared she had been at first. That seemed pointless. Instead she wrote about her birthday gift. They had given her an iPod. Pink. Jesse bought music for her off the Internet, all her favorite stuff from home. Maybe it was a bad idea to keep those ties to home. Maybe not.
She kept the ribbon from the package and put it in her nightstand drawer right next to The Awakening. She didn’t want to read it. Everything inside of her cringed at the thought of absorbing words her mother loved, but her curiosity got the better of her. Finally, she opened it and read it in one sitting. Then she read it again a week later. She didn’t know why. She wrote in her journal about how it made her think of her mother outside of an office and a courtroom. A real person.
She wrote about the dragons and her dreams.
She wrote about Jesse.
She was sure he was the one who gave her the notebook. If he ever read it, she wanted him to know she wasn’t scared of him. She just couldn’t wrap her head around opening herself to him yet. She could hardly stand writing on those stiff, white pages, the tangy smell of ink filling her nose. Every time she opened the journal and smelled it, she felt like something inside of her might break.
XIV
July
SHE ROLLED OVER IN BED AND SQUEEZED her eyes shut. Today was Brad’s birthday. Even in Colorado in an air-conditioned house, the heat was beginning to swelter just like it did in California. That always reminded her of Brad’s birthday, of humid nights in his car and ice cream after a movie. She wouldn’t have remembered his birthday if it weren’t for the calendar on her iPod.
She listened to his favorite song and waited for tears to come. They didn’t, so she stood in the shower and thought about the bonfire and her sweatshirt that smelled like fish. Brad had thrown it on his floor that night when she crawled into bed with him. His mother was a nurse and worked graveyard shifts. That was why he didn’t worry about her spending the night all the time.
“She’ll never find out,” he said when she told him it wasn’t a good idea. “She works and comes home and crashes. She never knows when I come and go. She never even looks in my room. I don’t think she’d care, anyway. Hell, we’re almost in college.” He pulled her into his strong arms and kissed her until she forgot about worrying.
Now she stared at the grout between the tiles in the shower and traced the little lines she had dug with her fingernails months ag
o. There were thirty-five of them. She had stopped after that because it seemed pointless to count the days. Now she counted months, and even that was starting to seem pointless. They flew by so quickly now, the days blending into one another like spilled paint until only a dark smudge covered the floor. Sleep, shower, breakfast, books, dinner, Jesse, over and over and over. Sometimes she watched a movie with the four of them downstairs, curling herself into a corner of the couch. She lost herself in another world on the television screen until the credits rolled and Eric or Evelyn asked if she wanted to go to bed.
She would be with them forever. She belonged to them.
She got out of the shower and went back to bed.
“YOU SHOULD read Hemingway,” Jesse said when they finished a game of pool and settled themselves on a sofa. She picked up the book she had been reading earlier.
“I’m not a big fan,” she muttered. “My teacher made us read A Farewell to Arms when I was a junior. I hated it.”
“You mentioned that your mom liked classics. Don’t you think you’d like them more if you gave them a try?”
“I have given them a try. I read a whole stack of them, and then all that Shakespeare, remember?”
He grinned and stretched his arms across the back of the sofa. “I just thought you should try even more. Open your mind.”
She tried to keep her jaw from dropping. “Open my mind? What do you mean by that? I read lots of classics before I came here. Stop pushing the issue.”
Nobody had ever referred to her as closed-minded before. She had an open mind. She had read what he had given her. Just because she didn’t like it didn’t mean she had a closed mind.
He shrugged, leaning over to look at the book in her lap. “I mean just that. What are you reading right now?” She attempted to hide her book from him, but he grabbed it and looked at the cover. “Fluffy fantasy again. See? You’ve already read this one three times. You could at least pick up some serious fantasy.”
She tried to grab the book from him, but he held it away from her, laughing. All of this closed-minded stuff was his way of kidding with her. That was his odd sense of humor coming into play again. She softened and let herself enjoy it. He knew which buttons to push, and he wanted to see how she would take it. She would show him.
“A Farewell to Arms,” he urged as she kept reaching for her book. “Come on. You’ll like it this time. We can talk about the parts you hate.”
“I hated the whole thing!” She laughed and leaned into him, still reaching for the book. The feel of him against her made her heart beat faster. She loved the way he smelled. She loved his freckles and red hair. She wanted to kiss him, but she didn’t know what he would do if she tried. He had only kissed her the one time. She still remembered the taste of him, and the memory made her all soft inside.
She smiled when she finally got hold of the book. He stopped laughing when she moved her mouth closer to his.
“Naomi, don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Her heart fluttered. The book fell from her fingers.
“I said don’t.” His eyes focused on hers as he touched the small of her back. He looked upset, but that only made her want to kiss him even more. He leaned closer.
“You’ve never hurt me,” she whispered. “You’ve been nicer to me than anybody ever has, even Brad.”
It was true. He had never hit her, and he had never forced her to do anything except stay in the house. His mouth opened and closed like he wanted to say something. She could tell he wanted her. She could see it in his eyes.
Shaking his head, he moved his hand to her hip and nudged her away. “I’m not ... this isn’t ....” He pushed her away and stood up. “Not yet, Naomi. That’s all. That ship sailed on your birthday, remember? You’re not ready.”
She glared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand. Let’s find Hemingway.” He turned around and headed for the bookshelf with all the classics. He had told her it was Evelyn’s favorite shelf. Most of them were hers passed down to her from her mother. Some of them were in Italian.
Jesse stood in front of the shelf longer than needed. “Did you know Hemingway didn’t write it in Italy?” he asked as he bent down to look at the lower shelves. “He was there just prior. He was your age when he was wounded and fell in love with his nurse. I think he was in Milan.”
“He was eighteen?”
“I think so.” He pulled a book from the bottom shelf and stood. He looked more relaxed now. “You’ll probably be older before Eric and the others take you there.”
He stopped and looked away and started to say something else, but she interrupted him.
“To where? Italy?”
“Never mind.”
“Tell me.” She shifted across the cushions. “Jesse?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I said never mind. Drop it.”
She clamped her lips shut. She didn’t like the anger in his face, and moved her attention to the book in his hands. The entire story took place in Italy.
XV
August
NAOMI OPENED HER JOURNAL ALMOST every night and read through specific passages. She wanted to remind herself where she had been in her weird kidnapping journey. She wanted to see how her emotions were changing. So far it was a growing attachment to Jesse and the others. She saw the attachment; she suspected it was deliberate on their part to get her to want to stay, but there was nothing she could do about it. She could never go anywhere, never talk to anybody except them. She was completely, one-hundred percent stuck.
The dragons kept visiting her dreams. She wrote about them and described their thick, leathery wings and long, vase-like necks. She tried so hard to imagine a bouquet of flowers coming out of their mouths instead of fire, but her imagination wasn’t strong enough in her dreams. It was always fire, and it always burned the knight who came to rescue her.
After she read a few passages, she wrote a new one. She pushed the pen so hard into the paper it indented the next page. She wrote the words as small as she could so the journal would last because she didn’t know if they would give her another one—if she would even have the courage to ask. For some reason, writing in the journal felt like a big secret, especially since Jesse had slipped up and told her they were taking her to Italy and now she kept writing about it.
Italy.
It was so far away. It seemed like a fresh start, because as she looked back on her life, there wasn’t anything spectacular about it. Her nannies had cared about her, but they had never been particularly close. In fact, the more she wrote about her life the more she realized being kidnapped was the most exciting and real thing that had ever happened to her—and not necessarily in a bad way. That thought made her close the journal and cry into her pillow for the first time in weeks.
XVI
September
WHEN KAREN ARRIVED HOME FROM WORK, Mindy told her Brad was waiting on the deck. Confused, she made her way through the house as she shed her jewelry and suit coat and left them on various pieces of furniture. Mindy would collect them later.
Brad’s voice was dark and smooth. She heard him talking on the phone as she stepped outside and spotted him shuffling along the sandy paths from the beach. The rain clouds were heavy and black. They looked ready to split at the seams. The tall beach grass swayed in the breeze.
“Yeah, I gotta go. Later.” Brad closed his phone and smiled at her as she sat down in one of the patio chairs. He had never smiled at her before. That was odd. He reached the top of the steps, stammering, “Hello, Mrs. Jensen. I hope it’s okay I came by. Your housekeeper said you’d be home soon, so I—”
She stood to greet him. “I was at my office wrapping things up with a client. Things took longer than I expected.”
His eyes widened. “You’re back at work?”
“I never stopped.” She swiped a hand across her forehead. “It’s been seven months, Brad. You’ll be starting your classes soon, moving on with your life. Won’t you?
” Why was she explaining herself to him?
He cleared his throat and stared down at the phone in his hand. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“How is it going for you?”
Still staring at his phone, he muttered, “Alright, I guess. I’ve decided on medicine, but not sure exactly what yet.”
“That sounds like a fine ambition.”
He looked up and tried to smile. “Nothing like Harvard, though, huh?”
“Harvard?”
“Yeah, Naomi said she wouldn’t go, but I always thought she might since she was accepted. I applied after she did. I didn’t get in, of course.”
Karen sat down. The warm breeze tinged with the smell of rain was suffocating. She looked up at Brad. “Naomi applied to Harvard?”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“She was accepted?” Her voice was shaky now. She grabbed the arms of the chair, remembering her own acceptance letter from Harvard. Her mother was in the hospital then, dying of cancer, and her father couldn’t have cared less about what school she attended as long as he didn’t have to pay for it. It was a good thing she had won scholarships.
“Even if she didn’t tell you, I thought you or Mr. Jensen would find out from going through her mail or something.”
She put a hand to her forehead. This was only the third time she had seen Brad since Naomi’s disappearance. The first time was when he had come by to tell her and Jason that Naomi was missing. The second time was during the investigation. She looked up at him, confused. “Why didn’t she want to go to Harvard?”
“I don’t know.” He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked away.
He didn’t have to say anything else. She could see he was implying that it was her own fault. She tried not to glare at him. “So you’re in town to visit your family?”
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