Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2)

by Laurelin Paige

  “Are you serious?” Knox says. “To Keeper? This is huge. What is it?”

  “I need to work it out. And I will work it out.” I look my guys in the eye, one after another. I let my voice go icy smooth, because I made this promise to them long before I met Brooke. “Nothing stops us from rescuing those boys. From taking our vengeance. Nothing.”

  Brooke is a beautiful distraction, but I don’t need her. I can’t need her. I only have one purpose beyond saving those boys, and that’s revenge.

  It’s taking all the pain and fury inside myself so that the other guys have a chance at a normal life. There’s no chance of that for me.

  I made my peace with that long ago.

  Chapter 23

  Brooke

  I pull the blanket more tightly around me. It’s a cashmere silk blend, soft as a cloud, but I’d give anything to be wrapped in Stone’s coarse blanket instead. I felt safe in that cabin in a way I never have in this ten-thousand-square-foot home.

  “I’m not calling you a liar,” Detective Rivera says, voice soft.

  “I know,” I squeak, but he sort of is, in the way he keeps asking whether I’m holding something back. In the way his eyes seem to know that I am.

  Dad sits on the arm of the easy chair, arms crossed, expression distant. I can’t even meet his gaze. I haven’t been able to for a long time.

  Mom sits beside me, arm not around me, exactly, but on the couch back. She looks bewildered, anxious. “If there’s something more, Brooke…”

  “There isn’t!” I say.

  Detective Rivera’s sitting on the coffee table, a cardinal sin in this house, but Mom allows it, which tells the story of how worried she is. He leans in, elbows on his knees. His dark slate eyes are kind, and there are faint lines to the sides of them. Laugh lines. But he’s not laughing now. “Liam said you called him by name. That you called him Stone. That you seemed to know him.”

  “You told me that was his name,” I say. “When you were last here.”

  “Does he like you to call him by name?”

  I swallow. “How would I know?” I say coolly as I can. “If I know somebody’s name, it’s only polite to use it when addressing that person.” I look helplessly at my mother. “There’s no reason to lose my manners.”

  “Of course not, sweetheart,” she says, her voice a little sad. Like she thinks I’m hiding something, too. “Good manners are always in style.”

  Usually when she says that, I roll my eyes, but now I’m so grateful I could kiss her. It’s a kind of absolution from the person who’s been most critical of me.

  The silence goes on forever. I feel this flash of frustration at Stone. And longing. He made it sound so easy to tell them nothing, but it’s not easy at all. Stone was hardened by life, but I’ve never felt softer or more vulnerable. And the place between my legs feels sore, raw, alive with the memory of him. If they knew about that, they would lose their minds.

  Rivera watches me. I’m a bug under a microscope in front of his searching eyes. I want to grab my phone and look at something stupid, random Facebook statuses about someone’s breakup at prom, but I don’t want them to see how bad I need this to be over. I force myself to meet his eyes. I draw my lips together in imitation of Mom’s impatient face.

  “I know this is uncomfortable for you,” Rivera says. “But I’m trying to work this out in my mind—why would a man kidnap you on your prom night only to ask about your life as a high school girl?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  After another uncomfortably long silence, he asks, “Do you think he imagines some sort of connection to you? Or that you owe him?”

  I shrug.

  “I think sometimes we can get scared,” Rivera says, “and the easiest thing is to sweep it under the rug. But I’ve been in this business a long time, and trust me, that never helps. Things like this only escalate.”

  Too late, I think. This has escalated beyond what they can imagine. But I say nothing, reminding myself that I’m in control. Just like Stone said. I’m eighteen. An adult.

  “I know this is scary,” he says. “Your friends told us how violent he appeared—eyes wide, fists flying. Your friend Randall thought he had a knife. Did he show you a knife?”

  “It happened so fast,” I say, even though there was no knife.

  “Your friend Liam observed that he was frothing at the mouth, out of his mind. He thought drug use was involved. Did you have that impression?”

  Of course Liam would make him sound like a rabid, drug-crazed monster. “No. I did not have the impression of drug use.” Or rabies, for that matter.

  “So he wasn’t violent with you.”

  “Not at all!”

  “Except to drag you away from prom.”

  “Right,” I say, heart beating fast. “Except for that.”

  “He didn’t sexually assault you.”

  “Absolutely not!”

  At some point last night, I put the bodice of my dress together with two safety pins. Nobody noticed the rip, which ran neatly down the seam—luckily.

  Now I’m in pink fleece yoga pants and a giant Mickey Mouse T-shirt, and the dress is tucked into my drawer. I’ll sew it back up later.

  “So he only asked you questions,” Rivera clarifies. “For three hours.”

  “I don’t know what more to tell you.”

  “It must be a heady feeling,” he says, changing his tactic, making his voice smooth and almost hypnotic. “To have a man like that so focused on you. All that power and rage, except when it comes to you.”

  “Detective—” Mom puts a hand on my shoulder. “What are you getting at? This is starting to sound like victim blaming. My daughter is not at fault for anything that monster did.”

  A shiver of gratitude washes over me.

  “Of course not,” he says, putting his pen in his front pocket. “I didn’t mean it like that. If you come up with anything else, Brooke, I’m listening. I’m on your side, believe it or not.” His eyes crinkle as he smiles. He turns to my mom, my dad. “I have some literature for you, some information about the effects of this kind of situation, if you’d…”

  Dad stands. “Let me walk you to the car.”

  Something passes between my mother and Rivera, and suddenly she’s walking him to the car, too. “Why don’t you draw yourself a nice bath,” she says to me, soft-like.

  “Maybe I will.” I say goodbye to Rivera, and I head upstairs feeling upset and like I’m in all kinds of trouble I can’t understand.

  When I peer out my bedroom window, I see them talking by the door of Rivera’s car. I crouch down and ease the window open just a crack. I can’t hear what my mom is saying, but Rivera’s voice carries through on the breeze—enough of it, anyway, to get the gist. “…develop positive feelings…reasons why she’s protecting him…strong emotions like fear…feels like infatuation…”

  My pulse races. He thinks I’m on Stone’s side.

  And he’s right.

  Rivera gestures at Mom. She’s holding a pamphlet. “…some form of Stockholm syndrome…”

  My father’s voice is a rumble back—he sounds impatient. I hear my name a few times. “Why Brooke? …why target her? …background on this Stone Keaton…need answers…”

  Rivera’s shaking his head. “…not his real name…no record…”

  They’re pointing at our neighbor’s house. Why are they talking about that house? It’s for sale. Our neighbors don’t even live there anymore—they moved to Florida. The place is vacant. Overpriced, Dad always says.

  “Gonna come back…predictable…get this guy…” Rivera says. He’s saying things about the mall. About school. I strain to hear him, but the wind has changed directions.

  I quickly duck when my parents turn to come back inside. The windows of the vacant house look down on ours. It sits above and has a good view of us, actually. It would be the perfect place for the police to hide in. Maybe that’s what he was saying. That they’d hide in that house. That
they’d follow me to the school and the mall.

  They have a plan. They’re going after Stone. Of course. Why wouldn’t they?

  And they’re going to use me as bait, whether I want it or not.

  The ding of a text makes me jump nearly out of my skin. I grab my phone. It’s Kitty.

  Everyone asking about U, she says. Cops were here.

  I text back, careful to seem breezy. I already texted Chelsea, but this is the text that will get around school. I’m fine. IDEK he drove me around and brought me home. Just a weird joy ride. Lucky I guess.

  Joy ride—that’s one of the phrases I used to Rivera. Like maybe it was a joy ride and he wanted a passenger. That makes it sound more innocent, like something Liam might do if his dad didn’t plan for him to run for the Senate one day.

  A joy ride. So different from a grown man taking me to a secluded cabin and taking my virginity.

  She texts back a surprised emoji. Scary! So glad you’re okay.

  I text her a heart emoji and she replies with a four-leaf clover. We text emojis back and forth; then I just sit there staring at the black screen of my phone.

  They think Stone will come back for me.

  He’ll be in such danger. Doesn’t he understand? Maybe he does.

  Maybe he doesn’t care.

  A shiver of excitement slides over my skin when I think how easily he handled the cops in dropping me off.

  He’s coming back, and he doesn’t give a crap if cops are waiting.

  I still feel him inside me. All over my skin. We had sex without a condom, and I don’t even care. I should be scared, but I only feel this excitement, fine hairs on my arm on edge. Excitement and dread, because this is the worst thing I could do. The worst man I could want. A threat to everything I love.

  Chapter 24

  Brooke

  There’s this weight that’s building inside me. When Stone first said the name Keeper to me, it was a tiny drop of water on a mountain of security. I know Daddy better than anyone. Maybe even better than my mom. I’ve seen how gentle he can be when he patches a skinned knee. He can’t be involved in anything to do with Stone or hurting boys. He wouldn’t.

  But this terrible fear drips, drips, drips until I feel like it’s a hundred pounds. A thousand. It’s creating a fissure right through my middle, cutting apart everything I thought I knew.

  Because it wasn’t pure coincidence that had Stone at that party the night we met. He came for Mr. Madsen, who was a friend of my father’s. A business friend, not a real friend, but that’s enough, isn’t it? Enough of a smoking gun. Enough to incriminate him in Stone’s eyes.

  That’s how I end up in Daddy’s office, my heart pounding loud enough to shake the solid wood floor, hands shaking as I pull open a file cabinet. I’ve been in this room a hundred times. Played Barbies under the desk. Sat on his lap in front of the fireplace. Never did I think there could be evidence of a terrible crime only a few feet away. I don’t know what to believe, but I need to know, once and for all.

  Because it’s not just the vengeance Stone wants or the justice he deserves that’s at stake. It’s the boys who might be held right now. If there’s even a chance I can help them, I have to try.

  Daddy’s at his weekly racquetball game with Uncle Bill, so now is the time.

  Dang technology takes twice as long for double the cost, Daddy sometimes jokes, but this would have been before digital files and online listings. It takes a little while to look through the files and find a box in the closet from the right decade. Before I was born, but I recognize the scrawled handwriting. I’ve seen it on my birthday cards and permission slips. It was even on a present from Santa one year. The year I realized that Santa wasn’t real, that it was Daddy all along.

  “Where are you?” I whisper, my throat tight.

  There are smudged yellow and pink papers slipped between white ones, copies that have faded almost to nothing. Only the hard downstrokes of pen are showing on some of them.

  I’m almost afraid to see it, the street name where Stone was held as a child.

  My hands move faster, the paper thin as butterfly wings. Dust tickles my nose and blurs my vision. A dark round stain on one of the pink sheets, and I realize it isn’t only dust clouding my eyes. I’m crying. How did I end up here? Snooping on my own father? Doubting him?

  And then I see it, the street name in Daddy’s bold writing.

  A sound comes from outside the closet, a soft snick, as loud as an explosion to my grief-stricken mind. Daddy shouldn’t be home for another hour. Mom’s at her hair appointment. It’s the maid’s day off. One of the only times I’m in the house alone, which is why I took advantage.

  The paper crumples in my fist. I shove it into my jeans pocket.

  For a wild second, I think it might be Stone, that from across the city he realized what I’d found, that he’s here to demand I give him the proof. It burns in my pocket, all the way through the denim to my skin.

  Then my father’s standing in the doorway to the closet, a concerned look on his weathered face.

  “Brooke, what’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  His familiar voice makes me crack, and I run to him, press my face into his chest, feel the hard chest of him, the springy hair and the ribbed fabric of his workout shirt. Whatever aftershave he uses, a little too strong, but it only reminds me of him. Of safety. “Oh, Daddy.”

  “What are you doing in here?”

  He doesn’t sound angry. And he doesn’t sound worried, even though the lid to the file box is ajar.

  Has it been so long that he’s forgotten? Has he done so many bad things that this one doesn’t register? I don’t even know what to think. Part of me wants to whip out the piece of paper in my pocket, to show it to him and make him explain it. To demand there be some innocent reason for him to own three houses on a street in an abandoned part of town.

  Another part of me knows I have to be careful. I need to figure out who to trust, because right now I trust no one. And everyone. If Daddy was really one of these terrible men, then he can’t know that I know. Would he hurt me? I don’t want to believe that, but I don’t believe he could hurt boys either.

  “I’m sorry,” I say desperately, wanting him to explain himself without being able to ask it of him. “I was just scared. I wanted to talk to you. I thought you were at your racquetball game, so I was waiting for you.”

  “Bill sprained his ankle. We had a drink instead.” Familiar brown eyes darken with worry. “Maybe I should have listened to that detective. Got you in with a psychiatrist who can help you. Your mother thought—” He sighs. “She thought you didn’t need it.”

  “I don’t,” I say too quickly. We both know the real reason she didn’t want me to see a psychiatrist is because it would get out. People would talk.

  He looks at me, unusually grave. “I always wondered, Brooke, if something happened that you didn’t tell us about. That you were scared to tell us about. You know I would never be angry at you. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault.”

  He means sex. He means violence. But I want to tell him, I started to care about this man, Daddy. It’s wrong, but it’s also real. And he might try to kill you if he knew what I know.

  “Nothing happened,” I say, my voice small.

  The lie sits between us, pulsing with its own vitality.

  After a long moment he nods and stands aside. I run from the office like my life depends on it. Well, maybe it does. Only that night do I smooth out the paper under a lamp and confirm my worst fears. The doubt had been a steady drip. The certainty is only a single drop more, but it’s enough to break me.

  Chapter 25

  Brooke

  Mr. Reyes stands at the front of the class, talking about the Aztec culture. He shows us a chart of pictograms—little picture symbols that combine to create meaning. That’s what the Aztec people used for communication instead of letters that make up words.

  Somebody says they’re like emojis. Reyes wants us to discuss th
at. From the way he says it, you can tell he doesn’t agree. I can hardly bring myself to care, because I’m way too focused on what I found out last night. Only twelve hours since my world got blown apart.

  Even now I want to imagine that Daddy never visited that basement, that he wasn’t truly a part of that horrified business. Maybe he was just someone’s contractor, without knowing what was happening. The pieces of paper with their numbers and letters—they don’t tell the whole story. But I’m not sure there can be shades of guilt when children are being hurt. Maybe it’s like Stone says, that everyone who looked the other way is just as guilty.

  Right then my phone buzzes. A text. Discreetly I slide it out from under my notebook.

  STEP OUTSIDE.

  On my phone it says BLOCKED where his number should go. Stone.

  My heart begins to pound.

  He was always going to come for me, but not like this. Not at school. I may not know every last detail about him, but I know he’s careful. I know he waits and watches. I know he likes to control his environment.

  So why here and now?

  Alarm shoots through me. Something’s not right.

  There’s a part of me that thinks about telling Mr. Reyes that I’m afraid. What would he do? Lock down the school? We’ve been having drills with all the school shootings that have been happening, special procedures we’re supposed to follow in order to stay safe.

  But there’s no drill that would keep Stone from doing whatever he wants to do. No safety when he’s around. Maybe not even for him.

  I shiver as I remember his words from so long ago—I’m the winter nobody ever saw coming.

  I scroll over to the Contacts page and look through all the names. Kitty and Liam. Dad. So many people in my life who would be angry at me for what I’m about to do. I feel bad about my mom, because I think she’ll worry the most. But I can’t grow up to be her, even if there are some parts about her I respect. I can’t smile for the cameras at society events, pretending everything’s okay, now that I know there are boys kept in basements.