Those items go in the passenger seat, right next to her book. Her bible, if you will. I turn the ignition, the engine roaring to life. Full tank. I smile because the next time I come back here, she will be with me. And I will never, ever let her go. Some things can only be loved in the dark. Ava and me, we know no other way, I just had to see it.
I drive for five hours before I pull into the tiny city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The place is littered with cars and RVs. Fucking football. College kids are camped out under tents, circled around kegs, all red-faced drunk and shouting. The traffic in front of me inches along McFarland Boulevard and my knuckles turn white from gripping the steering wheel.
“Fucking idiots,” I mumble when a pickup rear-ends a sedan.
There’s a side street to the right which I turn down. Only a few cars are on this route and within fifteen minutes I’m just outside of campus, in a quaint little neighborhood that resembles something out of Leave It to Beaver. And seeing as how this is a college town where football is more important than God, the area is completely deserted. I pass 547, 545, 543 Elder Street, and luckily, find a parking spot right under an old oak tree in front of 541. You’d think it wouldn’t be so easy to find a girl who’s already been abducted once, but University directories—well, they obviously don’t take that into account. The porch light is on and one window in the back of the house is lit up. One car in the driveway. I grab the gloves and my jacket from the passenger seat. After I slip my jacket on, I wind the rope up and shove it inside the front pocket.
There’s no traffic. Not a car. Not a soul. Not a motherfucking bird in sight as I hurry onto the sidewalk and down along the side of the house, thankful it’s dark enough between the two small houses that I blend in with the shadows. When I come to the back of the house, I’m delighted to find the back door open, only the screen door separates me from the inside. My breathing grows ragged, audible as I slip my fingers into the leather gloves and take my knife from my back pocket. It’s so easy to cut a hole through the wire mesh, reach inside, and flip the lock. And easy enough to push the screen back so it’s not noticeable, unless you are looking, that anyone has intruded. Even though I use caution, easing the door open as slowly as possible, the aluminum hinges groan. I cringe, my brow wrinkling, but there is no sound, no movement from within.
I carefully shut the door behind me and quietly make my way along the wall to the hallway right off the tiny kitchen. My pulse hammers in my temples, my skin heats from the anticipation building like a slow fire in my chest. This is a chance I’m taking. I’m not going to lie because I don’t know who is here. I’m on guard as I approach the living room, and even more so when I turn down the second hall leading to the only room in the house with a light on. The room where, hopefully, my dark creature lives—for now.
The soft sound of music drifts down the hallway—“Unsteady”—of course. The song ends just as I reach the doorway, but comes back on because she has it on repeat. And I swear to you, my heart has never raced like this before. Stopping just beside the door, I attempt to collect myself, but when I step into the doorway I find the room empty. The comforter on her bed is balled into a mess by the footboard. Clothes are strewn across the room. Her closet door is wide open, laundry spilling out from a hamper and out of the doorway. And for the briefest of moments, I panic. My plan is failing…my gaze lands on a framed picture set on her bed stand. It’s a picture of her and her parents, and the fact that I can look at her, it makes everything else fade into the background.
I step over the mess on the floor and pick the picture frame up, staring at her, pissed that I somehow forgot exactly how beautiful she was, but then again, I never saw her like this—with makeup on and her hair curled—trying to hide who she really is. Just as I sweep my fingertip over her picture, headlights bounce around the room. The hum of a car pulling into the driveway is barely audible through her bedroom window.
She’s here.
The thought causes my pulse to skip as a deep smile settles on my face. Without pause, I step inside her closet, pressing my back against the wall and dragging in one last, deep breath. My eyes slam shut at her scent, an aroma that once wrapped around me, quitting the demons deep within. And if that isn’t enough to tell me this is fate—that this is how it should be—well, I don’t know what will be.
I hear the front door open. Voices talking. Footsteps treading down the hall. And with each sound, each movement drawing her closer to me, my heart damn near explodes out of my chest.
“Ava,” a girl’s voice floats down the hallway. She sounds agitated. “I’m trying to understand it, but I don’t even feel like you’re trying. I get it, it was shitty. It fucked you up, but—”
“No! You don’t get it,” Ava shouts. “Don’t try to, Meg. Just—just stop trying to force me to do shit. It’s not helping.”
“Ava.” The other girl sighs. “I’m sorry, I just want you to be happy again. I just want you to learn how to cope with all this BS.”
“Yeah, I’ll cope with it.” A cynical laugh fills the room as I hear the door creak open. “Why don’t you just go back to the party?”
“Well, I’m sure as shit not staying here to sulk with you. I’m done enabling this shit, Ava.”
“I never asked you to enable anything.”
The wall shakes when the door slams shut. I hear her cross the room, groaning. The music cuts off. She’s pacing and mumbling under her breath. Seconds later, the back door bangs closed and moments after that, I can hear the faint sound of a car leaving the driveway. This is it. I just have to take her—just claim her. I pull the rope from my pocket and prepare to step into her room, but I hear the hinges to her door creak, and suddenly, she’s gone. I peer out cautiously and hear a shower cut on down the hall.
Sneaking out of the closet, I tiptoe across the room, and carefully, I peek around the doorframe. My gaze strays to the partially opened door at the end of the hallway. I slink along the corridor and try my best to keep the floorboards from creaking—not that she would hear it over the shower. If I’m honest, I do hate how this is turning out. Never did I want to take her from the bathroom, nude. I didn’t want one thing about this to seem perverse or cliché. Because this is our love story. Dark and gritty and raw, so deep it has driven us both to the brink of madness.
I bite down on my lip as I creep along the wall, my hands running over the slick chair rail. When my fingers curl around the doorframe, I hesitate. Maybe this is not the way to do this, but just as Ava said, things stolen hold so much more value to you, and things stolen, in turn, know they have a great worth, for men only steal those things they cannot live without.
And I cannot live without her.
Day 265—home
Hot water runs over my body, but it does nothing to ease the tension coiled tightly throughout my muscles. I feel like a bitch for shouting at Meg, but I have little control over my emotions anymore. The anger ripples through me without warning, and I snap. The sadness drowns me, and I sob. Those emotions are like feral beasts I have no hopes in taming.
I tilt my head back, resting it against the cold tile. Lost in my own skin, I fucking hate this. I hate all of it and sometimes I wish I could go back to the night I was taken and have that bullet go through my skull instead of Bronson’s. Or maybe, back to the night I drowned myself, because this time I would have waited until mother had gone to bed.
Guilt bears down on me over the thought. But to me, death seems like such an easy way out because once it devours you, there is nothing else. Blackness. Emptiness. Nothingness. A dead man no longer struggles with demons.
Tears fall down my face, losing themselves within the trail of water from the shower. And just like that, tiredness falls over me. I can barely keep my eyes open and all I want to do is sleep for days. I want to sleep all of this away. And I can’t help but think sleep is a form of death for the living.
I quickly wash myself, turn the taps, and climb out of the shower, grabbing the towel from the vanity a
nd drying myself off. When I wipe the fog from the mirror, I notice the door is wide open. Did I leave it open? My pulse immediately goes into a sprint, but somehow I manage to calm myself down. Maybe partly because, where I am tonight, I wouldn’t care if someone has broken in to kill me.
Huffing, I reach up to the top of the mirror, almost like someone else is controlling my limbs. “You’re scaring me…” I pen those words through the fog before walking to my room.
Call me a sadist but right now, the way this depression is rattling my insides, I just want to wallow in it. I want to let it consume me, so I skim through the playlist on my laptop and pick “11:11” by In This Moment, pressing play before I grab a pair of underwear and a T-shirt from my dresser. After I pull them on, I fall back onto my bed.
Rain begins to fall over the roof, and I smile because, so it seems, the rest of the world feels the same as I do. A gust of wind blows raindrops against the window. Branches from the tree outside scratch across the window pane. And I lose myself in thoughts of him. Of that room…
A floorboard creaks and I feel the energy of another person. My skin prickles. I catch the shadow on the wall just before a hand covers my mouth, another one grabbing onto the top of my head.
“Shh,” he whispers, the heat from his breath fanning over my neck. Sobs rack my body. My muscles go weak. “Don’t scream, understand?”
I nod, choking back the tears because he came for me.
He removes his hand from my mouth, and I feel the rough texture of rope scratch against my arm as he grabs both my hands and crosses them over each other. Quickly, he wraps the rope around my wrists and sits me up, turning me to face him. I bite down on my lip, tears pouring down my cheeks. I want so badly to touch him, but I can’t with my hands bound like this.
“I love you,” he whispers before tenderly pressing his lips against mine. “And it’s nearly driven me insane, but this is just how it should be. Me and you, like this.”
There’s a pause where we stare at each other, and it takes me just a moment to form words. “I love you, too,” I whisper.
A sympathetic smile forms on his face. “You will…for the right reasons this time.” He stands and grabs my bound wrists. “Come on now, darlin’.”
And I stand, following him without a fight, smiling. Beaming. Because he loves me to the point of insanity—with such a fierceness that he is taking me. Stealing me. People search entire lifetimes wanting to be owned and imprisoned by a feeling so strong that nothing can break it. That is what this is.
I don’t make a sound as he leads me through the back door, along the side of the house, and to a car parked across the street. He opens the door for me and when I climb in, I find my book in the floorboard. My heart flitters in my chest. My stomach flips and flops. Sweat builds in my palms and my cheeks flush. This is love. This feeling is what makes me know I’m not crazy.
The interior light comes back on when he opens the driver’s side door. Those dark eyes of his lock with mine. He seems even more beautiful than I remember. And maybe that’s because I now know he is mine. I am his. And I am safe with him.
He climbs in and turns the ignition, checking the rearview mirror before pulling away from the curb. By the time we’ve reached the end of the road, his hand is on mine, his thumb gently stroking over my knuckles. “The rope’s not too tight, is it?”
I glance over at him. “No.”
The streetlights flick over his face, the shadows accentuating his cut jawline. For a moment, I fear I’ve finally given into the pending nervous breakdown my mind has been battling, and I panic, tightly closing my eyes. He’ll still be there. He will… Because so many times I’ve dreamed of him coming for me, and waking up to the reality that I am free has nearly killed me.
“Max,” I whisper. I can’t open my eyes. I can’t bear to. “Max?”
“Yes, dear?”
“What’s your last name?”
“Carter.”
But that’s not enough to convince me he’s real. “What took you so long?” I ask, then open my eyes, and he is still here.
“I had to get things ready.” He squeezes my hand, looks over at me, and smiles. “Because I have to keep you safe with me.”
I settle back in the seat, bliss falling over me like a haze. “You know you don’t have to keep me tied up.”
“I know.” He smirks.
“I’d never leave you.”
“I’d never let you.”
And we drive through the night. I doze in and out of sleep, my hand in his the entire time. I wake just as the blackness of the sky gives way to a deep midnight blue and swallows the stars within the light. Max pulls off the main road, turning onto a dirt driveway and parking in front of a chalet. He turns the ignition off, climbs out, and opens my door. Then he leads me up worn wooden steps and through the front door.
The inside of the house looks like it hasn’t been updated in over thirty years. Over the fireplace is a family portrait, and I assume that small boy standing next to a toddler with pigtails, and in front of beaming parents, was Max. Through the den, down a hallway, and we come to a door.
A door to a basement.
Max opens it, immediately going down the stairs. When he reaches the bottom, he turns and holds his hand out to me. I lift my bound hands and take hold of him.
“Almost there,” he says. We make our way through a rec room and down another hall, and at the very end is a door—with a lock on the outside.
I wait as he undoes the lock, dropping it to the floor. The door swings open and he allows me to enter first.
The walls are freshly painted. Everything in here is dainty and perfect. My eyes land on a bookshelf on the far wall filled with books. My chest swells and I smile. “It’s perfect. I love it.”
Above the wrought iron bed is a simple black canvas with the Pablo Neruda line: I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul, written in wispy, white letters. That is our line.
Max unties the rope, dropping it to the floor before he spins me around to face him. Gripping the tops of my arms, he leans his head down to rest his forehead against mine. “I thought giving you your freedom showed you I loved you, but I just didn’t understand.”
I swallow. There is so much I want to say to him, but where would I begin? “I begged you not to leave me, I begged you…”
“I know you did, but I only wanted what was best for you. Never…never did I imagine by setting you free I was killing you.” He pauses, swiping his fingers across my neck. “And if this is what you need to know your worth, if you want to be stolen and coveted, I will do that, but that lock, those ropes, we both know there are no need for those. They are just symbols. You understand that, right?”
“Symbols of what?” My brow wrinkles and a slight smirk plays over his lips.
“Love. Because it, in and of itself, is a prison.” He gently tucks my hair behind my ear.
“And one I don’t ever want to escape.”
“Exactly. I had to realize that people like you and I—other people are too sheltered to understand us, they are too simple,” he says. “And we don’t need for anyone to understand this so long as we do.” He kisses me with such reverence I swear our souls bleed together with this kiss. This is a kiss where the very core of who you are becomes intertwined.
Max backs me against the wall. His hands covering me in a frenzy, like he can’t possibly touch me enough. He kisses over my neck, one hand stroking across my throat. “You,” he breathes against my skin. “Nothing else could ever make me feel the way you do.”
Clothes are ripped off and he throws me onto the bed, winding my hair around his wrist and taking me in the way only he can. He fucks me with his movements and makes love to me with his words. He treats me like I’m unbreakable, but whispers to me like I’m the most fragile thing to ever exist. Sweat builds on the small of my back and he grabs onto my hips, slamming me down on the bed before he settles between my thighs. A slig
ht smirk plays over his lips as his fingers wind around my throat. “So fucking innocent, so fucking beautiful.” He bites down on his lower lip before he slides back inside of me. I toss my head back on a moan, his hands still around my throat. Leaning down by my ear, he kisses along my jaw, grazing his teeth over my skin. “Tell me how you feel, Ava,” he whispers.
I stare up at him. In love. Madly in love. “I love you.”
“As you should.” He slams back inside of me before gripping the sides of my face and dragging my lips to his in a ruthless kiss. “And fuck do I love you.”
And I believe he does. Like no other man ever could.
No one would understand this. Most people would call us insane, but the thing is, we all have a bit of darkness inside of us. And too often people see this blackened part of our souls as something evil, something twisted and wrong because something tells us everyone should live in the light. But for some, the light of life is just too bright. There must be balance in everything, which means there must be darkness, for without that chasm, light could not exist. And this dark little world of ours—this perfect love—it is the night sky that allows you to see the stars. You see, there is beauty within the darkness, if only you teach yourself how to find it.
Sixty-four days in captivity. Two hundred and sixty-five days without him. The rest of my life to be captive to the man who will always own my heart—free or not. Because to be honest, in the sense of love, everyone wants to be held captive.
And where the darkness ends, the dawn begins…
First and foremost, thank you, dear readers and bloggers for taking a chance on a new story. You are what breathes life into these words and the reason these stories are told.
Darkest Before Dawn Page 18