In Too Deep itd-1

by Eliza Jane

I go back to my assignment and begin working. My fingers tap furiously at the keys. I’m using multiple computers in the room, my heart thumping with a steady energy as I set everything into motion.

  I sit back and wait.

  I notice that somewhere in the mayhem, McAllister brought me a can of soda. It sits warm and unopened beside me. I look at the clock and notice that somehow two hours have passed. I send a quick email to McAllister letting him know that everything worked out perfectly.

  I yawn again and rub at my eyes. Time for bed. Hopefully Bria won’t mind me missing Zumba…

  When I wake up the sun is cascading through the dorm windows. I’ve slept way longer than I intended to. The room is hot and sticky and I kick off the heavy duvet.

  I glance at the clock. I’ve missed both Bria and Colt’s classes, but if I hurry, I’ll be in time for lunch.

  I take a quick shower, and dress, combing my hair into a simple bun so I won’t have to style it. Then I make my way to the cafeteria.

  Right away I can tell that something’s different. The normal hum of conversation, the scooting of chairs, and occasional fits of laughter are missing. It’s dead silent.

  I hesitate at the door, trying to figure out what’s going on. A group of students huddle in the corner facing the TV mounted on the wall. I make my way over to them. The news is on, showing a ship in the ocean, it is listing badly to one side. My blood goes cold.

  I take a step forward and get closer to the TV. I have to hear what they’re saying. MJ and Logan and are amongst those crowding around the TV. I squeeze between the bodies, making my way to the front. I can hear them saying my name, asking where I’ve been, but my mouth is completely dry and I’ve forgotten how to speak. My head spins and I do my best to focus on the TV. The blood rushing in my ears is deafening, but I focus on the newscaster until her voice comes into focus.

  “Breaking news…massive oil spill…oil tanker, Alliance has collided with a coral reef…”

  I suck in a breath and my knees go weak.

  “Officials for World Oil Corporation have no comment at this hour about how this disaster could have happened…”

  Oh my God…

  “Pending a full investigation…”

  I turn and run. I hear my name being called, but I don’t stop. I push through the doors and stumble blindly down the empty hall.

  My legs feel weak, but I can’t collapse here. I push myself to keep moving, trailing my hand along the wall for support.

  This is no coincidence. I heard the news anchor – she said Alliance. The name of McAllister’s assignment for me. I push my legs faster, needing to get someplace where I can break down.

  I’m only vaguely aware of footsteps behind me when I feel a hand clasp around mine.

  Colt.

  His strong hand encloses mine completely. His face is hard, serious. “Come on,” he commands, and pulls me down the hall.

  Colt must have seen me leave the cafeteria and come after me. My heart fills and expands. Colt will help me fix this. He has to.

  He leads me to the stairs and helps me climb up; stopping once we get to the second floor. He pulls me along. For a brief second I wonder where we’re heading. Then I realize: He’s taking me to his room.

  I don’t put up a fight, thankful at least I’m not alone. He unlocks the door and holds it open for me.

  I step around him and hear the door close behind us. All at once he’s pulling me into his arms, folding me into his embrace. I lay my head on his chest, letting myself fall into him completely, balling my hands in his shirt. It’s only then I let the tears come.

  We stand like that for I don’t know how long. Colt doesn’t press for details, or ask any questions. He just holds me, rubbing my back while I sob into his neck.

  After a little while, I lean back and meet his eyes, wondering why he’s being so nice to me, why he’s taking care of me right now.

  When he meets my eyes, his hardened angry look falls away revealing his concern and worry.

  “Are you okay? Talk to me,” he pleads. He takes my face in his palms, wiping the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs.

  “I did that.” I sniff. “That ship. That was m-my fault.” A fresh wave of emotion hits me, racking my chest with sobs.

  “Shhh.” He pulls me to him again, patting my back. “That was not your fault.”

  “Yes it was!” I shout, pulling back from him.

  He drops his hands, confusion all over his face.

  “I need to go to the lab. I need my computer.” I wipe at my face with my shirt hem, knowing I look a mess.

  “I’ll get it for you. Stay here.”

  I blink up at him.

  “I’ll be right back.” He turns and leaves me alone in his room.

  I know it’s irrational. I know it’s too late to stop the commands I released, but I need my computer. I need to do something.

  I pace Colt’s room, convincing my pounding heart to slow, and eventually coaxing my tears to stop. I find a box of tissues beside Colt’s bed blow my nose, and wipe my eyes dry.

  When I’m slightly calmer, I sit down in the center of his bed and scan my surroundings.

  The room is larger than I expected, I don’t know why but I was expecting a tiny dorm room with cement walls and a narrow twin bed.

  His bed is large and at the far end of the room with his dresser and a small table, both in rich wood. The bed is neatly made in rich navy and crisp white bedding. I bet if my nose wasn’t so stuffy it would smell deliciously like him.

  On the other end of the room, closer to the door is a seating area with a small couch and a desk with Colt’s laptop and files. A narrow book shelf leans against one wall with a few books – mostly textbooks stacked messily on the shelves. On the center shelf, at eye-level is a photo in a silver frame. The one personal artifact in his room. I walk closer to inspect it.

  The boy – no more than eleven or twelve is clearly Colt. Messy, dark hair, a smile like he knows something the rest of us don’t and he’s tall, nearly as tall as the woman beside him. She must be his mother. She’s striking, and way too young to be gone. I can see where he gets his full, dark eyelashes.

  Colt comes through the door with my laptop and stops when he sees me holding the picture of his mother.

  He swallows and steps closer to me, slowly, tentatively. He holds a hand out for the picture frame, offering me the laptop instead.

  “What’s her name?” I ask before parting with it.

  “Elaina.”

  I hand it over.

  Once I have my laptop, I go back to Colt’s bed and sink against his pillows, propping the computer across my lap.

  Chapter 39

  I watch Taylor move around my room. She sits down in the center of my bed, scooting up until she can lean back against the pillows. She opens her laptop and begins typing furiously as she studies the screen. Fresh tears spring to her eyes, and she presses her lips together, forcing them away.

  I watch her work for a few minutes, unsure of what to do. In this moment the only thing I know for certain is that she is beautiful, and that I hate my father even more than I thought.

  I could quite literally kill him right now. I’m itching to track him down and raise hell, but the only thing keeping me here is Taylor. The look on her face when she saw that news footage felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I hate to see her cry.

  I’m not sure what made me follow her out into the hall and drag her up here, I just didn’t like the thought of her alone and crying in the hall. It reminds me of that time with Samantha. I still feel guilty as hell over her catching me with another girl, the same night I asked her to hang out. Guilt was a strange feeling. New for me. Taylor was invoking all kinds of new feelings in me. I both liked it and didn’t.

  I set the picture of my mom back on the shelf. If anyone else had touched this, it would have bugged me. But not her. I look over at her and watch her sink back against my pillows. Something tugs in my chest. I take a breath,
flexing my forearms and move closer to her. Confusion, anger and something else I can’t identify swirl around inside me.

  I sit down beside her, the bed dipping under my weight. “I told Tate you wouldn’t be in class this afternoon.”

  She looks up meeting my eyes.

  “What else can I do?” All my concentration is on her. Making her feel better. Helping her. Just like at our last assignment gone wrong. I remember getting her in the bath, feeding her, kissing her. My head swims with the memory.

  She turns away from the screen, momentarily at a loss for words. “Why did you bring me here? Why do you even care?”

  Her words sting, but given my track record, I suppose it’s a fair question. “I thought I made that clear. We’re friends Taylor. And I know better than anyone the shit McAllister is capable of.”

  “Friends?” she chides. “Friends who go on dates and kiss and then run away from each other?”

  My palms itch. Why do I have the urge to hit something? Damn, this girl challenges everything I do. I release a breath slowly through my teeth. “I thought I explained why I ended that date.”

  She blinks up at me.

  Fuck. She’s going to make me say it. To admit to her again how I feel about her. I’m quiet while I consider her question. The silence in the room hangs heavily around us.

  I sigh and run my hands through my hair.

  She bites her lip, still waiting, still blinking up at me with those big blue eyes that are at least no longer wet with tears.

  “Let’s not get into this right now.” I meet her eyes, my voice firm.

  Her face tightens, her forehead creasing.

  “We have more pressing things to figure out, don’t you think?”

  I resist the urge to reach out and touch her, to comfort her again. She seems to be doing okay now – which means I need to keep my hands to myself.

  She nods in agreement, letting me off the hook. For now.

  “What have you found?” I nod to her computer.

  She turns it to me, setting it on the bed between us then presses play on a news video.

  We listen in silence to the segment, which doesn’t offer up many new details. But she breathes a sigh of relief and her shoulders visibly relax when she hears there were no causalities and the crew made it safely off the ship.

  “Are you worried they’ll trace this back to you?” I ask once the video ends.

  “Of course. But honestly I don’t think they’ll be able to. It’s more the gravity of what I’ve done. The damage I’ve caused.” She looks down again at the computer screen, which shows images of silty black water slick with oil, and brown waves crashing against a rocking shoreline, leaving the thick deposits in its wake.

  “I just don’t understand…” She looks lost. “Why would he do this? Why give me this assignment? He had to know right?”

  I look down. Of course he did.

  She inhales, fighting off the emotion in her voice. “I thought our assignments were taking down bad guys, the criminals. I thought we were on the good side of the law. McAllister said I’d work with the government, that I’d be helping. That’s why I stayed – that’s why I’m here.”

  “I know,” I say, softly, reassuringly. “That’s why I’m here too.” Our eyes meet and lock on each other’s for a moment.

  “Why would he make me do this? What’s his motivation?”

  I shake my head. “He’s just hungry – he won’t say no to business. Running this place is his entire life and I don’t think he has any moral compass outside of seeing his company succeed.”

  “Is he married?” she surprises me by asking.

  “He was. A long time ago.”

  “How do you know so much about him?”

  “I just do.” I clear my throat. “I’ve been here for three years trying to keep him in line.”

  She nods, accepting my answer without question. If she knew the truth, I doubt she’d be sitting here right now, so calmly discussing this with me.

  Taylor goes to another news site and clicks on an article about the major cleanup effort that will likely last several months. She leans forward, reading it with interest, desperately trying to piece this all together.

  “Enough.” I close the screen to her laptop.

  She looks up at me blinking her beautiful eyes, her pink lips parted.

  “It’ll just upset you,” I explain.

  Taylor stays with me until dinnertime when I make her go downstairs to eat with her friends. The sooner she moves past this the better. I don’t want her dwelling on it. We can’t change the past, and I know she’s now working out her future here.

  I can’t argue with her about staying again, not after this.

  He must have known that. Is this a punishment for that botched assignment? Can he tell I like her and doesn’t want her getting in the way of my work here?

  When Taylor slips off to dinner, I decide to pay a visit to McAllister, my palms itching as the need to pummel something returns in full force.

  * * *

  Taylor spends the entire next week reading every single news article she can find, tracking down any connection McAllister could have to this ship, yet we’re still no farther along in understanding McAllister’s motives behind this deliberate oil spill than we were before.

  It’s no longer enough for me to hang out with Taylor during her independent study, she also comes to my room every night after dinner and we read the news articles together, even though I know it’s not healthy.

  I’m thankful when after several days; the media attention about the oil spill has died down.

  “I’m going to throw this laptop out of the window if you don’t get off of it soon,” I threaten.

  Taylor’s lying across my bed on her stomach, deep in thought, staring at the screen. She looks up at me and smiles. Actually smiles. It’s heaven. I can see the tension slipping from her day by day.

  Taking her good mood as a cue, I join her on the bed and close the laptop, sliding it away from her.

  “You’ve been too distracted lately. Too consumed by this. We’re getting out of here for a while.” Damn it. I’m telling her again. I swallow and correct myself. “Can I take you out?”

  She smirks, studying me curiously. “I assume after how our last date ended – this won’t be a date.” She uses air quotes.

  I stare at her, the confidence growing inside me. “Call it whatever you want, but yes, I see it as a date.”

  She bites into her lip, studying me.

  “But I promise to be a proper companion this time. No physical contact.” I hold up my hands, showing her I’m safe.

  She frowns at me. She really doesn’t understand why I stopped touching her last time.

  “Why do you assume that’s what I want?” She challenges.

  Now it’s my turn to stare at her in confusion. Her blue eyes dance with mischief, perplexing as ever. “Okay. How about this?” I drop my voice a notch lower, leaning in closer to her. “No physical contact unless you ask for it first.” I smile. “Sound fair?”

  Her lips quirk up in a strange half grin when she realizes she’ll have complete control over me. “I think I can handle that,” she says, breathless.

  Who knew being the one in control would make her so happy. I realize this is what she wants, what she’s needed all along: me, this relationship on her terms. I’m game. Because by the end of the night, she’ll be begging me to touch her.

  “Tomorrow then.”

  “Tomorrow.” She smiles.

  I’m a goner.

  Chapter 40

  The last week has flown by in a whirl-wind. I can’t eat a solid meal, I’ve barely slept, I’m on my laptop 24/7 and I respond to my mom’s calls with one-line texts, just to say I’m fine, but busy with school, knowing that if I hear her voice I’ll break down.

  Each day I’ve questioned why I’m still here. But if I’m being honest with myself – the reason is Colt. He’s been my savior this week. Making sure I’m eating,
keeping me company in the computer lab, listening to my rants about McAllister, who’s conveniently gone away on business – I think to avoid me and Colt.

  Each night I’ve gone to Colt’s room, where he distracts me with old sitcoms on his computer, and board games from the rec room closet. He’s doing everything he knows how to do to keep me occupied – well not everything since I suspect there are extra-curricular activities he excels at beyond Monopoly, yet he hasn’t laid a finger on me.

  I even acted like my neck was stiff and sore once from hunching over my computer all day attempting to entice him into giving me another massage like he did in the lighthouse, but this time, he just clenched his jaw and asked if I needed another Diet Coke. When I’d said sure, he’d darted out of the room like there was a fire.

  He’s beyond frustrating. I have no clue what he’s thinking most of the time. But then yesterday he surprised me by asking me out again. I’d figured he’d chalked up our one and only date as a complete failure, so was I thrown off when he asked.

  Then he’d promised there’d be no contact between us and my smart mouth shot off without a filter as usual. I’d certainly caught him off guard, in a good way, judging by the look on his face.

  I head to my room to get ready and solicit MJ’s help again with my hair and makeup.

  “I thought you said the first date sucked?” she asks, squinting at me.

  “I thought it did.” But looking back with a clear head, without the scent of Colt and the crashing waves filling my senses, I recall details I’d missed in the moment. The low groan in his chest when I kissed him back.

  I want to kiss you. In fact, I want to do much more than just kiss you.

  Colt had been protecting me. From what?

  Oh.

  From himself. From the way he normally uses girls.

  But what did that mean? That he liked me only as a friend, and not on par with the type of girls he messes around with? Or was it that he liked me much more than a friend – above being treated with the carelessness he afforded the other girls? God this was confusing.

  “What?” MJ asks, stopping mid-brush stroke meeting my eyes in the mirror.