TEN DAYS

by Jenna Mills

  A quick blade of fear stabbed deep. He was scaring me. He was too still, too controlled, his voice too quiet. "What are you going to do?"

  He moved so fast I had no time to prepare, no time to ease back. But I wouldn't have, even if I'd realized he was closing in on me. He took me into his arms with a ferocity that made my heart slam hard and deep, his eyes hot on mine.

  "I'm not going to let anything happen to you—I promise you. I'm not going to let this touch you, ever, ever again."

  This.

  Not him—not Sloan.

  And everything inside me started to rush. "Aidan."

  But already he was pulling back, pulling away. "Take a shower. Get some sleep. Tomorrow—"

  "No." The word ripped out of me. A shower was not what I needed.

  "Kendall—"

  "Not without you," I said, standing there without backing down. "There's nothing I need tonight more than I need you."

  The truth, I realized. The truth, I knew. Him. I needed him to touch me, take me where the darkness couldn't find us—find him.

  Where darkness didn't exist.

  Where there was only us.

  His eyes flashed, and I knew, I knew the chains were breaking.

  "Please," I whispered. "Don't make me beg."

  His throat worked, and then he was there, a breath away, his hands cradling my face. "I'm the one who should be begging," he rasped. "I'm the one who doesn't deserve—"

  I didn't let him finish. I went up on my toes and lifted my mouth to his, drowning out whatever he was about to say.

  Words were not what I wanted.

  No More Chains

  The chains fell away—the chains disintegrated, and I had my answer. They were. They were all that had been holding him together.

  But I didn't want him together. I didn't want him in control. I wanted him one breath to the next. I wanted him raw—real. Unrehearsed. Unscripted. I wanted him in the moment with me, without worrying about five minutes, five hours, five months down the road.

  "Kendall," he murmured, his mouth open and greedy, taking and demanding, then demanding even more.

  "I thought you were gone," he said hoarsely, and I realized it then, realized it for the first time, what it must have been like for him on the other end of the phone, listening, hearing what was happening—but too far away to do anything.

  "When I heard you scream—"

  "Don't." I slid my hands from the warmth of his chest to the shadow of his jaw. "Don't relive it. Don't go back. Don't do that to yourself. I'm okay, and I'm here..."

  He kissed me again, harder, deeper. "The line went dead," he breathed, between kisses. "And I kept calling back..."

  "Sh-h-h," I tried. "It's over."

  But for him, it wasn't. His mouth slanted against mine, over and over and over, as if in doing so he could rewrite the past twelve hours and destroy the hell that had consumed him. "I called 911. And then I got there, and saw you in the grass."

  I pulled back. "Aidan."

  "You weren't moving."

  "Aidan," I said again, this time more forceful.

  His eyes were dark, unseeing. "And I started to run—"

  "I'm here now," I said, reaching for the edges of his shirt and dragging them over his shoulders, his head, until he stood there, bare-chested in his jeans. "And I'm very much alive."

  He sucked in a sharp breath.

  "Let me show you," I whispered, and finally the last of those chains fell away, unleashing him, the man he tried so hard to lock away.

  "Never again," he said, and any misunderstanding I had about his words crumbled the second he stepped toward me and put his hands, so big and capable, but shaking now, to the sides of my black tank top, and lifted. My denim shorts came next, leaving me standing in my bra and panties, also black, selected that morning when I'd fantasized about the day that lay ahead. About picking up where we'd left off the night before. About tearing down walls and coming together.

  But for a moment, that moment, he stood in the soft light of a single lamp, shadows falling around him, drenching him as he watched me, his eyes dark...on fire. And I could feel him, could feel everywhere he touched, lingered, even though he had not lifted a hand. And everywhere he touched, I burned—begged.

  Cried.

  "Never again," he murmured again, more quietly this time, and then he was reaching for me, and I was back in his arms. It was the only place I wanted to be. The heat of his body soaked into mine, chasing away everything else, all the remains of the day and the ugliness and the fear, leaving only us. And I knew I could drown there, drown forever.

  He dragged me to his bed and ripped away the comforter, sending the doll parts flying across the room. I took over then, pushing him to the mattress so I could straddle him, leaning down so that my hair rained down against his face. Watching him, never looking away, I unclasped my bra and let it fall away, and then he was dragging me down so that my breasts found his mouth.

  More, closer, was all I could think.

  In some barely functioning corner of my mind, I was aware that only hours before I'd resolved to leave him, walk away. That doing so was the only way to spare him from the ugly game his life had become. But in that moment, none of that mattered, only reaching down and finding him with my hand, hard and ready.

  "Yes," I whispered as he found me, too, his hand streaking lower, his fingers sliding into the moist warmth, filling me....readying me as I rocked against him, wanting.

  Needing.

  "Now," I said, and then my panties were gone, and he was there, thrusting up into me, thrusting deep, killing and resurrecting with each deep thrust, until everything shattered, and I fell back to earth—him.

  Where I belonged.

  Day 9

  The Things We Remember

  I don't know what woke me. Maybe it was a sound—or the absence of sound. Maybe the quick whisper of cold, the awareness inside me, a silent alarm. I only know that one minute I lay wrapped in a cocoon of warmth, but in the next I lay fully awake, my eyes straining against the darkness.

  He was gone. The absolute stillness told me. The emptiness. When Aidan lay beside me, I knew, I could feel the inferno of his body, the cadence of his breathing.

  I lay there a moment, in the predawn stillness, listening, waiting for him to come back. Seconds passed, dragged into minutes. I tried to go back to sleep, to clear my mind and drift until he returned.

  Instead, something I didn't understand pulled me from bed. Curiosity, I told myself. Not concern.

  Not caution.

  He was probably restless, downstairs so that he didn't wake me.

  Quietly I made my way through the house, the stiffness of my body reminding me that everything was far from okay.

  Around me, the house breathed. I could hear the wind blowing through the trees, the shrubbery scraping against the windows.

  But I didn't hear Aidan.

  The library stood drenched in shadow. The kitchen sprawled untouched. And from one moment to the next, I knew where Aidan was, what he was doing.

  The window confirmed my suspicion, revealing the carriage house across the backyard, the soft glow of lights through the panes of glass—and for the first time since I'd arrived, the door open.

  He was working. It was what he did, how he coped.

  I thought about going back upstairs, leaving him alone to exorcise his demons, privately, in his own way. It's what I should have done. But I couldn't. I couldn't turn and walk away, leaving him alone. Not after the way he'd made love to me. After the way he'd held me.

  I told myself to stay in the kitchen. To wait for him. It was what he wanted. He'd given me so much in such a short time, I shouldn't demand more. He would come back when he was ready.

  But I wasn't very good at listening to myself, not when I could see him still, the way he looked at me, as if the simple sight of me hurt.

  I'll never know what would have happened if I'd listened to myself.

  But I'll always wonder. />
  I went to him. I went outside. I went into the gauzy veil of early morning, when the world around me still slept, but the darkness was beginning to fade.

  The wind blew. I remember that. It was warm and soft, a caress to my arms and legs, bare beneath the t-shirt I'd dragged on. Aidan's shirt. The trees, all those old oaks, swayed, sending the Spanish moss shimmying. And a bird, there was one, just beginning to sing.

  I remember all that.

  Wrapped there in the serenity of that moment, I followed the stepping stones to the carriage house, but instead of slipping inside the door, I veered to the tangle of wild roses framing the window. I wanted to see—

  But I didn't. I didn't see him at the big desk across the room. I didn't see him on the leather sofa. I didn't see him anywhere.

  And the first sliver of unease sliced through the web of contentment.

  I stood there, not understanding.

  I stood there, confused.

  He kept his office closed, always. Even when he was inside. I'd been so consumed by in my own dreamland, the open door hadn't struck me as odd. It was night. No one would disturb him. Maybe he wanted fresh air—

  But now...

  Maybe there's a bathroom, I told myself as my heart started to slam. Maybe there's a separate room, and he's only out of view...

  But the minutes piled up on each other, and the slivers of unease came faster, sliced deeper.

  I eased toward the door and started to call out, but something stopped me. Caution, maybe. Instinct. The possibility that I wasn't alone. Around me the wind was still blowing, softly, but loud enough to conceal the sound of breathing—or footsteps.

  You were warned.

  You should have listened.

  No.

  The denial screamed through me, shattering the vestiges of caution.

  No.

  Not me, I remembered realizing.

  The game, the vendetta, it was never about hurting me.

  Frantically, I spun around and found a broken branch on the ground. It wasn't much, but I grabbed it and slipped inside the carriage house—

  His world.

  It was his world, I realized instantly. I could feel him there, smell the leather and sandalwood. And the walls of bookcases, filing cabinets. All so neat and tidy, filled with research material and novels and, finally, at last...the missing pieces of his life.

  There he was, Nicky, the boy I remembered, standing barefoot and bare-chested in a creek with a crawfish in each hand. And another picture, with Dauphine—and Adelaide.

  And another-with a buddy.

  Sloan.

  His childhood friend. His best friend—

  His best man.

  I stepped closer. There were no pictures of Laurel, or anyone else in the wedding party, but there in a simple wooden frame, Aidan and Sloan stood side-by-side in black tuxedoes and bow ties, in a church, at an altar. Around them, candelabras glowed. And they were smiling—not the posed kind, but the kind that came from laughter. Shared memories. Warm.

  Happy.

  And deep inside, I started to hurt.

  Aidan kept a picture of himself and Sloan in his office.

  His friend.

  His enemy.

  I made myself rip away. I knew it wasn't the time. I needed to find—

  I didn't know what.

  Him. Aidan.

  I needed to find him—

  Manilla folders sat stacked on a large wooden table. A few notebooks. Some papers. A simple ivory coffee cup—a single serve coffee maker on a counter against the wall. And his desk. It was big and basic, undeniably masculine with a laptop and a yellow tablet side-by-side, and something smaller near the edge, cardboard—and instantly familiar. I reached for it, but the writing on the single sheet of paper beneath stopped me.

  Profile

  Primary traits: Trusting, naive, gullible, insatiable, hot

  Weaknesses: Needs to be needed, vulnerable, fearless

  Strengths: Curiosity, compassion, passion, determination

  Wants: To be loved, to be in control

  Backdoor: Make her feel special

  Cold. It came so fast. Mechanically, I made myself look away, to the big leather chair, where a lockbox sat open. I still held the stick, held it tight, my hand curled bloodlessly around the rough layers of bark. But the second I looked inside the box, everything else fell away. The stick fell from my hand.

  "No," I breathed. Or maybe I screamed. Or maybe the screaming was only inside me. It was all blurring, pressing closer, the stack of matchbooks and the black marker, the black nail polish, the dolls—dolls identical to those in Laurel's room. Naked, their eyes sightless—piled high on top of a coil of rope.

  Shaking, everything shaking, I reached for one, picked her up—and saw the knife.

  I froze. Everything froze. Everything but the pieces falling around me, the horrible ugly pieces, sliding with eerie precision into a horrible ugly picture.

  Wake up, I told myself. Wake up, I commanded. It was time to wake up. The nightmare needed to end—

  But the naked doll stayed in my hand, while my other slipped against the unmarked bottles beneath the rope, each containing small pills, one bottle yellow, another white.

  Once you're in his world, you're in his story.

  That's his gift.

  I never heard footsteps. I never heard breathing. I never heard anything, not until his voice cut into the dead silence.

  "What are you doing?"

  His World, His Story

  I spun around. I spun around fast. I spun around with the doll still in my hand, and found him there, in the doorway. In his jeans, but no shirt. No shoes. His hair mussed, his jaw unshaven, exactly as it had been when I moved over him, and gave him everything.

  "Aidan," I whispered.

  Aidan, I cried.

  Because I knew.

  Finally, at last, I knew.

  He knew how to plot. He knew how to manipulate, deceive. He was a master storyteller.

  It was what he did.

  All he knew.

  I'd been warned. I'd been warned over and over. Even Dauphine had begged me to leave. Even Dauphine had warned me that some darkness could not be escaped.

  Or erased.

  "This is my office," he said.

  Don't shake, I told myself. Don't show fear. "I was looking for you. I got worried when I woke up and found you gone."

  He stepped closer. Something glinted in his hand. Something long and metal. "I told you not to come in here."

  Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. "The door was open."

  The strangest look came into his eyes, a flat calm, as if he was disconnecting from himself, fading, stepping aside. "You shouldn't have done that."

  The knife. It was in the box. I could grab it—

  "But you did," he said, with another slow step. "And now here we are."

  Less than two hours before, he'd been on top of me, inside me. And I'd welcomed him. Wanted him.

  Loved him.

  "I don't understand," I said carefully. There was no point in pretending, playing games. The truth was too obvious. "It was you," I said, trying not to cry. "It was you all along."

  Trying to scare me, while at the same time, vowing to protect me.

  His face twisted, all those beautiful lines I knew so well contorting into a mask I didn't recognize. "Don't look so shocked, doll baby," he said. "You knew what you were walking into. You knew I wasn't a schoolboy eager to please. You were told—you were warned. You knew I didn't want you here—"

  Spinning, God, everything was spinning, what I thought I knew with what I realized I'd never known.

  Trap.

  Eyes wide open, I'd still walked straight into his trap.

  His world.

  "Tell me this is all a mistake," I said. "Tell me this is for a book." Like the time he'd chased me through the weeds of the 9th Ward, or when he'd tied me up with strips of black silk. "—research." Something. Anything.

  A
single corner of his mouth curved into cruel parody of a smile. "And you'll buy it?"

  My heart kicked hard.

  "Do you really expect me to believe you're that naive?"

  A thousand pieces. I was shattering, and I could feel every one of them. "I know things aren't always what they seem."

  He smiled. "Do you? Are you sure?"

  Keeping my eyes on his, I lowered my free hand into the box, toward the knife. "You could have said no," I pointed out. "You could have told my uncle no."

  "And lose another agent?" he asked. "Not the best idea."

  "So...what?" I said, fumbling for the knife. "You decided to script everything instead? To turn the interview into some kind of sick, twisted game, pretending to play along, while at the same time trying to scare me off?"

  His eyes met mine, and I knew. I knew.

  Because there was nothing there.

  Nothing.

  All the burn. All the want. The passion and the pain, the hesitation—the tenderness. It was all gone, stripped away like an eraser to a page of words, leaving only blank spaces.

  "You don't scare easy," he said mildly.

  The twisting inside me wouldn't stop. The bleeding. "God," I murmured, and finally, my defenses faltered, and my voice broke. "Sloan was right. About everything. I should have listened to him and Anna—"

  I broke off fast, but not fast enough.

  Aidan's eyes narrowed, the first spark of emotion flickering. "Anna?"

  "I know that's not her real name," I tried to cover. "But she told me how you manipulated her, too. How she grew to fear you."

  Aidan stood there so very, very still.

  I had no idea if he believed me.

  So I plowed on. "Tell me, did I react okay when I opened the box yesterday?" I spat. "The way you wanted?" The memory made me sick. "Did that make you feel good? Powerful—"

  Blank. He was so blank.

  "You spend so much time playing God with your characters, you don't even know anything else, do you?" My fingers closed around the cool metal of the knife. "What happens now?" I asked. "We can't erase this—we can't pretend I didn't see all this."