Victor stumbled into Riley’s room and found him sleeping beside the toilet in his bathroom. “Riley, wake up! Where’s Sierra?”
“Huh?” Riley mumbled.
“She’s disappeared. Do you know where she is?”
“What? No. Are you sure she isn’t somewhere in the palace?”
“They’re searching as we speak, but everyone seems to be moving in slow motion from this illness.”
Riley sat up quickly and threw up in the toilet. Victor left the room.
“Where did you go, Sierra?” Victor said out loud to himself as he looked out the window, feeling incredibly peeved for being fooled by a girl. He’d believed, like his father, she was too weak to run. The lame excuse of her suffering from the flu that was issued the night before at the engagement party had made him look like a fool because anyone who was someone knew she was trying to end her life just so she wouldn’t have to marry him. The embarrassment he felt for being played by a girl enraged him to the core. She would pay for this!
Chapter 3
The sun peeked over the tips of the tall mountains and lit up the sky. Sierra’s senses came back to her one at a time. Her sense of smell was first, as she became aware of the delicious aromas filling her nose. Hearing came next, but all she could hear was silence. She could feel the soft warm bed under her and the mound of blankets over her. She knew she was lying on her side with something heavy and warm draped over her waist. She opened her eyes and saw a wall, painted a pale white. A clock sat on an end table beside the bed, showing the time as 9:58 a.m.
She couldn’t remember how she came to be in this bed or how she got out of the lake, but she was fairly certain she was alive.
A shudder ran through her body, confirming that she was definitely alive — and cold. To her alarm, the heavy warm object on her waist moved! She lifted the mass of blankets and looked underneath to discover that she was wearing only her panties and bra and that the thing draped over her waist was an arm. She immediately sensed that her back was warm, although she couldn’t feel anything touching her.
Her heart rate tripled. She had no memory of anything after jumping from the plane. She had heard of bad things happening at crosser homes, how people had suffered worse fates after leaving Rendier. She had wondered how much of that was just lies invented to scare people away from the idea of crossing. But now, as she lay in a strange bed almost naked and, from the looks of the hairy arm draped over her, with a man lying beside her, her panic turned to anger — anger at herself, anger at the man who felt he could take liberties with her while she was unconscious.
She jumped up screaming, kicking and flailing her arms to free herself from the layers of blankets. Her sudden outburst and struggle awoke her bedmate. He tried to calm her down but made no effort to keep her in bed. He had his hands raised with his palms out and his fingers splayed to show he meant no harm.
“Hey, it’s okay. Calm down,” he said to the panicking girl.
“Get away f-from me!” She stumbled out of the bed and fell to the floor as pain ripped through her left ankle and foot.
Paul jumped out of the bed to help her. She sat on the floor, curled up in a ball holding her left knee close to her chest and wincing with pain. Her body trembled uncontrollably.
He approached her.
“St-tay away f-from me!” she screamed. Her chattering teeth and shivering made it difficult for her to speak. She stretched one of her arms out to keep him away, while clutching her bent leg close to her chest.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. He stepped closer. She noticed now that he was wearing only his underwear.
She slid away from him back toward the corner. “Where am I, and why am I und-d-dressed? What did you do to me? And wh-who are you?” She couldn’t spit the questions out fast enough.
He smiled and sat down on the floor at arm’s length away from her. He felt slightly hurt that her presumptions of him were evil. “You’re in Baylend,” he explained. “You were on the crosser plane last night, remember? I picked you up and brought you to my house. You were frozen to the bone. I had to … I was only warming you up with my body heat.”
She looked back at him nervously, trying to figure out what he was going to do next. She knew she couldn’t run away. She didn’t know where she was, and something was wrong with her foot and ankle.
“Nothing happened, I swear. My name is Paul. Are you hurt?”
“What kind of question is th-that? Of course I’m hurt!” Anger flashed in her beautiful hazel eyes, which Paul now got a good look at for the first time. Their color was on the green side of hazel, with a definitive brown border around the edge of her irises. The perfectly shaped eyebrows that he had admired in their relaxed state were now arched in anger, and after having slept with wet hair, her locks were kinked in disarray and flopped forward over one shoulder. This girl was full of fire. But he figured as much the night before when he saw the markings all over her back and legs. He looked at her legs again in the morning light, and a tight knot formed in his stomach.
Paul realized she must be feeling vulnerable because of her nakedness, so he reached up and grabbed a blanket off the bed and handed it to her. He got up and walked over to the dresser, took out a pair of jogging pants, and put them on. Then he pulled out an oversized tee-shirt and tossed it to her.
The shirt landed on her head. She pulled it off her face and looked at him in confusion. What was he playing at now?
“Well, put it on,” he said. “Clearly you’re worried that I’m going to take advantage of you in your helpless state. Cover up so you can think straight.” He knew he sounded gruff, but he felt his actions were necessary to help her to relax.
She watched him leave the room, then she hurriedly pulled the shirt on before he came back. She tried to stand up, but her foot wasn’t going to cooperate. She hopped toward the bed, trying to keep her balance. She tumbled onto the bed whimpering in pain and crawled back under the blankets to get warm. She could hear voices from outside the door. In walked Paul and an older woman. They stood over the bed and looked at her.
“Nice to see you awake, honey,” the woman said. “How do you feel?”
“My foot hurts,” Sierra confessed. She admired the woman’s beautiful features and her short, wavy brown hair. She stood several inches shorter than the boy next to her.
“Any other pain?” the woman asked pleasantly.
Sierra thought for a second. “Just some aches. Nothing bad.”
“Are you hungry?”
Sierra nodded her head.
Paul stepped out of the room and came right back with a tray of food. It must have been sitting just outside the door. He brought it over to her, and the woman helped her sit up in bed. He placed the tray in her lap, then stood up straight and looked at her.
He still wasn’t wearing a shirt, just the jogging pants. He was lean and trim, with impressive muscle tone and broad shoulders. As she looked more closely at his face, she could see he wasn’t very old, probably in his early twenties, maybe younger, and exceptionally good looking. Victor and Riley had nothing on this guy.
He had dark brown hair and thick bushy eyebrows. His eyes were the kind a girl could drown in — dark brown, almost black. He had a perfectly straight narrow nose with just the right amount of bridge and a small indentation at the tip. The ridges and valley between his nose and top lip helped shape his mesmerizing mouth. The lower lip was plump, and the upper one thin with the shape of an “m.” His cheekbones weren’t extremely prominent but were high set, elongating his cheeks down to a firm jaw line that was shadowed with a slight amount of dark stubble. His light skin tone accentuated his dark features even further. The combination resulted in perfection. Plain and simple, Paul was gorgeous, and just looking at him made her mouth go dry.
“What would you like us to call you, honey?”
“Hmm?” She pulled her eyes off Paul and tried to swallow.
“What’s your name?” Paul asked with a soothing to
ne in his voice.
“Sara.”
“Okay, Sara. This is my mother Elsie.”
“We’ll step out now and let you eat your breakfast,” Elsie said, ushering Paul out the door.
Sierra had not planned to use the name “Sara.” It just fell out of her mouth when he asked. She wished she had used a different name like Amy or Lisa and not one so similar to her real name, but her mind turned to mush after her in-depth appraisal of Paul. As she thought about it now, the name “Sara” would symbolize a dramatic change in her life. That was what she was trying to do: change her life, change her future. Her mind went back to her father. He was always full of one-line aphorisms that were deep in meaning like “You can’t change the past” or “Living in the past makes you ignore the present and prepares for a bad future,” but her favorite was “Stop should-ing all over yourself.”
She looked at the warm plate of food in front of her and stopped for a moment to appreciate the fact she was alive. She had survived the jump somehow, and her future was now in her own hands, not in the Rawlings’. She dug into the food Paul had brought her: fried potatoes, toast, and some type of warm cream sauce over scrambled eggs, with a glass of milk. She was grateful for the meal, and it really hit the spot. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten. By the time she finished, her foot was throbbing, and she wished Paul and Elsie would come back in.
While she waited, she looked around the bedroom and scrutinized her surroundings. To her left was the door, a dresser, and double doors that she assumed went to a closet. The wall at the foot of the bed was a solid white wall. There was a window on the wall to her right, and in the right corner was a cushioned armchair. A simple white valance stretched across the top of the window, with white sheers that partially obstructed the view but still allowed the light to come in. To her immediate right sat an end table, with a matching end table on the other side of the bed. There was a lamp with a popular sports team logo and an alarm clock on the table to the right. There were no pictures, no posters, and nothing else that personalized the room. The dark waxed hardwood floor completed the emotionless room.
About thirty minutes later Paul returned. He knocked first and waited for her to tell him to come in. “Here, let me take that for you,” he said, leaning over the bed to take the tray.
She looked up into his dark eyes. “I’m sorry for panicking like that,” she said. “It’s only that I woke up and was so disoriented and …”
“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t need to apologize.” Paul cracked a smile on one side of his mouth.
“Your other crossers probably don’t give you this much trouble.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”
She looked puzzled. “Isn’t this a crosser home?”
“Yes, but I’m not … I’ve never taken care of … well, someone like you.” Let alone a girl, he thought.
“I don’t understand.”
“My job is to pick up crossers after a drop. I picked you up and brought you here. The other beds in the house were already full, and it was either take you somewhere else or put you in my own bed.”
She looked out the window in a daze. “There was a bad storm.”
“Yeah, it was a total blizzard. They told me a plane was flying in, and I wondered who would fly through such a mess. They must have had some valuable cargo on board.”
“So, I must have made it to the road for you to find me, right?”
“No, I found you stuck in the ice about fifteen feet into the lake.”
Her eyes widened, and her voice became soft. “I never made it out of the lake?”
“Well, not on your own. But that’s my job, remember?”
The situation suddenly became clear to her. “Thank you for saving me, and warming me,” she said. “I understand my cold wet clothes had to come off so I wouldn’t freeze to death. I’ll be sure to thank your mother for undressing me to save my life.”
“Well, she … sort of … wasn’t the one who undressed you. I did.”
Her eyes opened up so wide that Paul thought they might fall out if he gently tapped her on the back of the head.
“She was busy with the other crossers when I brought you here. I didn’t know we were full” — thanks to my brother — “and she was going to send you to another crosser home, but I told her I’d take care of you.”
Sierra was becoming all sorts of nervous. Just when she thought this crosser home might be safe, her mind was going in another direction.
“Didn’t she think it was wrong for you to undress me?”
Paul felt insulted. Who did this ungrateful girl think she was? “No offense,” he said, “but you’re just another crosser to us. You needed help, and we gave it. Does it really matter who undressed you? You’re alive aren’t you?”
She stared at him, trying to decipher his words. They were curt, impatient, and slightly rude. His bushy eyebrows had knit together in frustration, and it worried her. Yes, this boy and his mother had helped her, and so far as she knew, she hadn’t been abused, plus they had fed her. Maybe she was overreacting.
“Should I have put you back where I found you when I learned there wasn’t room for you here?”
“No, Paul. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me. I’m just a little confused is all.”
“Join the club, but you can rest assured I’m not a bad guy. I’m here to protect you, not hurt you like other people in your life have done.”
She stared at him, taking in his honesty. She believed he meant what he said. She nodded to him that she understood.
“Look, I’m supposed to ask you about your payment,” he said.
“Payment?”
“Well, you know, money so we can take care of you?” he was extremely uncomfortable asking the injured girl for money, but it was procedure.
“Oh, right. Where’s my coat?”
“Why?”
“My payment. It’s in my coat,” she said in a slightly frustrated tone.
“Oh, then it was probably a bad thing we burned your clothes.”
“What?!”
“Just kidding,” he smiled and laughed. “They’re in the closet drying.”
“That’s not funny.”
Paul went to the closet and pulled out her coat. “I have to say, this baggie bubble idea was pretty smart. It probably saved your life.”
“Thanks.”
“Did someone recommend it?”
“No.”
“You didn’t want to sink in the water, so you made a life-vest with baggies?”
“No, I didn’t know I’d break through the ice. It was more for padding, you know, to make me look bigger.”
“Well, it saved your life.” Paul lowered his voice and spoke in a more serious tone. “My dad said they pulled twelve bodies from the lake this morning.”
Her mind went immediately to the plane ride. She could see the anxious faces of the other passengers, people just like her who only wanted freedom from tyranny. Her eyes watered as she realized she actually would have died if Paul hadn’t pulled her out. “They only wanted freedom,” she said. “I guess they got it.”
Seeing her face blank out and turn to sorrow with tears filling her eyes was almost too much for Paul to watch. He didn’t like seeing this kind of emotion on her face because it brought into sharp relief just how difficult her life had been in Rendier. He wanted to see her happy again, or even spitting angry, as long as the anguished look on her face would disappear. Sam and his parents had never talked about this emotional roller-coaster with the crossers. He wouldn’t have volunteered to do this if he had known how difficult it would be. Paul’s voice was nearly a whisper. “Are things so terrible in your country that it’s worth dying to get away from it?”
“Yes.” She wiped her eyes.
Paul handed her the coat. She flipped it open and started ripping the bottom inside hem. A large zipper bag slid out containing a bulky brown envelope.
“How much?�
� she asked him, clearing her throat.
“I, uh, don’t know. How much you got?” he teased, trying to lighten the mood, attempting to put a smile back on her face.
“That’s not funny either. Go ask your mother.” Once she said this, his own smile faded quickly, and his mood changed. Then he left the room.
Sierra didn’t know what she had said wrong, but clearly something had hit a nerve. He couldn’t possibly be upset because she wouldn’t tell him how much money she had with her, could he? This guy was hard to read, but then again, it had only been an hour since she had woken up in this strange place with a strange boy cuddled up next to her. She was still a little disoriented.
Sierra unzipped the bag and looked inside at the stacks of hundred dollar bills. Together with the three other envelopes still hidden in her coat, she had a total of a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. That was all she had left of her father’s insurance money after paying the crossing fee. She hoped staying at Paul’s house wouldn’t cost much. She would need this money to start her new life.
Paul left the room and stomped into the kitchen. Go ask your mother? Great. Obviously this girl thought he was nothing more than a worthless kid. Without even knowing him, she had put him in the same position of insignificant household member that his parents did. Would anyone ever acknowledge him as an adult? He was almost twenty, for crying out loud. He’d probably have to become a brain surgeon to be seen as competent by these people. And even then, if someone in his family needed a brain operation, they probably wouldn’t consider him good enough and would ask for another doctor.
He found his mother in the kitchen. “What’s our fee?” he asked.
“A hundred a week.” She recognized stress and anger in his voice. “Are you okay, Paul?”
“Just dandy.” He turned on his heel and walked back to his room. He told Sierra what the fee was. She pulled the money from her stash and handed it to him. He snatched it and left.
When Paul came back several minutes later, he brought warm blankets and dumped them on the bed by Sierra. “There you go. These will get you warm again.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned up against the dresser.
Scars Of Defiance Page 4