King’s Captive

by Amber Bardan

  He’s at my side so fast, his arm around me, pulling me to him.

  I don’t want to be pulled. I want to be the one pounding on him with my fists. I want to scream. It’s too hard to scream.

  My face presses against his chest. His bare chest. His heart hammers right under my ear.

  “No, it’s not fair. Nothing has been fair. He wasn’t old enough to understand. I had to protect him.” His fingers curl in my hair, and his breath is on top of my head. “I had to choose him.”

  The sobs break free.

  Maybe for the first time I understand Julius. I’d do the same. In a way I did. I put Thomas first. I hate what Julius did but not why he did it.

  I pull back, sobs slamming to a halt. “But you brought him here, does he know now?”

  “I explained before he came.” Julius looks at me. His chest glistens where I cried all over him. “He’s smart and he was ready. He knows you don’t remember some things.”

  “I can’t believe any of this...” I rub my temples. A million things I never understood fall into place. Like the way Julius would look at me sometimes, and strange things he’d say. I’m flooded with glimpses, and there’s a billion more that mean nothing. My gaze snaps to his. There’s an ache there that makes me want to throw the rage away. “You can’t tell me that this has all been so selfless.” I step out of his reach. “You’ve been angry at me. I’ve seen it.”

  His brows gather.

  “You were furious the day you took me—with my father, yes, but I’ve felt it again and again every day since I’ve been here.” I spread my arms. “So tell me, Julius, what do you want from me. Just what the hell are we really doing here?”

  His hands close at his sides, the anger seizing his features proving me right even as his mouth poises to tell me I’m wrong. “You don’t think it’s right to be angry?” His jaw forms a hard line. “I shouldn’t be furious my wife and child were taken from me and I was left to die?”

  “Why are you angry with me?”

  He clamps a hand over his mouth and drags it down, looking at me with his head tilted back, as though his entire being recoiled from the question. “I’m not angry with you.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to lie to me?”

  He shakes his head and his scowl flashes teeth. “You can’t begin to understand.”

  “That’s because you don’t tell me a damn thing.” I lunge forward, and plant my palm on his chest with a shove. “Tell me what I did to you?”

  He grabs my hand, and suddenly it’s clamped behind my back, his chest knocks mine, and he’s right in my face. “I did not believe you could truly forget us.”

  Breath rushes from my chest, leaving me empty.

  “Every second of every waking moment we were apart, every thought, every breath, every time my heart beat, it was of you, for you, because of you.” He squeezes me tighter, so I feel every muscle and fiber in my torso. “I couldn’t just walk onto the ranch and get you. It took years and unspeakable things. You have no idea the price I’ve had to pay or what I’ve done for you.”

  My bones might break, but not from his grip.

  “I thought you’d take one look at me and it’d all come back.”

  He lets go and he’s gone, and my skin is cold. And he’s backing away from me as though I’m the one who’s a danger to him.

  “But it didn’t. So I told myself you must know, unconsciously, when you put yourself between me and your father.” He looks away from me. “But you didn’t trust me. You were able to fool me because I’d never imagined a world in which you’d hurt or betray me.”

  My eyes shut for an instant. I see the blood on his temple from when I’d hit him with the shovel. The pain in his eyes.

  I press a fist to my lips.

  “When I tried to explain, you’d been through too much too soon, and just about lost your mind.” His eyes glare red around the blue. “So I’ll admit I couldn’t always be gracious, because how could you not remember me when you are what kept me alive? Every day I didn’t die, I didn’t die for you.”

  My shoulders roll forward, and my stomach clamps tight.

  “When you shut down so completely that the only glimpses I had of my Sarah were the ones where you were mad.” He approaches me again. “So maybe I didn’t mind making you a little angry. So maybe I thought that might draw you out.”

  His words, the magnitude and truth of them, wrap around me—as does the enormity of all he’s left out.

  I gasp three times, and try to make my throat work, my mouth move. “If you loved me the way you’d have me believe, if you were so concerned about me and my mind, then why risk taking me at all?” My hand drops to clutch my waist. “If everything you did was for me, then you could have left me with my father if I was doing okay. You could make that sacrifice if people would die and I’d be hurt. Unless having me back was more important than having me well?”

  His eyes flare and his teeth snap shut.

  “You doubt how I love you?” He strides to the bed and snatches up his pants. “Put some clothes on and come with me.”

  We’re not holding hands, not in the way of linked fingers and palms pressed together. His grip engulfs mine. He leads me across the island to the church. Our footsteps amplify down the aisle. He takes me to the very back of the chapel, pulls keys from his pocket and unlocks the utility closet, then flicks on the light. I step inside. There’s a metallic tang of dust in the space, and boxes and crates of junk on the shelves.

  Julius slides down a long cardboard box and sets it on the floor, then unfolds the top. I lean over. It’s half-filled with rolled newspapers.

  “What is this supposed to tell me?” I pick up a newspaper and break the plastic, then unroll it.

  “There’s only seven months left until we’re caught up to where we left off.”

  I tug the sides of the paper, and look at the date, and breathe in too much dusty air. My lungs get tight. I’m looking at the future. This paper is from next month.

  I glance at Julius. He crouches next to the box, eyes on me.

  He doesn’t need to say anything. I shove the paper back into the box. I’ve been existing in a time warp, and Julius has kept me there. Drip-fed me news from the past.

  “What’s the point of this?”

  “The point is whether you knew it or not, I’ve been telling you the truth, over and over again.” He closes the box. “Every day that you’ve been here, I’ve given you hints.” He takes down another box, but this one he sets down gently, and his hand hovers over the top. “I’ve given you bite-size pieces of our life.” He opens the box. “And I’ve prayed that eventually those pieces would click together.” He slides the box toward me until it hits my knees. “And that you’d remember.”

  I can’t help looking inside. And really, it could be junk, but I know it’s not. There’s a ziplock bag of shells on top. I take them out.

  “You collected those on our honeymoon.”

  My mind flashes with images—not of the honeymoon but of all the nonsensical things Julius has given me. Maybe not nonsensical at all.

  He takes out a CD. “The song we first danced to.”

  There’s a husky thickness to his voice.

  My breath catches. I know that song. It’s the one I listen to over and over again.

  Sorrow fills me to my marrow. My chest wheezes, my eyes burn.

  He takes out a blue blanket, and his thumb flicks under his chin. My nose itches. I know what he’s going to say. “The blanket you first wrapped Tom in.”

  I choke. Cough, and choke and cry, then scramble from the closet. He grabs me, arms around my waist. I struggle, and twist, but I already know how useless it is to try to get away.

  “I love you.” He squeezes me.

  I don’t want to get away.
/>   “I have always, always loved you.”

  I cover my mouth and nose with both hands.

  “Soon you’ll understand the whys.”

  His chest rises and falls against my back and I feel each breath as though they came from my own lungs. I love him too. Not a leftover sentiment from the past. I love him here and now. His pain and his hope stick to me in a way that will never be washed off. I can’t stop crying, not just for me—for him and for Thomas. They had a wife and a mother.

  And I took her from them.

  The life I’ve lost hovers inside me, a cloudy picture, but it’s one he put there with his hints and clues. It’s not my life. That woman isn’t me. The things he’s shown me are of another woman, another Sarah.

  “You loved her.” I shake my head. “I’m not her.”

  “Yes you are.” He pushes himself harder into me.

  I pry his arms from around me and step free. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to remember.” I pull together all my strength to look at him. “This might be all there ever is.”

  The words hit him, just as I feared—his lips turn down, his jaw pulses. No matter how he claims to love me, I’m playing second fiddle to a memory.

  My chest aches like there’s something stretching under my ribs, like it’s all about to tear.

  Footsteps thud at the entrance. “Boss?”

  Julius wrenches his gaze from me with palpable force. “Yeah?”

  “There’s work to do for tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. Yes, because tomorrow this man of mine has a shipment of guns coming.

  How did we get here?

  He glances at me, just a flick of his eyes. Then his chin lifts. “I’m coming.”

  What the hell happened to us?

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I drag my sleep-deprived bones into the kitchen. Despite the big night of weapons dealing that Julius has ahead of him, apparently there’s time for a little early-morning sausage making. There’s time for that even though he hasn’t spoken to me since the chapel yesterday.

  Julius loads the sausage casing onto the machine at the kitchen table. I fill a glass of water from the tap, take two strong painkillers and try to ignore the stupid man who hasn’t glanced up since I entered the room.

  I gulp the water. The pills scratch my throat. Our conversation replays in the silence between us. In each sound he makes that is not speaking.

  I’m not her. Does he love this me?

  I approach the table and set the glass down on an empty space. My attention travels over the sausage mince and the scent of the spices he’s used reaches me. “You’re using fennel seed.”

  He hums some kind of agreement, but doesn’t look at me. Fennel and pork is my most favorite combo, but his least. His favorite sausage is cooking the salami fresh.

  An itchy feeling inches through my body.

  I stare at him. He doesn’t glance up. The first of the mince fills the skin, and he twists, then twists, and twists, a line of perfect sausages.

  I gulp. It’s like the pills are wedged in my throat. He’s never avoided me before. That’s my trick. He never responded to what I said, but the way he’s acting, it could be true.

  Maybe I’m a substitute.

  I still feel his hands on me, I feel his breath on my mouth, and the way he looks at me. He keeps pumping out sausage like it’s the last thing he needs to get done on this earth.

  I remember what it’s like when he’s inside me, and I can’t believe anything I’ve learned is more real than that. My fingers curl. I want to throw things at him.

  I want him to throw things at me.

  I want that irrational passion between us. There’s no deception that can survive it.

  Sausages spill across the tabletop like guts and innards.

  I know all the different labels for emotions, yet none of those names explain what I’m feeling now. I walk around the table and stand behind him, then wrap my arms around his waist and press my cheek against his back. He misses a twist, creating a giant monster of a sausage, then picks the rhythm up again.

  I never told him I love him. Maybe he doesn’t know. I squeeze him harder. Maybe he doesn’t know how I’m hurting. How now I’m suffering for him too. There are images in my head of those burns on him coming about. What happened to us? There’s a great big gaping hole inside me that’s filled with pity for what he’s been through. I breathe in his woody scent and it hits that aching place in my lungs.

  There’s only one way I know to show him what’s happening with me.

  My hands travel down, and I cup the front of his jeans. There’s been one other time I wanted him this much and hurt this bad.

  “I’ll take great pleasure in pinning you down.”

  He offered me something then, and right now it’s the only thing I can imagine that can break through these barbed barriers between us.

  “I want you to hold me down,” I say. The bulk under my fingers leaps, and I grip it harder. “Please...”

  Julius grabs my hand in one of his, and the sausage spurts out of control. He turns off the machine. “Not now.”

  The dry rattle of his voice shakes all my internal organs. Shakes them with a kind of hurt that’s 90 percent pure gut-twisting rage. My hand strains in the grip of his as I try to tug free—he’s just so much stronger. He lets go of my hand and I stumble back.

  He turns to me, finally. His narrowed gaze matches mine every furious heartbeat I stare him down. For a second, just a second, I’m filled with every bitter, murderous intention I’ve ever held toward him. A stupid saying comes to mind. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. I’ve never understood until today how a woman could be so enraged.

  I do now.

  The sting of his rejection is brutalizing. The fact is, whether I remember our past or not, whether I chose to be here, I’ve never felt unwanted or undesired, and that in the least is something sacred.

  Maybe the only sacred thing I have left.

  I move around him, around the table, and take in everything in my peripheral. He tracks me, moving only so much as to remain facing me. For once I’m the predator, and I fully intend to stake him out and break him down.

  My attention catches on the cell phone he rested on the table edge, and I snatch it up and back away.

  “Put that down.” His posture shifts, now he’s stalking too, inching toward me.

  The phone drops to the ground, and I slam my heel down on top of it. The screen cracks, but doesn’t shatter the way I’d hoped. The crunch still makes me smile.

  “What are you doing?” he demands.

  Breaking your everything.

  I approach the table opposite him. “Didn’t you say you’d take great pleasure in pinning me down, Julius?”

  “Not like this.” His words might be even, but the bulge under his zipper belies his denial.

  “How does it need to be, then?” I rest my fingertips on the back of a chair. “When you’re not pissed off?”

  His body gets tighter, his hands close.

  “When you’re more in control?” The table sits squarely between us, but it’s the least of our obstacles. “When I haven’t asked questions you don’t want to answer.” My voice gets higher than I meant it to, and all I can think of is her, and me, and us, and where we stand. “When you’re comfortable? Would that be better?”

  He breathes faster, and maybe this is crazy but at least I have his full attention. I want his attention. I want his love. I want him so close and so fixed on me not even a ghost could squeeze between us.

  Julius steps right into the table. “Nothing between us has ever been comfortable.”

  The chair bumps my abdomen as I lean in. “I don’t need comfortable, but you swore you’d be honest.”

 
His expression eases a bit—not much, not all the way, but his squint is gone and somehow I know it’s giving in. “Are you sure that this is what you want from me?”

  “Oh, I want it.” Want everything.

  Julius smiles, but instead of walking toward me he goes into the kitchen. “Understand that if you tell me to stop, you had better mean it, because I will.”

  My tongue gets sticky. I won’t ask for mercy, I know that much. Yet I’m having visions of what he might do to make me.

  He washes his hands, then scrubs all the way up his forearms.

  “Remember when you said you believe me?” His voice breaks through my racing thoughts.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe I love you?”

  Sadness wraps around me, taking the edge off the rising lust. That’s the real question here. The one that has me acting crazy. The one that has me pushing to drive him insane. “Why do I need to believe that now?”

  He dries his hands, then throws the towel down. “Because in a few moments when you’re on the ground, you might be pressed to think I don’t.”

  I swallow, pounding heartbeats making their way up from my stomach to my throat. “I believe you.”

  He slams both hands on the counter, the smacking sound vibrating through the room. “Then run.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  A shot of force enters my bloodstream and I move. I don’t run for the kitchen door, outside into the fresh air like I want, because there will be others around today. I rush for the hallway, shoes slipping on the tiles as I round the corner.

  I kick off my heels, and they bounce off the wall, then it’s my bare feet pounding down the long hallway. Louder, heavier steps echo mine, but these are slower—one thunk for every two of my fast strides.

  He’s walking.

  Julius takes his time while I run. However, this resort home is huge and I slip into the poolroom, which has doors to three other areas. I make a snap decision and race to the outside door, open it as softly as I can, slip through, shut it behind me, then duck down. I run along the side of the house in a crouch, then open the sliding door to the dining room, slink back inside and close the door.