by Riley Jean
I blinked away the memory and smoothed my features, but it was too late. When my eyes focused on Vance again, he was staring at me intently.
“That! Right there!” he said, pointing at my face.
“What?” I asked, wide-eyed.
“You’re fighting it! I can literally see you start to feel something, then you shut it out. Why do you do that?”
“Uh…” I fumbled. Busted.
“What were you thinking about? Right then?”
“Um…” I was too confused to make anything up on the spot. “Last night?” I admitted, feeling my face grow even hotter.
He nodded. “And you were smiling. Do I need to draw you a diagram?” There was no victory in this revelation, no joy in backing me into a corner. His face held nothing but the same determination and confusion. He knew I hadn’t admitted anything yet, and that meant there was still something missing.
“Am I just a Todd to you?” he posed, his voice soft again.
Todd? The boy I made out with at a party and then forgot even existed? I frowned at the insinuation. “Of course not. You’re my best friend.”
“And you had fun last night? With me?” he asked, brushing a curl behind my ear.
Unable to look away from him, I nodded slowly.
“Then what’s the problem? Tell me what’s stopping you,” he cajoled, taking my hand and rubbing small circles over my knuckles.
I looked down at our hands, cursing myself for how even this small touch invigorated me. Last night he had given me just a taste of what I had been denying myself. I thought it would be enough to satisfy my urge, but it wasn’t. It was only fueling it.
Before last night, I’d forgotten the gentle pressure of a soft kiss, and the heat of a passionate one. I had forgotten just how nice it felt to be touched and held and cherished.
But then there was the dream—the warning—that penetrated my every thought. I’d already lost someone I cared about. How could I forget that?
Hands down, Vance was the best friend I’d ever had. And now we’d taken that to the next level. I was crazy to pretend that it didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t intend to hurt him, but the look in his eyes told me if I shut him out completely, that’s exactly what would happen.
Vance was pulling me apart and putting me back together, all at once. He was breaking down my wall, brick by brick, even as I struggled to build it back up.
It was almost funny. All I’d ever really wanted was for someone to understand me. Now someone was here, willing to listen, and I was too afraid to say what I was feeling. Figures the first time I had a real friend, I’d make a mess of it.
I dreaded coming this close to the truth, but Vance was right, he deserved an explanation. I bit anxiously on my lip, struggling to collect my thoughts. I couldn’t lose it now in front of him. If he saw the emotion in my eyes, he didn’t acknowledge it. He wasn’t letting me off the hook without an answer.
“I’ve had some… bad luck… with relationships.”
His eyes sparked. Desperation turned to hurt in one second flat. “I’m not Nathan.”
“I know,” I assured him.
“And I’m not that Miles guy, either.”
“I know!”
“That’s what you’re so worried about? You really think I would treat you like that?” he said, disgusted.
“No! You’re nothing like either of them!”
His hurt waned slightly, but he just looked more confused than ever. “Then…wha…?” He searched my eyes for answers, but I was just as desperate and lost. The ache bubbling inside my chest threatened to overflow; first because he was forcing me to open up, and second because I was causing that look on his face.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt him anymore.
Like the coward I was, I turned away and jumped out of his truck.
His door flung open just as I was running across the driveway. “Wait!” He grabbed my arm above the elbow, and just like that, I was back.
* * *
[Past]
He grabbed my arm above the elbow and wrenched me away from the man I loved. His grip was rough, hard enough to leave bruises. And when I cried out, the look in Gabriel’s eyes turned murderous. He’d fought hard for me, and though we resisted like two magnets being ripped from their mates, even Gabriel was no match for the gun shoved against my temple.
Rose petals scattered at our feet.
We were both at his mercy now… helpless.
“You’re going to do exactly what I tell you,” the masked man said aloud, his weapon still trained on me, “and no one gets hurt.”
* * *
At first I tried to stay brave. I knew everything would be okay because Gabriel was here with me, so I kept my gaze on him. He was my protector, my guardian angel, and with him I was always safe. That was the one thing I knew to be true.
* * *
“Don’t even think about it.”
I had no concept of real fear until the masked man shifted the aim of his weapon.
“Hit that button and lover boy dies.”
Then I discovered what my worst fear really was.
Terror like I’d never known ripped through me when I saw the gun pointed at Gabriel. I loved that man with all my heart. And seeing him in the line of fire, when he was only here because of me, broke something inside me.
* * *
Two hostages sat in the lobby, bound into obedience. One shaking, the other comforting, both hoping to be freed, waiting for it all to be over.
“You listen to me,” he whispered, and I lifted my eyes again. “None of this is your fault. None of it. If my whole life were to pass without ever having the chance to hold you… that would be the real tragedy. I need you to be brave, Scarlett. I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
I looked him in the eyes and nodded. “I trust you, Gabriel. It’s just, my heart couldn’t take it if I lost you.”
He swallowed. “Nor mine, sweet girl. Never, ever doubt that.” He looked away for a second, took a deep breath. “That’s why you have my word… You’re going to walk away from this, Scarlett Rossi. You’re going to graduate, you’re going to write something that will change lives, you’re going to make friends, get married, and have babies. Just don’t let Lexi be their godmother. She’ll corrupt them all.”
My eyes misted over. His words were meant to be comforting, but all I heard was goodbye. And I couldn’t bear to hear it. None of those things mattered if it meant I was walking out of this alone.
None of it.
* * *
Hope. It’s a dangerous thing.
Because as soon as I saw it, all practical sense went out the window.
“Don’t do it, love,” he whispered, reading my mind.
While I worried about Gabriel doing something totally stupid to save me, I should have been worried about myself doing something totally stupid to save him.
“Stop,” whispered Gabriel. “He’s coming back. He’s going to see you.”
And in the very next moments, my whole world came crumbling down around me.
He saw.
* * *
My mind couldn’t process what my eyes were seeing. The grotesque scene around me was something out of a nightmare. Broken glass. Destruction. Blood.
Ears ringing. Everything moving in slow motion, muted, like we were under water.
I scanned the room again until I found those beautiful blues. Gabriel. Everything should be alright because Gabriel was right here with me.
But it wasn’t alright. It was all wrong.
Eyes that had once been full of warmth and life… cold.
It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be real.
But it was real.
* * *
It took only seconds to rip away everything good in my life.
Then it was just me and the monster.
“Wrong move, you foolish little girl.”
* * *
He gripped my arm above the elbow and dragged me.
I was too shaken to fight back. Too lost in despair to be fully coherent. My hands were still bound. My feet stumbled, unable to keep up with his hurried pace. I tripped twice. He just muttered curses at me and yanked me along. Never once did the barrel of the gun leave my skin.
Through the darkness. Down the alley. Towards the car and into the backseat.
* * *
[Present]
“Please, God. Snap out of it, Rosie!”
“No,” I fought back as he shook my shoulders. “Let go! Let me go! You FUCKING MONSTER!”
“Open your eyes! It’s me, Rosie, open your eyes and see!”
With a gasp, my eyes snapped open and flew wildly from side to side as I took in my surroundings.
I was outside. It was night. I was lying on my back in my own driveway. My throat was in shreds and my face was wet. Vance bent over me, looking panicked and desperate.
Gabriel is dead.
“What happened?” His voice was uncharacteristically shaky. “I barely touched you and you just… you collapsed!”
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply in and out. My heart pounded wildly inside my chest, just as hard as it had that night…
The night that defined me, and divided me into two: before him, and after.
I had experienced flashbacks and nightmares before, but this was the first time I’d been hit with such an evocative trigger. I could picture every detail, almost as if I just relived the worst parts of it all over again…
“Say something,” he pleaded.
“Something,” I deadpanned.
Vance laughed humorlessly. “You gotta give me more than that.”
Emotions threatened to force their way out, but I stuffed them back behind the wall. I exhaled slowly, still trying to calm my racing heart as I debated what on earth I could possibly tell him. Even the idea of what he had just witnessed made me want to crawl into a hole.
“I-I’m freaking out here! What the hell was that?”
I rolled my eyes and sat up, brushing the gravel off my palms. “I just fainted, Vance. Calm yourself.”
“Damn it, Rosie, you scared me!”
He wasn’t exaggerating. It was obvious just how terrified he had really been. I felt awful for putting the fear in his eyes, but at the same time, I felt defensive, too. This never would’ve happened if he wouldn’t have pushed me so hard. He needed to listen to what I’d been telling him all along and back the hell off.
“You can’t grab me like that,” I snapped.
Several emotions crossed his face. Remorse. Recognition. Horror. I had to look away. Whatever conclusions he jumped to were out of my hands for now. I wasn’t revisiting the truth tonight.
“Rosie… what hap—”
“Can you do me a favor?” I asked, rising to my feet and standing over him.
Still on his knees, he looked up at me. Just yesterday he had talked about the Fairy Tale Syndrome and how it skewed women’s expectations about love and romance. Did he not realize he suffered from the same delusion?
I could see it in his eyes—he wanted to be the prince who rode up on his horse and saved the day. But I was no princess, and my Prince Charming had come and gone. I couldn’t survive losing another to dragon’s fire. Or to my own poisonous touch.
So I leaned down and looked him directly in the eyes. “Drop… it.”
Then I retreated inside, leaving him there, kneeling in my driveway.
Chapter 24
Escape
“Fake It” by Seether
Somehow I’d been able to lay low and avoid Vance for the last few days. He was antsy; understandably so after our night together, then our subsequent argument that led to me blacking out. Who knew what he was thinking at this point? What a mess.
We exchanged a few texts, but I think he understood I wasn’t ready to see him yet. So he gave me space.
I stayed in my bedroom a lot, retreating into myself, just thinking. They say time heals all wounds, but I appeared to be getting worse. The closer Vance and I grew, the more painful memories it seemed to dredge up. The ache grew deeper, the truth grew darker. More than ever I was convinced that I’d never be able to have a real relationship with these fears and this guilt looming over my head.
So I did something I’d been avoiding since the night I moved home… I pulled out the folded up old newspaper buried under my mattress.
It was just a small article from a little city by the beach, over an hour away. The headline read, Armed Robbery Turned Hostage Situation: One Survivor.
I skimmed right over the image of the old Scarlett, light-haired and smiling from a time before the nightmares began. My attention, as always, was immediately drawn elsewhere.
It was the only picture I had of him and it didn’t do him justice. Gabriel’s face stared back at me in black and white, stirring up a thousand thoughts and feelings. If only I could go back to that night… or better yet, relive the whole month leading up to it… I’d do everything differently.
Wanted criminal pulls his final bank heist, ending tragically for one witness, while the other narrowly escapes kidnapping in fatal crash…
After a long while I pulled my gaze to third photo… the face behind the mask. Too many questions built up inside me, but I would settle for just one—why?
I pulled out my laptop and Googled the name ‘Gavin Lockwood,’ for the first time. I hadn’t been ready to even voice his name before now, but today I needed to know the truth. Who was this depraved man? Maybe if I could find some answers, it would help me heal a little bit.
He was a man with a record, alright. The heist at my bank was only the beginning. More crimes came up. Theft mostly. Although it looked like I hadn’t witnessed his first murder, at least I witnessed his last…
I pushed myself through every disturbing article, wondering if this would end up doing more harm than good. I kept digging deeper, until I found something that disturbed me above everything else. Stricken, I slammed the laptop shut and dropped my head into my hands, trying my best to breathe evenly.
I changed my mind. I just wanted to block it all out.
My old journal came into view—the one with a heart and angel wings drawn on the cover. This little book had seen it all. It got me through everything between love and heartbreak, found and lost. It helped me feel heard in a world that never listened. It possessed the power to bring all my memories back to life.
I began flipping through the inked pages. Though none of the words registered, I saw how my penmanship changed through the years. The loopy, bubbly letters of my youth grew narrow and slanted through time. The doodles in the page corners lessened. All the way until the very end.
At last, I opened to the final entry, which was written after our last good day together on the beach. Reading my own words, I got caught up in the blissful bubble we’d created together. How for a brief moment in time, he had opened my eyes to bigger dreams and a deeper love than I’d ever imagined. How surely I believed it would last forever…
But it didn’t.
I wanted to hold him. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to demand why he left me here like this, alone and terrified and lost. But what was the point? For the answer, I had to look no further than my own reflection.
Because of me. Because I was the one that survived. Because he had given his life to protect mine.
For the first time in a long time, the full weight of all my anger, all my sadness, all my guilt overtook me. And I was powerless to stop it.
How the hell was I supposed to move on?
He had wholly and irrevocably ruined me for all other men.
When my tears finally ran dry, I tucked the folded article between the last pages and clutched the little book to my chest. With a solemn whispered apology, I returned it to its rightful hiding place under my mattress.
Alone on a shelf sat my new journal—the leather one Vance had given me for my birthday with the black musical notes and vintage designs. I reread the inscription handwritten on the inside
cover: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is today.”
He was right. It was time to start again. My fingers itched to write, but I had no idea where to begin. Where the other one left off? From today? How could I fit all my jumbled thoughts about life into neatly inked lines, when I wasn’t sure of anything anymore?
I was just sitting on my bed, admiring the blank pages when my phone started to ring. Curious, I looked down at the contact and was surprised to see where the call was coming from… Summer Elliott.
I seriously considered not answering. Good gracious, if she’d somehow found out about what happened in that park, she’d be out for my blood. I would have to tell her the truth—that I had no idea about her feelings for Vance when we kissed. I didn’t mean for it to happen. It wouldn’t happen again, and this time I meant it.
But when I answered the call, she spoke first.
“I’m so sorry. You were right, I was an awful friend to you. I got all paranoid about you and Vance. If you say nothing’s going on between you two, I should have believed you.”
…Awkward.
“I’m sorry, Scar. I’m so, so sorry. Can you forgive me?”
I sucked my lip into my teeth. What could I say to that? Especially since it turned out she was right? Guilt tugged at my conscience, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth. I reasoned that the thing between Vance and me was over anyway. No one needed to find out.
“Summer, I… yes, of course I forgive you.” I am a horrible person.
“Really?”
“Really.” I was silent for a moment because this kind of thing didn’t happen to me often. In fact, that might’ve been the first real reconciliation I’d ever experienced. I clung selfishly to her apology for the promise of one less confrontation hanging over my head. With the hope that she would never find out, I actually began to feel a little lighter. “Wow… this worked out a whole lot better than last time.”