by Jenika Snow
“You don’t come close to me.”
“Bethany, honey, let’s go upstairs.” And there was her mother, trying to smooth everything out with that saccharine voice that was as pleasant as nails on a chalkboard.
All she did was nod, look at the three of them once more, and turn her back on them. She had come back for what? To tell them that she was alive, and hope against all odds that they would welcome her with open arms? Had she actually believed that they would see the life they had put her in? They lived in this the sheltered existence where selfishness consumed them. She was at the point that she would gladly go back to being Abe’s prisoner.
She pushed past the guards that looked as dumbstruck as she felt, and headed back down the hallway and up the ornate stairs. The sound of footsteps following her didn’t have her stopping and turning. Bethany wanted her shit and she wanted out. Once in her room she shut the door and walked over to small vase pushed behind her first-edition books. Her room hadn’t changed, and even looked as if they still had the maid coming in once a day to clean. Grabbing the vase and opening the lid, she breathed out when she saw the wad of money she had been saving for far longer than she could even remember. The bank account had been official, but this was her own stash, one that she had dreamt would be used for travels abroad, or for purchasing something that wasn’t approved of by her father and mother.
She went to her closet, grabbed one of her bags, and started filling it with clothes. She was in the process of getting underwear and socks out of her dresser when her bedroom door crashed open. She spun, saw her enraged father and worried-looking mother, and ignored both of them. She was getting the hell out of here and never looking back. She knew where she had stood in their lives, and this situation hadn’t changed their views on anything.
“You’ll tell me why in the hell you thought you could run off like that, and then suddenly come back looking like…” He scanned her form up and down, his disgust even more evident with each passing second. “…looking like you have been out screwing in the woods like a damn animal.”
A choked sound left her at her father’s cruel words. No questions of if she was okay, of where she had been, and why she had “left” the way she had.
“Well? No daughter of mine is going to come into my home—”
“Robert, please calm down. Your blood pressure.” And then there was her mother, placating and smothering her father because she was the perfect little Stepford wife.
Steven moved past her mother and father and smiled. “Bethany, sweetheart, what happened to you?” He reached his hand out toward her and she looked down at it.
She shook her head, grabbed the bag on top of her dresser, and shoved the money inside. She wanted no part of this. “You guys sit here in your designer clothes with your emeralds, diamonds, and Cuban cigars, and look down at everyone else that doesn’t meet your standards.” She was crying now, but they were angry tears, hateful tears, and they had been a long time coming.
“You expect us to approve of you leaving when you’re set to marry Steven? You shamed this family, and then you run out of fun on your little tryst and come back here looking like a vagrant.”
“Is that all you think of me, as some kind of pawn to do with as you please?” She closed her eyes, shook her head, and chuckled humorlessly. “Of course you do. What a stupid, stupid girl I have been to think you cared about me or what happened to me. I was better off at—” She stopped, cut herself off because something inside of her told her to shut up. These people didn’t deserve anything from her, let alone an explanation of where she had been.
“Where were you?” her father asked again, his voice just as hard as it had been when he’d first seen her. There was no warmth, no love…not like she had felt with Abe during her short time with him. God, if that didn’t open up her eyes to reality she didn’t know what would.
“Bethany, no one is angry with you. We just want to know that you were okay.” Steven moved closer to her.
No, they didn’t want to know that she was okay. They only cared about themselves. “Leave,” she said softly. No one moved. “Leave,” she said louder, with more force, and made sure to make eye contact with each of them. Her mother and Steven left, but of course Robert stayed, trying to exert his dominance. It was a very familiar situation.
“Shut the door, Steven,” her father said without taking his gaze off of her. When the door shut her father exhaled loudly, closed his eyes, and grumbled something under his breath.
“I have nothing to say to you. I have no explanation as to what happened.” Oh, she could tell him the truth, but what difference would it really make?
None.
“Do you realize your little exertion cost me a lot of money, put this family under the media spotlight, and humiliated the Sterling name?”
All she could do was shake her head. “For my entire life it has always been about you and the Sterling name.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, but didn’t respond.
“Look at me.” She clenched her jaw at his bland expression. “Really fucking look at me, Dad.” Bethany had never cursed to her father, and she was pleased to see this flicker of his resistance lower because of it. “Does it look like I’ve been gallivanting around the woods, or playing house with someone?” She held her arms out. “I’m tired, dirty, and even where I was I knew that all that glitters is not gold. You are not my family, and everyone in this fucking house can go screw themselves. But especially you, Father.”
He scanned his gaze up and down her body once more. “I’ve been looking at you your whole life, Bethany,” he said once he was looking at her face once more. “And all I’ve seen is a disappointment to the Sterling name.”
She wouldn’t cry over his coarse words. “You won’t have to worry about me being a stain on your legacy anymore. Go back to your party, forget about me like you always did unless it suited you, and let others handle your dirty work for you.” To think she had felt any amount of love for this man. She had only been gone for a week, and even if he said he had people working on her case to find her, she knew he was full of shit. He thought she had left like everyone else had, and because of that he had put her out of his mind and gone on with his life. They all had.
He curled his lip, and although she had a feeling he had more to say, Robert Sterling was not a man that spoke out of place very often.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll pack my shit and go back to where I was.” That wasn’t really the truth. She didn’t think going back to Abe or the cabin was the solution to her problems. She was going to try the world on her own, and although she had only saved the few thousand dollars in cash, she could do anything she set her mind to.
Her father glared at her for several more seconds, and then without uttering a word he turned and headed out of her room. She saw her mother and Steven right on the other side, and when her mother acted like she was going to come forward and speak to Bethany, Robert grabbed her arm and steered her away. And of course her mother didn’t protest. Steven moved closer once her parents left, but didn’t enter her room.
“Steven, please just leave. I have nothing to say to you.” He was just as fake as the rest of them. He had yet to move, and so she glared at him the same as he was doing to her.
“You fucked up a lot of shit, Bethany.” His voice was just as icy as her father’s, but that was the real Steven talking. “You and I could have had a lush life.” She slowly shook her head. “You fucked up, and now Robert will cut you off, as he should. I hope you like living out of the circle, Bethany, because there is no way anyone will let you back in now.” He didn’t say anything else, just turned and stalked back to the party.
She slammed the door and walked over to her bed. For a moment she just stood there, staring at the shit that had been her life since the day she was born. She sat on the edge of the bed, and the tears that came from her this time were real, and painful, and from not having the love she had longed for since she was a li
ttle girl. But that was the past—even if the past had just been minutes before—and she wasn’t going to go there. Glancing down at her ankle, she saw the redness that circled it from the chain. It had been loose enough that it wasn’t painful, but she couldn’t count how many times she had struggled to get it off. That tug and pull had lightly bruised her skin. But looking at that mark on her flesh didn’t send a flash of disgust through her, but a sense of stability and pleasure, and a torrent of other emotions. She would feel it again, think about it a hundred different ways, but in the end she knew she had been freer during her seven days with Abe than she had in her entire life.
She stood and wiped her tears away, grabbed her bag, and got the fuck out of hell. Not looking at anyone, or speaking to any of the assholes that had strangulated her more times than she could count, she left the mansion and made her way down the long driveway. She knew she’d have to speak with the police, but she also knew she wasn’t going to tell them about Abe. There was just something in her that said telling them she was kidnapped and held against her will wasn’t the route she wanted to take. It wouldn’t matter either way, because even if Abe was conscious now, he was smart enough that he had probably already left town. A sick and dreadful sensation filled her, and she had to stop and hold her stomach as the feelings intensified. Why should she care where Abe was?
Because in your heart, hell, in your bones you know that you want him even through all of this.
That might be the truth, but she wasn’t going to go back into that right now. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She glanced around, but only saw the darkness of the forest surrounding them. She looked over her shoulder, saw her father and Steven standing on the porch with cigars hanging from between their lips, and took a deep, strengthening breath. How foolish she must look to them, standing in front of this mansion in grungy clothing with a bag hanging from her hand. She turned back around, scanned the woods once more, and felt that sensation that she was being watched. Pushing those feelings away, she continued down the driveway and right through the front gate. Fuck them, and fuck everything they represented.
Chapter Thirteen
June 2014—Two months later
Her life was no longer glamorous, no longer rich and filled with socialites and parties with gold and dripping diamonds. Her home was now a one-bedroom apartment, and compared to what she’d used to live in it was a hovel and a place her father and everyone that he associated with would call poverty.
She sat in front of the computer at the library and stared at the screen. Over the last two months she had tried to get away from everything that had to do with her parents. It was hard because she did love them, but the lack of compassion that they still showed made her realize that she was not a part of their world. Maybe she had been foolish to try and reconcile some kind of relationship with them after she left their house those two months ago. It certainly served them right, but after her mother contacted her, wanted to have lunch with her and talk, Bethany had thought maybe at least her mom had seen the error of her ways. But that lunch had just been a way for her mother to implore Bethany to apologize to her father. Hell, her mom hadn’t even told her father she had gone out to lunch with her own daughter for fear of his anger. That was it, when Bethany had called it all quits and moved out of Sinnerstown. She might only be in the next town over, but for starters that was good enough for her.
The police had come and talked to her, but it had been easy enough with her staying in the only motel in town. Of course they had wanted to know where she had been, and if she had left voluntarily. The interrogation—which was what it had felt like—hadn’t lasted long, because she had nothing to say to them.
“Yes, Officer, I did leave voluntarily.”
“I came back because I thought my parents deserved to hear it from my mouth as to why I had left, Officer.”
“No, sir, I was not kidnapped.”
“No, I don’t really know Abraham Sparrow, or where he has gone.”
Even as she told them she hadn’t been kidnapped, she had been able to tell they didn’t believe her. But they had no choice.
She hit print and listened to the map of the woods surrounding Sinnerstown being printed out. She turned in her seat and grabbed the piece of paper. It showed an aerial view of the land. There were a few houses closer to city limits, but it wasn’t those houses she was interested in, but the one more in the center of the land. It sat there like a lone stranger calling out for isolation and peace. Hadn’t she found a level of that there? She was still so confused about her emotions, but then again, she assumed that was normal, given the circumstances. Even though it had only been a couple of months, she knew what she ultimately wanted wouldn’t just vanish, and what she wanted was to see Abe again. What had surprised her was that Abe hadn’t come after her. She couldn’t understand why he hadn’t tracked her down, why he hadn’t dragged her back to the cabin and professed his dark love for her. Had she killed him? That thought had played through her mind over and over again. It was like Abe just up and disappeared. She might not have told the police about who had actually taken her, but they knew. Obviously it was suspicious that Abe had left the same time she had, and the authorities weren’t stupid. But it was like he never even existed because no one could find out anything about him. And once again she hadn’t felt right giving them the information they would need to connect Abe to her kidnapping. It was strange to protect him in such a way, but the feelings had been so strong that she couldn’t ignore them. And then when she tried to find out where this cabin actually was, but the only reference was of one owned by a Mitchel Greenlocke. It could be an alias, or it could be that Abe had taken her to a place owned by another, and one he knew would be vacant for an extended amount of time. Who was to say what he told her in that cabin was the truth?
She folded the piece of paper, shoved it in her purse, and stood. She left the library, got in her used POS, and gripped the steering wheel tightly. She certainly wasn’t living the plush life, but she didn’t care. Money wasn’t everything, and the sad, hard truth was that family wasn’t everything either. Robert had indeed cut her off financially. She had gotten a certified letter from his attorney telling her that all financial assistance had ceased. She had crumpled up that note and tossed it in the trash.
She grabbed the paper out of her purse and stared at the map once more. She was about an hour from where the cabin was, but she had been thinking about doing this ever since she’d left him. Now that she was on her own, had a job—albeit a crappy-paying one at the local bakery—she was doing this all on her own.
Three hours later Bethany was trying to navigate her way through the thick, overgrown woods. The road was narrow, and branches scraped against the side of her car. She was lost, that much was clear, and honestly she didn’t even know if that cabin was the one Abe had kept her in. She was purely going on instinct here, and despite her anxiety rising with each passing second, she knew she was doing the right thing. If she didn’t do this, that nagging voice inside of her would drive her insane. Did she think that Abe would still be at the cabin? Of course not, but she wanted to go back, like some kind of sick individual wanting to relive what at first she’d thought was a nightmare.
And then the trees parted and she saw the cabin up in the distance. She hadn’t seen the exterior when she’d escaped, which had been the only time during her week there that she had stepped outside of the structure, but in her heart she knew this was the right place. She pulled the car to a stop in front of the porch and cut the engine. Then she was unbuckling her seat belt and climbing out. It seemed like she was in another world, standing amidst the towering trees that blocked out the rest of the world. She felt no fear, no anxiety anymore as she stood and stared at the front door. And then she found herself moving closer to the cabin, stepping up onto the porch, and reaching out for the handle. It was cool and hard to her touch, but gradually warmed the longer she held it. She turned the handle and pushed it open. The scent
of a house that had been locked up for some time filled her nose. Dust, age, and staleness surrounded her, and although they were unpleasant aromas, there was a calming sensation that moved through her.
She took a step inside and looked at the kitchen. Everything was cleaned up and in its rightful order. No pot of rotting pasta on the floor, and no dead body of the man she had whacked upside the head. Relief filled her that she hadn’t walked in to a coffin of death and decay. She glanced at the living room and her gaze focused right on where the metal padlock had been that had kept her prisoner for so long. It was gone, and as she moved through the house and inspected each location where Abe had kept her tethered to the wall, she saw that all of them had been removed. It was like this had never happened, like they had never been here. She couldn’t say she had dreamt all of this, and not just for the obvious reasons. She thought about Abe each and every day. He was the first thing on her mind when she woke up, and the last thing when she fell asleep. He consumed her even though she was no longer with him, and she felt this emptiness in the pit of her stomach at the knowledge that he was alone.
Moving into the bedroom she had shared with him, she looked at the bed, remembered what they had done on it, and actually felt herself grow warm and wet. He had touched her in a way that she had never even imagined, opened her eyes to this feeling of being alive and free, even when she hadn’t been in the literal sense. She took a step closer to the bed, and then another one, and when she could touch it she did just that. Reaching out and running her hands over the comforter that had covered their bodies as he held her, Bethany closed her eyes. And then she felt it, that light shift in the air, that feeling that she was being watched again. The hairs on her arms stood on end, and she turned around and stared at the man that had been consuming her entire being for the last two months. The room was shrouded in shadows, but she knew it was Abe, could smell that dark and spicy scent that had embedded itself in her nose, and she took a step forward.