by Cecilia Tan
“Which is?”
His cheeks go adorably pink. “All the obedience stuff. Training. Learning from you and being, you know, tested and praised and rewarded.”
I’ve got him pinned on his back and I’m kissing him before he can draw another breath. I pull back and lick my lips. “There’s plenty more I can teach you.”
“Good,” he says, and rolls his hips upward. It’s obscene how sexy he is, naked under me, utterly available for anything I desire, hard or soft, fast or slow. Maybe it’s knowing that outside the whole world has stopped for Mother Nature, and we’re not going anywhere for a while. My whole world has narrowed to him and this moment. How we got here and where we’re going next don’t even enter my consciousness.
I have the taste of the truth in my mouth. “My name is Eric,” I say.
He laughs as if I’ve told a good joke, like he’s slightly giddy. This isn’t the reaction I expected. His next words are even more surprising: “I know.”
Icicles stab through me. What? “You know?”
“Errric,” he says, like he’s savoring the taste of my name in his mouth.
But I’ve been so careful. The disorientation makes me feel like we’re on a ship, like the pallet under us is pitching in a storm. “Did I forget to take a name label off one of my things? Was it the—?”
He’s still grinning. “Eric. No. Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize you?”
And now I almost feel seasick. My head is spinning, fear and tumult howling through my brain like the wind outside. “You can’t,” I say stupidly.
“I can.” He’s frowning up at me now. “You didn’t really think a goatee was enough to fool me, did you?”
I don’t know why I’m arguing when he obviously knows what he knows. My heart is pounding like we’re about to parachute behind enemy lines. “We barely laid eyes on each other when I first got hired. You were just a boy. I can’t have left that much of an impression.”
His gaze is intense. “You think I wouldn’t remember the most beautiful specimen of a man I ever laid eyes on?”
The flattery rankles. My hands are around his upper arms before I know it, pressing him back into the bed like I’m going to shake some sense into him. “Don’t joke about that.”
“I’m not joking. Eric, don’t be thick. You were like my best wet dream come to life.”
My mouth feels dry. I can’t listen to this. I can’t hear it. It’s too much.
“I used to fantasize—”
“Stop.” I do shake him. My jaw hurts from gritting my teeth. “Just . . . stop.”
He grits his, too, and snarls because I’m hurting him by not playing along with his little fantasy. “If anything, I thought at first you didn’t recognize me. I’m the one who’s changed the most.”
Shit shit shit shit. All the scaffolding I’d erected to keep up the charade is crashing down with every word he says, and my brain can’t keep up with it all. “So . . . you thought I didn’t recognize you, and I was inviting a random boy toy to a deserted island? And you went along with it?”
His facial expression shows he’s stung. He twists like he wants to get out from under me and I let him, feeling absolutely nauseous about holding him down like that. He pulls on a pair of pants, and I can’t say I blame him. I wouldn’t want to be showing off my junk to my kidnapper either.
When he speaks, his voice is fragile. Taut. “‘Went along with it.’ You knew it was me. You invited me.”
This is where lies will get you. You dig a hole halfway to hell and when it collapses, you’re all the way there. “It was . . . safer. For both of us. If you came willingly.”
He shakes his head, presses a hand to his face. He pulls on a shirt. I’d get dressed too if I weren’t using every scrap of brainpower trying to understand what’s going on. I’m sitting up with the sleeping bag bunched in my lap.
“Safer,” he says and shakes his head again. “Do you mean to say if I didn’t go willingly you would’ve forced me to come here?”
Yes. That he’s even asking this question drives home how successfully deceptive I’ve been, and yet I can’t tell whether I fooled him or myself more. “Chase—”
“You said my name!” He whirls and points at me accusingly. At first I think he means I don’t have the right to call him by his first name, but then he goes on, and I realize he means something else entirely. “Back at the motel. God! I thought you were giving me a tip-off! I thought you were making sure, just when a stranger would have been starting to get freaked out, that we weren’t strangers at all.”
My blood runs cold. “The motel.” My lips are numb.
“The second one. I thought—” He breaks off, starting to hyperventilate a little. “I thought that was your way of telling me this wasn’t a real kidnapping. That you were doing it because you . . . you . . .” He puts a hand on his stomach. He’s starting to look as ill as I feel. “Because you liked me.”
Oh, fuck. I’m torn between wanting to comfort him somehow—how?—and wanting to end the argument as quickly as possible. “Chase—”
He’s hugging himself, shivering as the realization hits him. “Oh God. Father always warned me about kidnapping. Oh God.” He pulls a coat around his shoulders and shrinks down where he is. I want to go to him, to hold him, to comfort him, but I know I don’t have that right anymore. Tears start to brim in his eyes. “Fuck you for proving him right. Fuck you, Eric.”
“This wasn’t how it was supposed to go,” I say, as if that matters, as if there’s any defense I can mount for my crimes.
He throws the jacket at me in a brief moment of tantrum and then seems to force himself to go to the stove to stoke it. He’s crying silently, his chest rising and falling, but he makes no audible sobs. Not loud enough to be heard over the wind, anyway. He puts boots on and pokes at the coals while my brain scrambles for what to say to fix this situation.
But I know there’s no fixing this situation. There’s only damage control. “I promised Aiden I wouldn’t hurt you.”
He stands bolt upright, wiping the tears off his cheeks with the backs of his hands. “How much did you ransom me for?”
“Chase, I’m sorry—”
“How. Much.”
I have no good reason to lie to him now. None. “Four million and change,” I say. It’s shredding me inside to see him cry, tearing at the lizard skin I’ve accrued around my heart over the years, proving that it’s paper thin, after all. “Chase, please—”
“Please, what? You shit. You utter shit.”
I can’t argue when I agree.
“You seriously thought I didn’t know who you were?” The cabin has never seemed smaller than when he begins to pace back and forth as he rants, a caged animal. “You thought you were fooling me into thinking you were just a hot trick, a hot lay? And I let you beat me. I let you bruise me.” His outrage comes out a roar: “I let you fuck me with that fucking flashlight—!”
I’m together enough not to say, But you like it, even if I can’t stop the thought from flashing through my mind. He’s exactly right.
“And the whole time you knew the only reason you had me here was for four million fucking dollars.” He throws up his hands.
“Not the only reason,” I say.
“Oh, right, four million dollars and to fuck me whenever you wanted.”
But I like you. The little voice in the back of my head is as much an idiot as the rest of me today. “I’ve told you the truth.”
“Oh, don’t pull that honorable semantics bullshit with me.” He comes close, looking down at me with a pitying expression on his face. “You think that matters? You think if I go back and replay every word you ever said and they hold up to some nitpicky definition of ‘truth,’ I won’t be angry anymore? That isn’t how it fucking works, Eric.”
“Yes, it is,” I hear myself say. The problem with ripping away two decades’ worth of emotional armor in a matter of minutes is I’m left with the coping ability of a heartbroken five-yea
r-old. Fuck. “Yes. I own it. I intended to kidnap you, and I was willing to capture you against your will if necessary. But the truth matters, Chase. Honor matters. It’s the only thing that matters anymore.”
He snorts. “Oh, really? Is that how you’re going to get yourself to sleep at night? By convincing yourself you upheld your principles despite—” He gestures around the cabin like he doesn’t even have words to describe the situation we’re in. “All this?”
I don’t have words for it either. “Look. I’m sorry. My intention wasn’t to lead you on. I didn’t even intend to have sex with you at all. Not even the first time.” But you more or less leapt onto my dick. I’m sure my face is as red as if I’d chugged a half bottle of Jack Daniels. “I never wanted you to get hurt. Only Aiden.”
Chase’s laugh is bitter. “You know he doesn’t feel it when you hurt me, though, right? Not that my fuckwad of a father doesn’t deserve everything he gets.”
“He doesn’t deserve you.” I’ve said it before I can filter it.
“Damn right.” He lets out a breath. “I guess we have to wait until the storm’s over to get off this rock.”
I nod. “When he finishes the transaction, I’ll hand you over to him.”
Chase blanches for a moment. Then his ire surges again. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
I hold out my empty hands, like I’m making a peace offering. “Okay. Okay. I won’t wait until then. I’ll hand you over as soon as—”
He bites down on my name. “Eric. Don’t be stupid. I’m not going back there.”
“You have to.” I shake my head. “I made a promise.”
“You’re kidding, right? You’d really deliver me back to him?”
“I keep my promises.”
Chase balls his fists. “I promise you’re full of shit!”
The gap between us is widening with every passing second, the flood of emotions washing us further out to sea. All I know how to do is cling to my convictions. “If you want to run away from home, that’s your business. But if I don’t put you back where I found you—”
“If you don’t put me back where you found me, you’re as bad as a criminal? Is that what you mean, Eric?” He’s laughing and crying at the same time.
The forethought and planning part of my brain has been trying to kick back on this whole time, and a thought finally cuts through: I should’ve tied him to the bed last night.
Yes, I should’ve.
“Sorry, Eric, but I can’t do that,” he says, and then before I realize what he’s doing, he’s shoved the trunk away from the door, flung it open, and is out in the snow.
I leap from the bed to go after him, and a moment later I’m on the floor of the cabin, wind blowing snow onto my naked skin, as I clutch at the ankle that gave out. Fuck, that hurts. Much as my instinct is to just crawl after him as fast as I can, going buck naked into a nor’easter is not going to happen. It takes me a minute to scoot across the floor on my butt to shut the door so at least the snow isn’t getting in anymore.
Assess. The firefight’s over. Assess, damn you, assess.
My ankle doesn’t look swollen until I compare it to the other one. Remember when you stuck your foot in a hole yesterday, asshole?
I make it back onto the pallet and try to stand more slowly. Nope. It won’t bear my weight at all. Remember stumbling back to the cabin last night? Apparently I wasn’t simply love-drunk. Having a high pain tolerance has never been a drawback.
Until now.
Fuck.
Time stamp: 1347 Thursday, Ledge Island
I don’t have a lot of time to lie around feeling sorry for myself. Time passes while I wait for the pain in my ankle to drop below the level of anguish I’m feeling in my chest, and then my survival instincts kick back in. Chase Milford—whom I’m sworn to protect no matter how much of a stupid fuck either of us is—is out there in a nor’easter.
And let’s face it. It’s not for Aiden’s sake that I want to make sure he’s okay.
It takes approximately forever to get clothes on. But not even the drill sergeant in the back of my head that sounds a lot like Garrett can make me move any faster. Neither can the skeptical voice that sounds a lot like Cassidy: How you gonna handle the fact you can’t walk, son?
I’m going to get my boot on as gently as I can and then lace it as tight as I can stand, that’s how. This isn’t my first rodeo. The last time it was the other ankle, but I made it out alive, and so did Ruiz.
Of course, that time it was men trying to kill us, not the weather, but challenges are challenges. Maybe the cold will help the swelling go down or keep it numb. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel it last night.
Assess. Maybe he’ll come back when he realizes how cold it is. I can hope, but I can’t plan on that. I try standing slowly on my ankle now that it’s laced in. The pain is ugly but I don’t fall over. Good.
I open the door. Good thing the wind comes from behind the cabin, or there might be a snowdrift so deep against the door I’d be stuck until spring.
It’s only been minutes but in the blowing snow, Chase’s tracks are already obliterated, even with over a foot of accumulation out there. The wind is gusting this way and that now, no longer a full roar, and I wonder if that means we’re on the tail end of the storm. It’s been snowing for at least twelve hours, but I’m not about to go back in to check the weather report. Now that I’ve pushed the pain in my ankle to the back of my mind, my only thought is, Find Chase.
Find Chase. Find Chase. Find Chase.
I decide to check the watch point first. Maybe I’ll find him there still angry but ready to talk more. I visualize it, trying to make it come true as I make my way through the snow. I wonder how much daylight is left. It’s gray and dim from the clouds and could be any hour. My imagination plays tricks on me. Is that one of his boots? No, a bit of rock outcropping sticking up through the snow along the ridge. What if he walked along here, lost his footing in the snow, and fell to his death? I try to remind myself just because I can barely walk doesn’t mean he can’t, but a gust buffets me and makes my stomach plummet.
The promontory is empty, scraped free of snow by the scouring wind. I crawl to the edge to look over, but there’s no sign of a body below. Okay, so he didn’t come here. I’m desperate to find him. I head back down off the ridge into the trees. Would he try to get to the Zodiac?
Would he abandon me on the island with no way to get off? At least until summer, when the water would warm up enough for me to swim to shore. Still. It’s no less a fate than I deserve.
Would he try to pilot the Zodiac in storm-churned waters alone?
Thoughts like this keep distracting me, my focus wavering like a gunsight in a drunk’s hand. I get turned around in the snow, and I’m suddenly not sure where I am. Every direction is the same, and there’s no good way to navigate in the gloom and continuing precipitation. All the trees look familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Some are down that probably weren’t before—that’s how strong the wind has been.
I find the trail down the cliffside toward the beach. Okay. That orients me. I know this place. A sudden worry hits me, though: what if the Zodiac blew loose, whether because Chase tried to get it out or the raging wind just sent it flying? I make my way down the trail to check on it, the rocky face on one side keeping me on track. The snow here is deep at first, but then as I round the cliff edge, it drops to nothing on the sheltered side.
I am goat-stepping down the trail, trying to smother the panicky feeling that makes my hands shake, when my bad leg slips on the ice. The rocks are invisibly slick, and I go down hard onto my ass and slide rapidly down the hill. I have a split second to register the Zodiac is right where it should be while my body is tobogganing toward a beach that isn’t there anymore. At the highest of high tides that beach disappears, but the storm surge has submerged it completely in churning waves. I’m grabbing for anything I can.
I manage to latch onto an exposed root with one hand, bu
t I feel my bad shoulder shredding as my legs plunge into the water, my ankle bashing against the cliffside in a wave. I’m in up to mid-thigh, and the cold feels like a vise crushing my legs. But at least I’ve stopped moving. I’m not dead or drowned. Yet.
The tendons in my arm scream—or maybe that’s me—as I haul myself upward, out of the water and onto the rocks.
Assess. Can I make it back to the cabin? Only one way to find out.
I wonder if Chase is going to live through this.
I wonder if I’m going to live through this. But the panic is gone. Clarity sets in when there are no decisions to make. The only thing to do is take one careful, limping step at a time up the path. One step, and then another, and then another. I stop trying to analyze what I know about frostbite and hypothermia and simply focus on moving. I lose track of time passing.
The snow stops, the wind abates, and night falls.
When my legs quit working over the top of the ridge, I start crawling. I’m not that far from the cabin, I think. I can crawl that far.
But then I come to a series of deep drifts and my strength starts to give out.
The voice I hear in my head isn’t my father’s or Garrett’s or anyone’s but my own. Keep going, you stupid fuck. What good is it if you can do a hundred push-ups if you can’t crawl the last hundred meters? Chase needs you. You can’t give up now.
Of course, when I could do a hundred push-ups was before I took a bullet in the shoulder. Before I spent months on end in a hospital, sitting still at Mom’s bedside. Before I lost my innocence. Before I lost my will.
No. My will is the one thing I haven’t lost. My arms have decided they won’t move anymore. My legs can barely push me ahead. I remember something I said to Chase not too long ago. If you’re wet, you’re dead.
Maybe I deserve to die, but I’m not ready to give up yet. There’s only one thing left I can do. And that’s cry out his name. The snow seems to swallow sound, but under a clearing sky I scream his name toward the moon.
Time stamp: 1122 Friday, Ledge Island