by Sage Arroway
He pulled his face away, caressing hers with his right hand as he stared into her eyes, “I’ve never met anyone like you,” he told her. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone.”
“Me either,” she meant to say, but it felt as though he had pulled the breath from her lungs. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t gasp, couldn’t move. It was all happening so fast. His pale blue eyes told her everything she needed to know, even before he spoke.
“I think I love you, Allie.”
Their bodies may never dissolve into one another physically, but one thing was for sure, he’d just melted her heart.
“I…I love you, too,” she heard herself say without thinking.
It had just slipped out, so effortlessly and honestly, and with it, any lingering fears about who he was or what they were getting themselves into. Tyler was hers, now in this moment, and hopefully for good. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.
Allie clung to him desperately close, holding the man who’d meant only to protect her from himself, and somehow, inadvertently, he had rescued her from herself. She was his, she vowed, and the only thing still standing between them was the slippery sheen of perspiration building on both of their bodies, as they hungrily made love, for the first time, as two people devoted to each other.
Chapter 20
The afterglow of sex was still readily noticeable on both their faces.
Tyler lay next to Allie on the bed, his shoulder beneath her head as he playfully tangled his fingers in her hair and smiled.
It was easy to like her. Besides her obvious beauty, she was strong, sovereign and, at times, painfully shy. Right now was one of those moments. She noticed him looking at her, and blushed, pulling up one of the sheets to cover her nakedness.
“You’re cute,” he laughed.
Her smile grew, “So are you.”
His fingertips made their way down her face, across her jaw and further still until they were tracing tiny circles just below her collarbone. He watched as her skin quivered under his touch and a soft coo fell from her mouth.
“I could lay here forever,” he told her.
Allie’s eyes moved to the window. It seemed she got lost in thought for a moment, then returned to his gaze. “I was just thinking the same thing,” she smiled. “Part of me doesn’t want to go back.”
No part of him wanted to go back, but for reasons he didn’t want to bring up again. Everything was going so well. Reminding her of his mounting fears of being tracked down or worse, caught, did neither of them any good. Besides, he really could lay with her forever, right here, and never look back. In fact, it sounded ideal.
His fingers found their way back to her chin and he turned her attention back to him.
“Why do we have to go?”
She looked into his eyes, perplexed.
“Think about it,” he added. “We have everything here we need here. We could stay and hunt, and live off the land and make love, all day. Every day.”
“It does sound nice,” she agreed. “But—”
“But what?” he cut her off. “You love it up here, and there’s no one else to take care of this place. You said so yourself. What’s in Apollo that you need to get back to so soon anyway?”
Allie rolled to her side and faced him, propped her head up on her left hand. “My job, for one,” she argued. “My boss is already gonna kill me for not showing up today. And Blake,” she paused, seemingly reminiscing, “she’s all I’ve got.”
Tyler soothed her worry, “Not anymore,” he assured her. “You’ve got me now.”
She smiled at that, but still looked concerned. “What about you? Your band?”
Tyler had neglected to consider them. What had been his most important relationship just a few days ago had somehow been lost to the bond he was forming with this woman.
“I don’t need a band, I need you,” he insisted, then used Allie’s own words to plead his case. “C’mon, Allie, stay with me.”
“Look, Tyler,” she offered, “it sounds great, in theory. I would love nothing more than to stay up here with you. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it hasn’t been on mind. It’s just…I don’t know. This is all so sudden, and we both have lives waiting for us back in Apollo.”
He didn’t get the feeling that she was rejecting him, but his heart sank anyway. It was true, she had a life, and he couldn’t run forever. The dilemma now became, no matter what faced him upon his return, whether or not he would be able to protect Allie from it.
A deep sigh rose and fell from his breath, “So tomorrow, then?”
Allie nodded and smiled, but it seemed forced. He wished she would just go with her heart – that is, if her heart wanted something different. But if it did, she never said so.
Tyler wrapped his arms around Allie and held her, tightly. A long silence fell between them, for minutes longer than was comfortable, as they both pondered, individually, about their future and what it may hold. She was the first to break the stillness.
“Thirsty?”
“A little,” he responded, his mouth dryer than he had anticipated. He cleared his throat.
“I’ll make some tea,” she said, wriggling from his embrace. She kissed his cheek, and a subtle grin appeared on her lips. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure things out. We’ve got plenty of time to make a plan while we’re packing.”
It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear, but Tyler smiled. It was impossible not to when she was looking at him that way. “Deal,” he agreed, and kissed her in return.
She eased out of bed, slipped the corner of the sheet out from underneath him and wrapped it around her upper body, dragging it with her. “Be right back,” she promised.
“Don’t be gone too long,” he called out as she disappeared around the corner into the hallway. “This bed is awfully lonely without you!”
It took a few moments for the smile to fade from his face. He raised his arms above his head and relaxed into the bed. Life was good. For now, he was safe. He was naked, in his lover’s bed, deep in the woods, and able to enjoy the last few hours of seclusion and tranquility in a world made only for the two of them. He closed his eyes; all was blissful, peaceful.
A soft tapping woke him from his daydream minutes later, and he heard Allie’s footsteps make their way across the length of the cabin. The crow was the first thing to come to mind; that menacing bird that scared the crap out of them earlier. Still, he liked that Allie cared for it; nurtured it the way she had nurtured him. It spoke volumes about her character and he delighted in his mental picture of her feeding it.
But that image quickly faded and panic ensued when he heard Allie shout, “Someone’s here!”
Tyler was up in a flash, scrambling to the window where he spotted a black Range Rover parked next to Allie’s jeep in the drive. He saw a tall, scrawny man in a dark trench coat walking around the back of both cars, toward the front door. His initial reaction was to get dressed, followed by his instinct to hide. He had been through these kinds of things before and—whether it was a relative, an ex, or even a current flame—they never turned out well.
But then Tyler saw something; something he wished he hadn’t the second that he did. Behind the man in black, from in between the cars, a woman stepped out. Tall and poised, with jet black hair and a fur coat—it was the woman from the warehouse.
She had found him.
“Oh shit!” Tyler yelled, running frantically toward the living room. “Allie! Allie! Stop, don’t open the door!”
Sheer terror filled his heart as he raced down the hall and made his way into the main room to stop her. “Allie! Wait! Don’t—”
It was too late, the door was open. Allie stood just inside the threshold, the sun and wind creeping along the wood-paneled floor already. The two women stared at each other, briefly, until Allie greeted the woman he only knew as his captor.
“Vanessa?” Allie’s voice cracked with reluctance.
Tyler froze; both physically from the blistering wind as
it hit his bare skin, and from the shock of what he had just heard. If his ears did not deceive, Allie knew this woman.
“Hello, Tyler,” the woman called to him. Her voice was smooth and daunting as she ignored Allie altogether, peering past her, and greeted him. Her cold, steely eyes locked onto him, and the moment his name left her lips, he knew he was in trouble.
Allie turned around, brow furrowed, and shot him a look of terrified disappointment. “You know each other?” Her voice cracked again; sharper this time and the pain piercing through her newly open heart was evident in her tone.
Tyler swallowed his own tongue. Nothing made sense. Who was Vanessa? How did she find him? And most importantly, how did Allie know her? He wanted answers, but by the expression on Allie’s face, he knew he needed to clear things up with her first.
“Well, yeah!” he said, matter-of-factly, but instantly realized that Allie wasn’t putting two and two together. He raised his hands, trying to explain, “I mean, no! She’s crazy—”
His words were cut short.
“Tyler, honey, let’s not play games here,” Vanessa argued, shoving Allie aside as she let herself in. “I’m sure you’ve had a nice time up here with your new friend, but it’s time to come home.”
“Honey?!” Allie repeated, turning her back to the opened door. “Home? Tyler, what’s going on?!”
His response came out in a jumble of brief thoughts, none of which made any sense. It was clear Allie didn’t understand, but a better explanation would have to wait. As he tried to cover himself and retreat from Vanessa’s advance, three men entered the front door behind Allie.
“Let her go!” Tyler demanded, moving quickly past Vanessa to Allie. He shoved one arm protectively between her and the men. “I’ll go with you,” he surrendered, “just leave her alone - your fight is with me, not her!”
The two thugs looked to Vanessa for instructions.
She laughed softly, throwing Allie brutally across the room. “I’m afraid you’re only half right, handsome,” she said, nodding to the men at the door.
One of the brutes – who moved too quickly for Tyler to notice which one – struck Tyler across the head, and darkness crashed around him in a blur of wooden floors and Allie’s screams.
Chapter 21
Allie’s ears were ringing.
Vanessa had thrown her, hard, toward the kitchen, and she had struck her head on something on the way to the floor. She blinked, trying to clear her vision enough to see what was going on around her. After a moment, she could see again, and saw Vanessa standing over her, one hand extended down.
“I do apologize, that wasn’t very delicate of me,” she said, a hint of danger in her voice.
Allie took the hand and rose to her feet, while Vanessa gestured toward a nearby chair. “Have a seat, Allie” she said.
Allie gritted her teeth, tried to relax herself enough to unclench her fists. She reminded herself of the hunting discipline that Moll had tried to instill in her from a young age. Slow breaths, be still, watch and listen. She took the offered chair and focused past the pounding in her ears. Moll would have told her to count to ten. She counted to twenty.
The two large men picked Tyler up and dropped him unceremoniously on the couch. They had caught him off guard, clocking him across the temple. He’d be out for a bit, but he’d survive, she reasoned. For now, though, she needed to focus on Vanessa, and try to understand what was going on here.
Vanessa’s third companion, the tall man with the oily black hair, walked in, looking curiously about the room before closing the door behind him. His dark eyes made the briefest of contact with Allie; other than that, he remained a quiet observer. His appearance stood out starkly against Vanessa’s other two men – they were large, broad-shouldered and tough-looking. The dark-haired man looked frail, his skin was pale and clothes seemed to have been made for someone much larger, or as if he had lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time.
“You’re surprised to see me,” Vanessa said. It was more a statement than a question.
Allie paused before nodding her head slowly. “It’s been…awhile.” She couldn’t even remember exactly how long it had been.
Vanessa half-smiled. “Awhile?” She laughed at that. “I was twelve, Allie. I’d say it’s been longer than awhile.”
Images of balloons and glittering presents flashed past her mind. The last time Allie could undoubtedly recall seeing her was at Vanessa’s twelfth birthday party.
“Thirteen years?” Allie said aloud, doing the math while trying to remember if she had seen her since.
Vanessa nodded. “That’s the last we ever saw of each other, you know that? And then you were off to live with Molly. Gone…” she snapped her fingers, “just like that. You forgot about your friends, Allie. But we never forgot about you.”
“I’m sorry,” Allie expressed. “I know it must’ve been hard for you, Vanessa. It was hard for me, too. But my family—”
“Don’t give me that shit about your family,” Vanessa argued, her voice rising with emotion as her clinched fist lingered dangerously close to Allie’s face.
Allie flinched, and Vanessa carried on.
“You were like a little sister to me. We were family! Didn’t that mean anything to you?!”
More memories came back to Allie, long-buried thoughts of her childhood. Their parents had been close and the two had spent a lot of time together. Then, one day, it all went dark and Allie moved in with her grandmother, and life changed. She remembered crying about the unfairness of it all, but those tears felt now like they had belonged to someone else.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Allie said.
“You could’ve called,” Vanessa continued as if Allie hadn’t said anything, “…written, even. But I never heard from you. Not a word. You just went on with your life, like I never meant anything at all!”
Allie fought back tears. “That’s not true!” she disputed - because it wasn’t. Vanessa had been her very best friend—her only friend, in fact—until more than a decade later when she met Blake. Allie’s life until that point had been riddled with loss; losing Vanessa, her parents, and ultimately, Grand Moll.
But Vanessa would never understand what she had been through. She had always been too caught up in her own feelings. Even now, as she stood over Allie, yelling, her only concern was that of her own pain.
“I always wondered what happened to you,” Vanessa persisted, walking circles around her. “Perfect little Allie. It was never easy to live in your shadow—especially when you were there. Why couldn’t I be more like you, everyone always asked. Do you know how hard that was?”
Again, Vanessa only paused for breath, her question unanswered.
“And when you left, it was expected of me. They all wanted me to fill your shoes. Try living up to that your whole life.”
“I had no idea…” she began, but Vanessa scoffed.
“How would you?” Her voice was shrill and packed with anguish. “You abandoned us, Allie! All of us! And that’s not the worst part. I kept tabs on you, knowing one day I’d come for you and bring you home. So when Moll died, I went to the funeral—”
Her admission surprised Allie. She hadn’t seen Vanessa there.
“You were there?”
Vanessa shrugged, “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that after she died, you never came back. You chose a new life. You’ve changed, Allie.”
Allie remained still, not sure what to say to that.
Vanessa kept her eyes on Allie a moment longer before changing her tone and taking in the cabin with a sweeping gesture. “I haven’t seen this place in years,” she said casually. “You want to hear something funny? The whole way up the mountain, I was telling Deacon, here, it couldn’t be the same cabin. There’s no way. What were the chances that my Tyler was up here, at Moll’s old place, shacked up with my old friend Allie?”
She half-turned to the bony man, and they exchanged grins.
“Isn’t that right,�
�� she said, looking now to the two thugs who stood beside the unconscious Tyler. “And what did you say to me, Jonesy?”
The smaller of the two brutes shrugged. “Astrological,” he answered.
Vanessa nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what you said. Astrological.”
The other thug elbowed Jonesy. “Astronomical, you git.”
“Same thing.”
“Is not.”
Vanessa turned back briefly and silenced them both with a look.
“Anyway, I told Deacon,” she repeated, gesturing back toward the gaunt man at the door, “and he assured me we’d find Tyler here with a woman. And Deacon’s never wrong.” Vanessa stopped in place, and took a slow, deliberate breath through her nose.
“That’s what I get for believing in coincidences,” she said at last.
“Why were you looking for Tyler?” Allie asked, abruptly.
Vanessa looked at her as if she’d just asked why the sky was blue. “Because he’s mine.”
Allie’s eyes glanced scornfully over at Tyler and she played their conversations over in her head. It couldn’t be true, she thought. Why would he lie to her? If he was with Vanessa, then how did he end up here, with her, at her cabin?
Flashes of her jeep, the accident, his injuries, flooded Allie’s mind and the answer rode in on the last wave.
“You’re the one who kidnapped him, aren’t you?”
Vanessa confirmed her suspicions with a shrug. “Kidnapped is a cruel word, Allie. We had drinks, he came with me willingly. More or less,” she amended.
“You could have killed him.”
With a curt nod, Vanessa began to pace again. “True, but I didn’t,” she bolstered. “Tell me, Allie, what has he told you? You’ve been up here a few days, surely you must have talked at least once or twice, when you weren’t doing…other things.”
“I know enough,” Allie admitted. Her eyes flicked back to Tyler again, unsure how much he would want her to reveal. “Why?”