Skylar’s sharp look told me I had overstepped. We were growing closer, for sure, but I needed to back off.
“We just fight,” she said, rising from the windowsill and padding into the kitchen to make herself some tea. “Like strong-willed people sometimes do.”
“Sounds familiar.” I followed her in and took a seat on the other side of the L-shaped counter.
“You want?” She held up a box of green tea.
I nodded.
“So, you and Eric…”
“Like jackals.”
“Yeah, I noticed. You’re not exactly nice to him during study group.”
“I think it’s the perfectly cut hair,” I replied. “Or maybe the ironed shirts. I just want to, I don’t know, put a wrinkle in there somewhere. The guy is immovable.”
“Don’t you think maybe you’re just looking for a problem that’s not really there?” Skylar filled the kettle and set it on the stove.
“Now who’s gaslighting?”
Skylar chuckled. “I just mean, he seems to really like you.”
“Sky, we’ve been over this. Guys like Eric don’t ‘really like’ girls like me. They are fascinated by us. Until they aren’t. I’m an amusement, that’s all.”
But Skylar just rolled her eyes. “What’s the word for gaslighting yourself? Delusion?”
“Hey! I resent that.”
“Janey, this isn’t high school, and Eric isn’t like the suburban kids you went to school with. He’s from New York, like me. I promise you, he’s seen all types, even if he did grow up on the Upper East Side or wherever.”
I considered arguing that people were people, and bigotry existed as much in the city as out in the middle of nowhere. Growing up in New York didn’t tell me a thing about how prejudiced Eric was or wasn’t.
Skylar poured us both mugs of tea, but before I could say anything more, there was a knock on our door.
I frowned. “Are you expecting anyone?”
Skylar shook her head. “Maybe Rob down the hall wants to ‘borrow another cup of sugar.”’
I snickered. Our neighbor seemed to bake more than anyone I had ever met, if his constant excuses to stop by were any indication. “He can make all the midnight snacks he wants. He’s not getting your cookie or mine.”
The knock sounded again.
“All right, all right. Keep your pants on.” I slid off the stool and opened the door. “Rob, I’m telling you, all that sugar is bad for your—oh!”
Eric stood on our ladybug-covered welcome mat, looking magazine-perfect in a pair of jeans, Sorel boots, a thick wool coat, and just a touch of snow quickly melting into his tousled blond hair. He looked way more delicious than someone walking out of an L.L. Bean catalog had any right to look.
“Who’s Rob?” he asked with a frown. “And why would his pants be off?”
I narrowed my eyes. It had been almost two weeks since his little possessive spat with the dick pics, and I’d made it very clear that this couldn’t be anything more than a leisure activity for either of us. When he didn’t like that, I ended up ghosting him again. Or trying. I still couldn’t quite let him go. Especially at one in the morning. On a Saturday night. And, the following Wednesday. And, yeah, okay, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night too.
Did I say ghosting? Maybe more like haunting.
“Did—did I forget something? Were we hanging out?” I purposefully avoided the word “date,” like I usually did, since Eric and I rarely made it out of either of our apartments whenever we met up.
He cocked his head. “Hello to you too, pretty girl.”
As if on command, I flushed. The boy tended to do seriously dirty things to me whenever he used that particular phrase. Just two days ago he tied me to his double bed just to prove a point before he wore me out over the back of his couch. Talk about thinning the line between love and hate.
That curiously magnetic smile appeared, and just as quickly, my toes tingled. Dammit, how did he do that? His whole face completely transformed whenever he grinned.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I didn’t mean to sound that curt.
One blond brow rose. “Why? Did you have other plans? With Rob, maybe?”
“I might have.” Right. You were “planning” to watch reruns of That Seventies Show and gossip with Skylar about the hot barista at Peet’s.
“Like what? Being rude and not inviting someone in? Hiding someone?” He poked his head over my shoulder and waved. “Hey, Skylar.”
I backed up as he pushed past me into the apartment.
Skylar just waved back awkwardly. “Hey, Eric. I’m, ah, just going to head back to my room to study some more.”
We waited until her door closed, and then I turned back to Eric, who was now watching me with irritatingly pleasant curiosity.
“Do you always just barge into people’s apartments like you own them?” I demanded.
His gaze seared over my otherwise unremarkable outfit of black leggings and a Joan Jett shirt. “When they don’t answer my texts, I do. Where have you been? After class yesterday you bolted.”
I scowled. “I don’t know. Living the normal life of a first-year law student? Class. The library. Trying not to kill myself with paper writing.”
Did his face whiten a little when I said the words “kill myself”? I blinked, and it was gone.
“Look, if you don’t want to hang out anymore, I get it,” he said, pacing around the couch. “But you came to my apartment Wednesday night, Jane. You came to me after you said you wanted to call it off. Again. And then you took off. Again. Did you really think I was just going to let you jerk me around?”
He unbuttoned his jacket, revealing a heather-gray sweater that hugged his trim body in all the right places. And lord, his legs looked impossibly long and scalable in those jeans. The fact of it should have been infuriating—how dare he make me enjoy his yuppie J. Crew aesthetic this much?—but instead I couldn’t stop ogling.
“You seemed to like me jerking you around on Thursday,” I said coyly, trying another tactic. Eric could be distracted with the right words, or so I was finding out. I could make this easier on us. Get it out of our systems and make an excuse about why we both needed to leave. Two birds, if you will.
His eyes closed, and I could tell he was fighting the urge to push me down to my knees like he had less than forty-eight hours ago. Ha! Victory me.
But then his eyes opened with a renewed, steely edge. “No. I…”
I sidled up to him and slyly slipped my hands around his ribs, toying with the bottom of his sweater. His skin was soft, and my fingers brushed the golden trail of hair that disappeared under his belt buckle.
“Come on, Petri,” I purred. “Be honest. You didn’t come here to talk. So let’s just get this over with, and give in to what we both want. Stop beating around the bush and pretend to be people we’re not.”
He stared up at the ceiling as I floated my lips over his tightened jaw. When I arrived at his mouth, I opened mine so he could suck on my tongue when I dipped it inside. I moaned. He groaned much louder before gently pushing me away.
I clicked my tongue, catching my breath. “You’re just making this harder on yourself. I’m right here. Easy pickings, dude.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why do you do that to yourself?”
“Do what?”
“Treat yourself like you’re nothing and ask me to do it too.”
Well, that definitely killed the mood. I stepped back and crossed my arms. “Just because I’m open about what I want sexually means I think I’m nothing? I definitely don’t think that. But apparently you do.”
Eric groaned again, but not in a good way. “That is not what I said, Jane.”
“You just did. You made the assumption and put that shit on me.”
“I made assumptions? What do you call what you were just doing, huh?”
“I don’t know, Petri, how about seduction?”
He rolled his eyes all over again. “Lefferts, i
f that was seduction, then I’m the fucking mayor of Boston.”
“If you’re looking for some sex kitten to wind her tail around your leg, you’re sniffing up the wrong pussy, my friend.”
“Jesus Christ,” Eric muttered.
“Hey, man, I’ve never pretended to be anything I’m not, so if you’re looking for a coquette, why don’t you hop on down to Cleo’s, or better yet, just wander around the T-stop and flirt with the undergrads. I’m sure you could find some jailbait seeking Prince Charming.”
My tone had gone from bitter to playful in less than a second. Suddenly, I found the idea of him doing that absolutely reprehensible.
Eric rubbed a hand irritably at the back of his neck. “Why do I do this?” he mumbled to himself.
I swallowed back the lump in my throat. The one that told me to apologize.
Eric opened his mouth a few times, like he wanted to say something else. Finally, he just shook his head. “For the record, I didn’t come over here for sex. You put that on me, if we’re talking about assumptions. I came over here because I wanted to see you. No innuendo. Just for the pleasure of your goddamn company, all right?”
Both of our mouths quirked. Neither of us missed the irony of that particular statement.
“Now,” Eric continued. “Tomorrow is your birthday, right?”
I blinked. That was definitely not what I was expecting. “Ah…yeah. Yeah, it is.”
Eric pulled a package from his coat pocket and tossed it onto the table. “You’re a pain in the ass, Lefferts. But this is for you.”
I stared at the package, unsure of what to say. No one aside from my parents had given me a birthday present in years—not since my tenth birthday party, after which my mother had told me I was officially too old for such celebrations. Honestly, I think it was more because she didn’t want to worry about little girls ruining her precious Ethan Allen couch anymore.
“I…thank you,” I said weakly. What new game was he playing here?
“One day, maybe you’ll tell me why you think everyone is out to get you,” Eric replied, shoving his arms back into his coat with unnecessary force. “But until then…happy fucking birthday, Jane.”
Then, abruptly, he turned and left. I listened to his footsteps echoing down the hall.
“Are you going to open it?”
I didn’t realize I had been staring at the door for probably a minute or more until Skylar’s voice stirred me. “Huh? Open what?”
My roommate pointed to the package Eric had left. I walked over and picked it up. Wrapped in nondescript brown paper, it was clearly a book. Attached was a note that simply read in Eric’s curt script:
Happy birthday, pretty girl. Meet me here tomorrow night to celebrate.
— Eric
I unwrapped the package, wondering what it was. Inside was a book, and the sight of it made me chuckle.
“What is it?” Skylar asked, coming to stand next to me curiously.
“Twenty-One Love Poems,” I said, looking at the plain white cover. “By Adrienne Rich.”
Skylar frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“She’s a…” I started to explain about the poet. About the irony that Eric even knew her at all. About the fact that he had been reading Leaflets when we first started…whatever this was, just a month or so ago. “Inside joke.”
I flipped the book open, and two pieces of paper fluttered to the table.
“Bookmarks?” I asked as Skylar picked them up.
“I don’t think so.” She handed them to me.
They were tickets for a concert. Some band I’d never heard of at Great Scott, my favorite venue in Boston. For tomorrow night.
“This…this seems like more than just a fling, Janey,” Skylar said. “Someone who just wants one thing doesn’t give you a book of love poems and concert tickets for your birthday.”
I looked back and forth between the two gifts, still unsure what to make of them—their presence or the obvious thought behind them.
“Will you go?” Skylar asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I will.”
11
Present
“You’re not going anywhere.”
The voice was a mere echo, the ghost of a warning. Its owner had vanished by the time I finally managed to open my eyes again, conflated with the visions of Eric’s hurt expression.
Was this why I had always been convinced someone was out to get me? Did some part of me, buried within half my DNA, know that out in the world lay a monster, waiting to capture me at just the right moment?
What an idiot I had been my entire life, running from demons like high school bullies and one-night stands. What a privileged fool. What a joke.
Shadows dragged through the blinds at the window, casting a yellow-orange light through the slats that told me it was nearing sunset here in…well, wherever this was. I had been drugged in the car for who knew how long, but I was still willing to bet I was somewhere in Hwaseong. Unless…oh, God. Visions of the map of South Korea, that tiny speck that marked the Goseong plant, throbbed in my mind. What if that’s where I was? Or even farther? Across the border, maybe?
All day. I had been here all day, lying on this cot. Freezing in this dusty room. The reality was I could be anywhere. And no one would be able to find me.
I turned, arrested with sudden panic, though my body responded with sluggish reticence.
Drugged, a tiny voice said in my head that sounded vaguely like Carol Lefferts. That’s because you’ve been drugged, Plain Jane. You’ve been drugged and taken hostage by your own fucking biological father.
And there could only be one reason for that. John Carson wanted something from Eric.
Eric.
Just as dazedly, another thought occurred to me. If I was a hostage, maybe I was with someone else.
“Eomma?” I croaked as I turned over on my cot. “Eomma, are you here?”
There was a groan from the other side of the room. With Herculean effort, I managed to drag myself up, though the blood rushing suddenly from my head almost knocked me back down. Everything ached. And everything was blurry. My glasses had been taken, so I was left to my own poor vision. But it wasn’t, thankfully, bad enough that I couldn’t see movement on the other cot.
I looked out into the thin afternoon light and tried to take in my surroundings.
It was a small, bare white room with some kind of tiled floor. Our two cots were shoved against opposite walls, each with dark rumpled blankets that barely kept out the January chill. I could make out small heating vents on the floors, plus three barred windows with the blinds drawn. There was a plastic table with a chair in the other corner.
“Eomma!”
My limbs wouldn’t work. I couldn’t walk properly, but I did manage to crawl across the room, a few scant feet that felt like miles. When I reached the other cot, I collapsed at the edge breathing heavily and touched the blanket-covered lump.
She turned. And it wasn’t until I saw her face, with a mosaic of bruises up and down her left cheek and a nasty, half-healed cut above her lip, that I finally exhaled fully.
“Eomma,” I whispered as I fell over her small, solid form. “Oh my God, Eomma, it’s okay. I found you. It’s okay.”
“Jane?”
Her voice was hoarse, almost unrecognizable. Her eyes widened, pupils severely dilated as she took me in. This close, I could see that her hair was brittle, her skin blotchy and shiny at the same time. It was clear by the way she half looked through me that she wasn’t entirely certain I was real.
“It’s okay, Eomma,” I said, grabbing her hand and pressing it to my cheek. “I’m real. I’m here. I’m…we’re going to get out of here, okay? I’ll figure something out.”
But her eyes only widened in pure panic. “Jane, you must—oh, you must…” But she couldn’t even finish her sentence before a stream of Korean poured out, like her hard-won, nearly perfect English was simply too much to bear under the strain of everything else.
<
br /> “Shhh, shhh,” I whispered, rocking her to me with the awkward, stunted movements my body would allow. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
She calmed slightly, and I felt her body wilt against me. We remained like that for a long time.
Eric, I pleaded mentally. Eric, please help us.
But, of course, no one answered. Eric was furious with me and maybe even still behind bars, depending on how quickly he was processed. Who knew if he would even come at all once he was out. All I had to help me here was a third or fourth cousin with a minor interest in an old serial murder case. That was it.
Before despair could overtake me completely, the door to the room opened, and a familiar figure entered—not John Carson. The goateed, eminently punchable face of Jude Le-fucking-tour.
“Well, well, well, our little butterfly emerged from her cocoon.”
He strode in, followed by a much larger man carrying a tray bearing two bowls. The smell of noodles and broth filled the room, and my stomach growled in response. How long had it been since I’d eaten anything? Hours or days?
My head swam. I just curled more into my mother’s cot.
“Jude,” I said through thick lips. “Or should I call you Hermes?”
I looked over his blurry form as critically as I could. He no longer wore the splint over his nose, but was that a bit of bruising still evident around his eyes? Eric had really gotten him in Lucerne.
Good lord, was that only three weeks ago?
“You’ll cooperate if you know what’s good for you,” Jude said with a leer. “None of that smart talk. Not without anyone here to protect you.”
I glared. “How’s your nose, Jude? Are you ready to have some other things broken?”
He touched his face self-consciously and grimaced. “Why? Are you going to do it, Tinkerbell?”
I cocked my head. “No, but I wouldn’t want to be here when Eric shows up. My guess is he’ll want to break something else too.”
It was bravado, of course. My failsafe. My default mode. Even if Eric were coming, he wasn’t a fighter. In spite of his admirable takedown of Jude in Lucerne, I had a feeling that side of him only came out when pushed to the extreme. And I also knew he didn’t particularly like it.
The Love Trap (Quicksilver Book 3) Page 10