by Riley Ashby
So why should Archer be any different? Of course, the only reason he wanted to bang me was because he thought it was a novelty, a way for him to explore some unnamed desire without actually hurting anyone.
I wished knowing that meant I wanted him less.
Several minutes or maybe an hour went by wasted as I stared at the wall with dry eyes. I didn’t want him to be a reason for me to cry again. He could take his cruel words and shove them up his ass for all I cared. This was only a temporary job for him. I needed to focus on moving forward and resolving whatever inside me made me think that anything between us could ever work. Then I could be happy.
I pushed Archer from my mind and picked up the photograph from my secret admirer, lying face down on the table in front of me. How had Chad gotten his hands on the picture? He must have come looking for me after I disappeared. I’d heard from him off and on throughout the years, random messages sent through social media that I promptly deleted or letters in the mail that went into the trash unopened. Every once in a while, he’d send me some flowers. I usually kept those—no reason to let good irises go to waste. His affections were irritating but not threatening, so I learned to deal with them. Once I left home, the attention didn’t follow me. Had he really tracked me to LA? He had to have seen me in the news, but it was still a mystery how he knew I’d be across the country.
I smiled for the first time that day, and Chad flew from my mind as I looked at the picture, curled up on the couch in front of the tall windows. I remembered everything so clearly. My parents had pulled out the kiddie pool for the first time, and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. They surprised me with a new swimsuit and let me play outside all day, pulling me inside only to eat. The moment I was excused from the table, I ran right back outside. It was the perfect day. Even my sister had gotten along with me, putting aside her normal snotty attitude to splash with me even though she was far too old to find joy in such things.
Fuck Archer for trying to keep this from me. He shouldn’t be allowed to take over my life just because he was being paid to hang around. If someone wanted to reconnect with me, who was he to stop them? I didn’t have any interest in talking to the person who had sent me this photo, but I did have a family. People who had missed me. I told the FBI when I was rescued that I didn’t want my family notified. I felt so much shame at letting myself be taken and made to do so many horrible things that I couldn’t bear the thought of facing them. Still, my mom must have heard about all the drama from the television. I should have reached out to them sooner because I could have used the support. Maybe I never would have bought that gun, and I wouldn’t be falling all over Archer now.
I snatched my phone and opened the keypad with shaking fingers. My list of contacts from my old life was long gone, but I still knew both my parents’ numbers by heart. I dialed my mom before I could think better of it.
I chewed on my thumbnail as the phone rang in my ear, bouncing my knee nervously. What would my mom say when we spoke to each other? Would she be angry with me for disappearing or for not coming back to her when I was rescued? Would she be happy to hear I was all right? My pre-emptive apology burned in my throat, ready to spill forth the moment I heard her voice.
Finally, the ringing stopped. “Hello?”
The tone was suspicious, but I recognized the voice immediately.
“Alicia?” I asked, breathless. It was my sister.
There was a pause. “Josie? Is that you?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, surprised by the emotion evoked by speaking to my sister. We had never been very close, far from it, but she had been my very first friend.
“Hi, sis.”
“Oh my God. I can’t believe you’re alive. The last we heard, you had disappeared and missed multiple shifts at your job. We told the police you probably skipped town again.”
That stung, but it was fair. I hadn’t been very reliable.
“No, not quite.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re safe. Where have you been?”
I struggled with how to answer. “Do you mind if we don’t get into it right now?”
“Um, sure.”
“Can I talk to Mom?”
Alicia was silent for too long. Something was wrong.
“What is it, Alicia?” I cursed myself for the weakness in my voice. Two minutes on the phone and I was already begging her to talk to me. Just be nice for a few minutes, Alicia. I’ve had a hard month.
“Mom died six months ago, Josie.”
My stomach dropped to my feet. “What the fuck do you mean?”
“She had cancer, and the chemo didn’t work.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” She got sick and died all before I was taken. If I had known, I could have come home. I could have been there for her.
“You hadn’t called in months. We figured you didn’t want to know.”
Tears stung my eyes. “You had no right to make that decision for me.”
I resisted the urge to throw the phone across the room. They cut me out again during one of the most important parts of my life. I never got to say goodbye. She probably died thinking I hated her.
“I’m sorry, Josie. We just thought …”
I hung up the phone and buried it in the couch cushions. I couldn’t talk to her when she clearly cared so little about my feelings. They didn’t give a shit about me at all.
I held a couch cushion against my face and sobbed, ignoring the vibration of my phone as my sister called me back repeatedly. What was the point in talking to her?
This was why I had cut off contact to begin with. Alicia was always putting herself between the rest of our family and me. My mom always took her side, even when everything was her fault. After high school, I decided I’d had enough of her manipulation and took off by myself with only the money I’d saved from my minimum wage after-school job. I couch surfed with my friends, taking on extra hours whenever I could in order to save up enough to get my own place. When I finally started earning enough to move in with random women I met on local for-sale sites, I thought things would get easier. But soon I found out why they needed roommates. They had drug problems or brought too many men back to their room that I never saw again. The two often went hand in hand.
That was how I fell into knowing the men myself. My last roommate wasn’t finding random men; she had a pimp who helped her set them up. And when he came by one night to collect his cut of her income, he met me. He tried to recruit me. He cajoled me with tales of how much money I could earn. He promised he would protect me from anyone who tried to take it too far. And when I refused, time and again, he talked to his boss. Chase Reilly. The man who kidnapped me, tried to sell me, and eventually decided to keep me for himself.
It was a fate crueler than I ever could have imagined.
The longest three months of my life passed minute by minute. I had resigned myself to dying anonymous and alone when the FBI came knocking down the door of the apartment Chase had left me in.
I flinched as the cushion was pulled away from my face, and I looked through my tears into Archer’s eyes.
“What’s going on?”
I launched at him and wrapped my arms around his neck, sobbing. I needed comfort right now, and he was closest. I could forget about what he said last night for a little while.
He was hesitant at first, but slowly, his arms came to wrap around my back. He pressed me against him while I sobbed into his shirt, letting out all the pain I’d been unable to express over the past few weeks for fear of being labeled a suicide risk and dosed up on even more drugs meant to make me happy. Clearly, I should have been taking them. My heart fell through my stomach, burning like a dying star. Every time I tried to quell the tears, they came harder, and I clung to Archer like a lifeline. He held me as tight as I needed, eventually picking me up and pulling me onto the couch with him. He held me through the unfathomable grief I could no longer suppress after years of rejection by my family and months of torture a
t the hands of some of the cruelest people on the planet. He soothed me while I poured my soul out through my tears. He held me close as I sank through my depression into a place I thought I would never rise from again.
I knew I shouldn’t have said to her what I did—the broken look on her face haunted me long after I left her alone—but there was no way my words had been so cruel as to inspire this kind of breakdown.
“Tell me what’s wrong, baby girl.” I didn’t even flinch at the affection in my words because she needed it now. Her damaged fingers were wound tight into my shirt, her tears soaking my collar as she sobbed so hard, she barely had time to breathe. “Josie, you have to talk to me. I’ll fix it if I can, but I need you to tell me what happened.” But no matter how I cajoled, or how softly I spoke, she didn’t utter a single word.
She cried for so long I worried she would hurt herself. I had to text surreptitiously, afraid of spooking her if she knew anyone was coming. The minutes ticked by endlessly as I waited for them to show up. How long did it take to get from the King house to downtown? Were they having trouble with the doorman? I breathed a sigh of relief when he texted to say they were on their way up to the apartment. When the knock sounded on the door, she stopped crying long enough to moan and clutch me tighter. I lifted her in my arms as I walked to the door and opened it awkwardly with one hand. Vail and Castel stood on the other edge, both of their mouths pressed into thin lines at the sight of the sobbing woman in my arms.
Josie lifted her head to see who had come to visit us and finally made her first sound of relief in over an hour.
“Vail,” she breathed, but she didn’t let go of me.
“She was on her phone,” I said. “I heard her talking to someone. Then she started crying, and she hasn’t been able to stop.”
“I can help with that,” Vail said. “Let’s go lie down, shall we?”
I took them back to her bedroom, resting Josie softly on the mattress and working to extract her arms from around my neck.
“Don’t go,” she begged. “It’s so dark right now.”
“I know, baby.” I caressed her face with my palms, unable to smooth away her tears faster than they fell down her cheeks. I couldn’t think past the twisting in my chest at seeing her like this. I didn’t want to move or leave her alone, but I was useless right now. She was going to hurt herself if Vail couldn’t help her. “I’ll be right next door. And you won’t be alone. Vail’s here, remember?”
Vail sat on the bed next to her and ran a hand across her back. “Let’s see if we can make things a little lighter, Josie.”
She nodded and released me, eyes on my face as I backed out of the room. “I’m still here. Call if you need me.”
“Okay,” she whispered, and then the door closed between us.
Castel followed me through the interior door into my apartment, where I promptly poured myself a double brandy.
“It’s ten o’clock in the morning,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows as I took a long drink.
He sighed. “Do you have vodka?”
We sipped in unison as the sobbing, still audible from the next apartment, slowly faded.
“What’s Vail doing?” I asked.
“She brought a non-opioid sedative. Something to bring her down a little bit. She needs to see a doctor, though.”
I nodded. “Help me convince her of that.”
Castel laughed a little. “Vail doesn’t want to talk to anyone either. I’m wearing her down, though. I think she’s starting to see how helpful it could be.”
There was silence for a few moments as we sipped our drinks. I begged him not to say anything else, to let it go, but he had to ask. It was in his nature. “What happened?”
I swallowed what was left in my glass and refilled it. “I told you. She was talking to someone on the phone, and then she lost it.”
He cocked his head at me. “Did you sleep with her?”
I choked on my brandy. “What the fuck kind of question is that?”
“So you did.” He finished his own drink and put the glass on the counter. “I saw how you looked at her in there.”
“No, no, I did not.” I sighed and rubbed my hand across my upper lip.
He stared at me expectantly.
“We came close.”
He grabbed the bottle of vodka and filled his glass again.
“Goddammit, Archer. Sleeping with witnesses? Are you working your way through the rest of the rule book now?”
“I did not sleep with her. And that’s a low blow. You have no idea why I took that money.”
He shook his head. “I know enough, Archer. I always thought better of you. And I believe you can be better. But you need to get your shit together if you want your job back. What the hell would have possessed you to even go after her?”
This was not the conversation I wanted to have. “I don’t know, man. I thought I had put up enough of a wall between us. But then she had … an incident. And we just fell together.”
The disappointment on his face was so blatant I could barely take it. “You need to figure your shit out before it ruins both your lives.”
I downed the rest of my glass. “I tried to scare her, but it backfired. I think it turned her on more than it frightened her. She’s different, Castel. Persistent.”
“You know that’s not an excuse. You’re the one with the power here. That means you have the responsibility as well.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going back East. This isn’t working. I never should have let her talk me in to coming here.”
Four servings of alcohol in under ten minutes was enough to make me woozy even though I was larger than most people. Or maybe it was the exhaustion from a restless sleep the night before, coupled with the anxiety of this morning. This was certainly not the plan I’d had for my life.
“She deserves someone better than me to look after her. Someone who doesn’t have half as much baggage as she does.”
Castel sighed and studied the contents of his glass. “You’re probably right. I think you should call the boss before you pick up and move back home, though. You don’t know what’s waiting for you.”
“He’ll take me back.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Vail walked into the apartment, pulling the door shut behind her but leaving it open a crack. “She’s dozed off, but she won’t stay that way for long. What I gave her wasn’t strong. She really needs to get to a doctor, see if he can prescribe her something else in case this happens again.”
I nodded in agreement. “I’ll set up an appointment.”
She walked over to Castel and slid against him; his arm went around her shoulder, and he lowered his head to kiss her without thinking. How had she been able to overcome her trauma and enter into a normal relationship with him? I knew it was his goal; he talked about her nonstop even before he realized how gone he was for her. But after she was held captive for so many weeks by the same man who had damaged Josie, surely it had been hard for her to let him get close to her afterward. Did she have the cravings for the darker side of sex like Josie did? Or did she manage to end up well-adjusted despite her ordeal?
“Are you okay, Archer?” Vail was squinting at me, and I realized I was staring at them.
I turned away to rinse out my glass in the sink. “I’m fine. It’s been a long morning.” I pulled out the crumpled photograph and held it out to Castel. “Look at the back. Someone sent this to her this morning along with another photo from when she was a child.”
Castel and Vail wore matching frowns as they examined the torn photo and the handwritten threat on the back. “I definitely don’t like the look of this,” Castel said. “Do you want me to investigate?”
I shook my head and held out my hand to take it back. “I’ll take care of it. Probably just a love-sick ex.”
“Remember what I said, Archer.” Castel pointed at me as they headed out the door. “Keep yourself under control. It’s the best thing for bo
th of you.”
I ushered them out before Vail could ask what he meant.
Grabbing my book from where I’d left it in my bedroom, I walked over to find Josie curled up under her comforter. She looked to be just on the edge of sleep, but when I reached forward to brush one of her curls away from her face, she didn’t so much as twitch. She really was so beautiful. I felt so shitty that I’d upset her. If I wasn’t going to be able to control myself around her, the most I owed her was to protect her from my own fucked-up thoughts.
There was a chair at the vanity in her closet, and I dragged it into a ray of sunlight shining through the window. I could just see her face from here. I settled back to read but found myself watching her instead. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
I slept dreamlessly but not senselessly; my grief followed me through the dreamscape no matter how deep I tried to sink. My mouth tasted sour; my eyes felt swollen to twice their size. My hand ached endlessly.
I awoke from my doze to find Archer sitting near the window in my bedroom, reading a book. I sat up too quickly and was immediately beset by a raging headache.
“There’s water to your right,” he said, and even in my distressed state, I noticed the way he kept his voice soft. He was treating me like an injured animal, someone who might bolt at the first sign of danger. I snatched the glass gratefully and drank it, relishing the feel of the cold liquid sliding down my throat.
I wiped my upper lip and turned back to Archer, who leaned toward me with his elbows on his knees.