by Lannah Smith
"Well, Jackman?"
Alec didn't reply. He folded his arms across her chest and stared long and hard at her until Christopher told him to wait for him in the study.
"I'll be right behind you," he promised him.
Alec didn't look like he believed him. Still, he nodded and retreated back to the study. Turning to April, Christopher grinned at the way she was glaring into the hall.
"You can go to your bedroom," he said. "I'll bring your coffee and medicine up in a moment."
"Don't bother." She stomped to the counter and grabbed the mug. Then she stomped up the stairs and slammed the door of her bedroom with good measure. She forgot to take her medicine. Deliberate or not, he'd take it up to her room after he talked to Alec.
Chapter 22
Christopher might be an asshole but if there was one good thing to admit about him, it was that he made great sunny side up eggs that was just a little runny.
I couldn't say that to his bacon though. If it weren't for spite, I wouldn't have eaten that disgusting greasy thing he called a meal.
I walked over to the closest window, sipping water that I had taken from the pitcher in my room. Moving the curtains aside, I stared out at the falling snow. I was given the corner bedroom of the house, with windows that looked out to the slope of the cliff and part of the view of the sea. The snowflakes were quite large and when I looked below, the ground was already covered it.
Despite that, the sea still sparked azure, creating a beautiful contrast between the calm blue waters and the deep carpet of pristine white. And despite the snow coming hard, I didn't feel the cold inside the house. I could already imagine the exorbitant power costs for the heating of the house this size.
I let the curtain fall back to place. His words came to me then, whispering, torturing.
“You should have come to me.”
I closed my eyes tight.
Like I would.
Like I could.
No, no, I never could.
Sighing, I took another sip of the water and took a seat on tufted bench at the foot of my bed, my thoughts drifting towards my childhood memories.
I remembered that in the past, Christopher had a much cuter side to him than now. And I remembered how intolerable I was towards him when we were still friends.
"You're late," I remembered scolding him after he arrived to take me again to my mother’s meadow.
Christopher’s hands were deep in his pockets and his face surly when he said, "I didn't want to come in the first place."
His voice was still hoarse, scratchy from disuse. It had surprised him so much that he still could speak after years of not doing so when he took me to my mother's meadow three days ago that he had cried liters of tears. Of relief. Of grief. But definitely the relief was there.
I had never tried to comfort someone. But as he broke down and cried, a strange feeling that I had never felt before brought even more tears in my eyes.
I had saved someone.
I couldn’t save my mother but I saved him.
And that was a feeling that I would never be able to forget until I die.
After crying at the meadow, we made some more flower bracelets and necklaces with the daisies. He kept quiet this time. He wasn't timid, he just didn't like to talk much. And whenever he did, he'd always complained about me.
At first, he avoided me because my attention was overwhelming that I had to resort to blackmails about my head injury which troubled him a lot.
Which was why he was here.
"Do your grandparents know you can talk again?" I asked curiously.
He didn't look at me when he said, "No."
"Why not?"
"They're going to make me go to school."
Perplexed, I stared at him. "And what's wrong with going to school?"
He glared at me. "I'm a freak. No one likes a freak."
"I like you well enough though."
"No, you don't. You're just a bully."
It hadn't been the first time I was called a bully. But it had been the first time I was called a bully to my face.
Spoiled rotten by my mother, I'd been a little bratty as a child. Emotionally abused and manipulated by my father, I'd become even more cruel. It was the only way I'd keep people away from me.
Christopher was going to be my little secret though.
I smiled at him and he gave me a look of suspicion.
No one watched me closely in the house. They wouldn’t guess I’d been sneaking out the window and down the tree to come to the forest.
"I don't know why you keep wanting me to take you there," he grumbled. "It's literally just at the back of your property."
"I get lost."
"Is that one way of telling me that you're actually an idiot?"
See?
I laughed.
He was refreshing. He wasn't afraid of me.
I wanted to be with him all the time.
Someone knocked on the door and I turned my head, shoving those memories aside. Alec came in without waiting for my answer and placed a glass of water along with some pills on the nearest table. Then he left without closing the door. He was rude.
Just like his employer.
Before I could sum up my displeasure over his ill manners, he returned. This time, it was to dump a pile of books on the table. Then he left as swiftly as he came, closing the door this time.
I didn't let that make me angry no matter how much I wanted to.
Anger was exhausting.
Still, it kept my mind off other things.
Which was probably what Christopher had in mind when he kept trying to piss me off. It was obvious that he was doing that on purpose.
My eyes went to the pile of books and I moved towards them. Putting the glass down, I picked a book up to see that it was a Jane Austen novel. Startled, I picked the rest one by one to check the titles. All classics. All novels I had read before and kept reading because they had become my favorites.
Christopher knew. How did he know this? When all the while, back when we were in middle school and high school, after I had rejected him, he had stayed away from me. Far away from me. Like I disgusted him.
Had he kept watch over me all this time?
I didn't let this move me. I refused to let this sway me.
And I refused to let his threats cow me.
◆◆◆
"She broke the window. "
Alec noted this all with amusement.
Christopher, however, wasn't amused.
He thought his conversation with her had made her understand. That escape and running away was futile. He didn't anticipate that she would fucking take it as a challenge and actually do those things.
Immediately.
Broken glass littered the carpet. There wasn’t much left of the panel glass left intact. April had broken the window at the far corner of her bedroom. And had climbed down the side of the house.
"What did you do?" Alec asked, bending down to pick up a broken piece of glass.
"What do you mean what did I do?" Christopher growled, still staring at the destruction.
Alec turned to him. "You must have done something to make her desperate enough to escape."
"I didn't do shit."
Alec didn't look like he believed him. "Didn't you piss her off earlier?"
"I don't have time for your questions," Christopher barked at him, whirling around. "I have to go find her."
Damn it to hell.
Christopher marched down the hall to his bedroom and stomped into his boots.
April had retreated to her room. He made sure of that before he went to the study to work. He even had Alec take her medicine up and, on his return, told Christopher that she was just sitting quietly in there, seething by the expression of her face. But the two of them never thought that she was plotting quietly too. Christopher also never thought she'd be fucking reckless and stupid to run off into the cold to make a silly point. That she would indeed leave.
They didn't even hear the glass shatter. The snow had mostly probably muted the fall of the shards too.
Alec handed Christopher a thick jacket and Christopher pulled it on.
"She caught you off-guard, didn't she?" Alec asked him.
"She did,” he grunted.
April had caught him so off guard it was fucking annoying. Yet, this pleased him. She got her spirit back.
"You want me to accompany you, sir?"
"No," Christopher answered. "I'll go take her back myself."
Alec reluctantly nodded. "What are you going to do when you find her?"
"Give her a cup of hot chocolate," he mumbled then started for the stairs. "She'll be cold from her little trip outdoors."
"Wuss," Alec coughed, trailing after him.
Bounding down the stairs, Christopher muttered dangerously, "Then I'll strangle the fucking asshole who let her escape when I told him to watch over her closely."
At that, Alec shot past him to open the door. Then he practically shoved him out the house.
"Go. Hurry up and bring her back. She's probably freezing right now."
There was more than a thread of amusement in his right-hand's voice. Christopher wanted to kill him but he didn't waste any time arguing and left instead, cursing him out.
The snow was coming down so heavily. Christopher could barely see twenty feet in front of him. Thankfully, there was hardly any wind. And thankfully, April didn't cross a great distance down the slope before she gave up.
She was leaning against the trunk of a tree, looking frustrated, cold and weary. Hearing the soft crunching of his boots on the snow, she lifted her head and looked at him.
"I got lost," she admitted.
He didn't even have the chance to be angry at her. She looked so pitiful, shivering inside her thick clothes that he didn't have it in him to scold her. Wrapping her in his own jacket despite her protests, he carried her back to the house and into her bedroom.
"I thought you had more sense than to pull a fucking stunt like this," he muttered angrily as he wrapped double blankets around her body.
"Desperation leads people to do stupid things," she simply said. She was sitting on her bed and for once, letting him attend to her because she was shivering too much, she couldn’t move.
Those words made him narrow his eyes on her. "Jesus Christ but you're stubborn."
She lifted her chin haughtily. "And you're to blame for that, Christopher."
He almost grinned. "I was wondering when we'd get around to that."
"You are. If you would just let me leave this darn place, then I wouldn't be doing stupid things."
Shaking his head, Christopher turned to look at the heavy curtains that covered the broken window. Alec had created a temporary barrier with wood in the meantime while they wait for the window replacement.
"How the hell did you break the window?" he asked, incredulous.
Her face turning carefully blank, she tilted her head to the side. "I punched it."
Christopher blinked. "What?"
"I'm stronger than I look. I wrapped a towel around my hand and punched through the glass. It took a number of times but the window eventually—"
Christopher didn’t let her finish. "You actually expect me to believe that?"
Her shoulders visibly slumped. "Fine," she scowled. "I didn't punch through it. I hit it a couple of times with a chair and used the curtains to muffle the sound."
He wanted to ask her more questions but then he saw a shiver run through her body. Folding his arms, he stared down at her with worry.
Then he said, "If you're still cold why don't we try doing a little exertion to, you know, get the blood flowing and work up a little sweat."
She gave him an angry glance. "Don't even think about it, you pig."
He laughed. "You don't even know what I'm going to say."
"I wasn't born yesterday."
"I was going to suggest doing some exercises, April. Like jumping jacks."
Rolling her eyes, she laid down the bed and closed her eyes, dismissing him effectively, but only because he thought he’d let her. Deciding to leave her alone to give her some time to rest, he threw another blanket over her as a precaution and turned for the door.
Christopher left the bedroom thinking that April had finally got rid of all thoughts of escape because of her failed attempt.
But he never thought that was only just the beginning.
Chapter 23
April tried two more times to escape the house.
The second time she did it, Christopher didn't say a word to her nor she to him when he again found her down the slope and took her back home. He'd impressed the hell out of her too. She'd been trying to hide behind snow-covered bushes, trying to blend in with her white clothes but he still spotted her anyway.
She looked devastated by her failure.
So he didn't nag at her again thinking that she’d finally give up.
Yet she did it again.
She ran away.
And the third time finally did it for him because she had actually tried to climb down the side of the fucking cliff when he caught up with her.
His chest feeling like it was on fire, he grabbed her back up to safety, tossed her over his shoulder and carried her back to the house. All the while, she was cursing at him in frustration and humiliation, especially since he paraded her past a smirking Alec.
"How dare you treat me like this?" she shouted. "I'm not a bag of flour. Put me down this minute, you asshole!"
He slapped her ass to make her shut up. He didn't use even a little bit of his strength but the way she carried on, making a racket by screaming in outrage, made it sound like he did hurt her. Had he not been so angry, he would have laughed.
Christopher dropped her into the center of her bed and the noise she was making cut off abruptly. Since he fully expected her to bounce right back and try to snap his head off again, he was surprised to see her settle the covers around herself. After she scooted backwards to the headboard, Christopher sat on the edge of the bed beside her.
"Are you doing this to irritate me, sweetheart?"
Her eyebrow twitched. "No. I'm actually trying to escape. And I'll keep trying until I do."
He kept his laughter contained. "April, I don’t have time for this.”
“Time for what?”
“To spar with you. To keep tracking your pretty butt down. I need to get some work done, honey.”
Her chin lifted. “Then get them done and let me escape,” she snootily replied.
Christopher shook his head. “I'll tie you to this bed if you try to escape again, I fucking swear," he told her gruffly, trying to sound mean.
She thought he was serious.
"You wouldn't," she said in a low angry tone.
"Try me."
April fell silent and Christopher waited to hear her compliance. fuck knows she was getting herself into danger and he hoped to make her realize that. But he knew he failed when instead of telling him the words he wanted to hear, she was back to shouting at him again.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he answered, grinning.
Christopher could almost see the fury building inside of her. “Tie me to the bed?” she snarled in angry disbelief. “You think I’ll let you do that to me? You think I’ll let you humiliate me even further?”
“You’re humiliating yourself just fine, April,” he pointed out. “You don’t need my help.”
“How dare you—.”
“You have to give me your word you won’t try to run away again, April.”
"I hate you so much!"
He refused to let her rile him. "Not as much as I love you, April."
April stopped shouting and gave him a look of deep disgust. Then she turning away from him and began to fluff her pillows behind her.