Captive Page 12

  As expected, he was completely unperturbed. “There isn’t anything you can do that’ll drive me away.”

  I brushed his hand away and scooted out of his hold. Holding the bedsheet tight around me, I turned around to look at him. “I don’t buy that.”

  “Okay.”

  Okay?

  I huffed. “Can’t you see I’m getting worse? All I do is flip out. I can’t hold back anymore, Nixon. You’ve unwound me all the way. There’s nothing timid or innocent left. You’ve broken me.”

  “You were broken when I met you,” he replied.

  “No,” I disagreed. “I was hopeful.”

  “You still are.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because you still think people are looking for you.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I sucked in a breath, trying to calm my thoughts. “Two years would make many people give up. That’s reality. I become a statistic and I get buried under dozens more cases of missing people. That doesn’t mean I should stop hoping.”

  Nixon went quiet. I didn’t know what his silence meant, but there was a weight to it.

  “People cared about me, you know,” I added quietly, holding back the surge of emotion. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “No,” he softly answered. “Not at all.”

  “Do you think that’s normal?”

  “I’m not normal.”

  To that, I silently agreed.

  Jesus, there was no getting through to him. I could paint the rights and wrongs to him in black and white, and it wouldn’t phase him. Because he didn’t care. He’d done it once before – at least – so why would it matter to him the second time around?

  This bothered me. I felt bitter and moody. Whatever warm emotions I felt for him before, I quickly cooled. “Just so you know, that blowjob you demanded out of me wasn’t a thank you.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Alright.”

  Ughhhh.

  I sucked at picking my moments. I couldn’t hold back when he gave me short ass answers like that. It was probably what he hoped for. He knew me well by now, triggering me because I couldn’t hold back my thoughts when I was pissed. I fell right into it. With a harsh look, I spat out, “By the way, Dr Sullivan told me some things.”

  He propped his knee up and wrapped an arm around it, casually staring back at me like that didn’t mean anything. “Yeah?”

  Fuck his one-word answers. “Yeah.” I enunciated rudely.

  He waited a few moments before he shrugged. “Well, are you fixing to tell me what she said, Vixen, or are you going to keep me questioning?” He looked so unbothered, like he really didn’t give a fuck.

  I frowned. “You know what, maybe I will keep you questioning.”

  He smirked now. “Okay.”

  “Okay,” I repeated mockingly.

  He chuckled, amused. “I know you, Vixen. You can’t keep shit to yourself. You’re like a rabid squirrel when you’re pissed. You’ll tell me in the next couple minutes what’s bothering you.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Yes,” he argued, casually, “you will.”

  “Because I’ll be a rabid squirrel,” I retorted. “Real nice, Nixon. I should start comparing you to animals now.”

  “Go on.”

  “Okay, you’re a fucking ogre.”

  “Ogres aren’t real.”

  “Doesn’t matter, that’s what you are.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah, okay.” When he smiled at that, I fumed. “You’re trying to get under my skin, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “If you give me another one-worded response, Nixon, I will find your gun and shoot this place up.”

  He sucked in a breath. “Jesus, baby, you’re in a mood tonight.”

  “Can’t you see why?”

  “Yeah, I can.” Amused, he added, “Do you want me to fuck the mood out of you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then are we ready to go to bed yet? It’s getting late and we have a meeting with the crew in the morning.”

  I was tired, but I was more stubborn. “You can go. I’m staying here.”

  He stood up, and my face heated with annoyance. What, he was leaving just like that? He wasn’t going to even pry just a little bit more?

  “Wow, you really don’t even care, do you?” I lashed out, knowing full well how ridiculous this was – how ridiculous I was being. I just couldn’t seem to stop.

  “You’re being unreasonable, Vixen. Come to bed.”

  As he began to walk away, I hurriedly jumped to my feet and flew in his direction. I cut in front of him, stopping him in his tracks. My cheeks heated as I looked up at his face, at his beautiful blue eyes and hated the way the fissure in my chest warmed.

  “You made me this way, you know,” I growled, blinking back tears.

  His amusement faded as he took in my distress. “Made you what way?”

  “This unreasonable, rabid squirrel way!” I hissed. “If you’d just hurt me the first time I did it, I wouldn’t have dared done it again.”

  He was desperate to calm me down because he playfully said, “I thought I always hurt you.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for hysterics right now. “You know what I fucking mean.”

  “Vixen, you’re not yourself –”

  “You keep telling me I’m not myself every time I lose my shit. You never stop to wonder what makes me tick. You just fuck the mood outta me. Unless you plan on having your dick inside me 24/7, this is what you’re going to keep getting, Nixon.”

  “Baby –”

  “Don’t ‘baby’ me. I hate that fucking word.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I do.”

  When he raised a hand to touch me, I took a step back, shaking my head. “Don’t do that, either. Don’t touch me like you care.”

  “Of course I care.”

  My heart squeezed. “Did you care for the girl before me?”

  Shit, fuck, I’d said it. It was out there. It happened. I let it slip. He was right – I couldn’t hold back if I tried.

  My body went stiff as I gauged his reaction, but he…just stared at me, unbothered, kind of like he wasn’t surprised at all.

  “Yes,” he answered gravely. “I cared for the girl before you very much.”

  That stung. Tears clouded my eyes. “More than me?”

  “Equally, but in very different ways.”

  I wanted to collapse to the ground and sob. I wanted to hit him and scream. So many emotions roared inside me. I didn’t know which route to take. All I knew was this fucking hurt. A lot. And he didn’t look sympathetic to my emotions at all.

  He cocked his head to the side, staring at me intently. “How does your heart feel, Vixen?”

  “Fuck you,” I snarled at him. “I don’t even care.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  I wasn’t.

  No, I wasn’t.

  I didn’t fucking care. I didn’t.

  I just wanted my freedom. I just wanted to be let go.

  WHY WOULDN’T HE LET ME GO?

  Fuelled by pain and anger, I let go of the bedsheet because I couldn’t storm off in it without tripping over it. I hurried into the softly lit bedroom and grabbed the random crap off the night stand. I threw the box of tissues at the doorway where he stood, followed by the comb and box of Q-tips. He didn’t flinch as they hit his chest.

  I hated him.

  I hated him because he made my heart pound and my skin burn.

  He made me search for him in the night.

  He made me need him like he was the air I breathed.

  He made me miss him when he was gone.

  And I just wanted to go.

  I really did.

  I wanted my old life back.

  Desperate, I grabbed the new lamp on the nightstand. This would be attempt number 74453432. I pulled it out of
the wall and threw it against the window again. I watched it smash into a thousand little pieces, and still, the window remained intact, not a single bit of it cracked or scratched or anything. What the fuck was this glass made of? What kind of fucking sorcery was this?

  Angered, I went to the window and pounded on it with my fists. It didn’t even rattle. I screamed, tears falling down my face as I bruised my palms with the force of my strikes.

  I felt him come up from behind me. I heard him shushing me like he always did, that calm tone of his striking at my heart, at my anger, at the centre of my being.

  The second I felt his arms begin to wrap around me, I spun around and pounded into him. I was screaming all kinds of things.

  You made me this way.

  You won’t let me go.

  You want me to fight you.

  You like this.

  You want me miserable and trapped.

  I wailed at him, and he took the full brunt of it, staring at me with an expression I’d never seen before. One that looked equally distressed and pained and miserable.

  “How did we get here?” I asked him, panting now, so tired my legs were shuddering. My body wavered against him, this time allowing him to wrap his arms around me to steady me. “I used to be so scared of you. I used to think you were going to kill me. Tell me, Nixon, in that cabin, did you think about it? Just a little bit?”

  He looked anguished, watching me for a long moment. “You worry me, Vixen.”

  Confusion filled me. “Why?”

  “Because you already know everything. You already know who was before you. You already know what my intentions were in that cabin. You just choose not to remember.”

  I blinked slowly, considering his words. “I can’t think about it, Nixon, without falling apart.”

  “Ever think you might fall together instead?”

  I didn’t respond because I didn’t know what he meant. It was the worst time of my life. I’d never been so petrified. I couldn’t unbury that trauma. I resisted.

  “You’re really never going to let me go, are you?” I whispered shakily, staring into his solemn blue eyes.

  “Never,” he said, resolutely.

  My shoulders sagged. The fight disappeared from me. I felt myself beginning to accept that this was it – this was how my life was going to be.

  “You’re not enough, Nixon,” I croaked. “I need more of a reason to live, you know.”

  Nixon’s gaze shifted to a spot on the ground. “Careful, baby. You feel that way now, but if you lost me, you might not think so.”

  I didn’t think that was true. He wasn’t the reason I was living. No way.

  “A person should never hold that much power,” I said, feeling more tears fall.

  “Shame,” he replied, equally tormented. “I never got to make that choice when you came into my world.”

  As I watched him, the way his shoulders slumped, the way he looked at me with such desperate pining, I suddenly wondered.

  Maybe Nixon was just as trapped as me.

  Maybe he had no way out.

  Maybe, while I fought to be let go, he fought to keep me because he needed to.

  Maybe… the one held captive was the captor all along.

  These thoughts stunned me in my place. I stared at him like it was the first time, like…I could see the cracks in him, though I knew they were there all along.

  “Take me to bed,” I whispered, my voice scratchy, the fight in me depleted.

  He picked me up with zero effort, pressing his forehead to mine, breathing me in with closed eyes. He took me to bed and held me in his lap, stroking my hair and back with a tenderness that made me want to cry all over again. He shushed me, whispering baby, baby. I relaxed, buried my head into his chest, closing my eyes.

  After I’d settled down, the room filled with silence. I heard his heart beating in my ear, heard his long, steady breaths.

  Then he whispered gently, “I let you out, and it went against everything in me. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, if given the chance, you’d leave me. Still, I let you out. Can’t you see I’m trying?” Fresh tears fell from my sore eyes as I listened. “My day begins and ends with you. You’re mine, Vixen, wherever you are, wherever you go, your home is with me.”

  After a while of his stroking and tender words, I felt the pain leech from my body. He always did that – made the hurt go away. I used to fight against it, resist believing he was responsible for making me feel better, but I was wrong. So very wrong.

  “What happened to you today?” I whispered in a peaceful lull. “Your hand is busted up and you’re not yourself.”

  “Today,” he whispered back, his voice tightening, “I had to feel myself rot, had to be my old self again, and I didn’t like it.”

  I tried to interpret what he meant. “Why did you have to be your old self again?”

  “Because sometimes it’s necessary. Because it protects us – protects you.”

  “Is this about that homeless man?”

  “Yes.”

  “You found out who sent him?”

  “I found out who let him through the door.”

  And that man was probably dead.

  His men were probably covering it up as we spoke.

  This would have been disturbing to me two years ago. Now? Not so much.

  “Is that why you needed my mouth?” I asked.

  “I needed to take the edge off.”

  Reflecting on my wig out, I murmured, “I don’t think I helped out much.”

  “I think you did just fine, kitten.”

  I traced my finger along his vast chest, running over scars I’d always known were there, but now they intrigued me. I thought of what Dr Sullivan said, about him being stabbed, about her nursing him back to health. I tried to think of Nixon disadvantaged and bleeding, and it was so hard to envision because I’d never seen him that way.

  “Is it true you got stabbed and almost died?” I asked, looking up at him in the dark.

  He peered down at me, looking utterly shattered from today. “Yeah, that happened.”

  “What happened exactly?”

  “I was a street kid. I thieved and couriered drugs. One day a group of thugs decided to rob me halfway to the drop off point, and they didn’t want me to live through it.”

  “So, they stabbed you?”

  “I stabbed them first with this rusted knife I carried. I’d stolen that blade from an army surplus store when I was a kid and never could seem to let it go, call it silly superstition. I’d never used it until then. I knew they were going to leave me for dead, and at the time I had a reason to live. I couldn’t die. I needed to fight my way out of it or die trying.”

  “And you fought your way out of it?”

  “I tried. I got seriously hurt and I ran bleeding.”

  “Until you broke into the clinic,” I finished for him, trying to piece the events together.

  “Now, that’s not true,” he admonished, lightly. “The clinic was closed but the doors were still open.”

  I cheekily said, “But it was technically closed.”

  He smirked. “Then they should have locked the doors.”

  “But you’d have died.”

  “Sometimes I think I should have.”

  My cheekiness died a sudden death. My heart ached at the thought of him dying outside the doors. “Why do you feel you should have died?”

  “I had more goodness in me then.”

  With a heavy heart, I considered that. Better to die with goodness in your heart than to die completely corrupted by the darkness. It was sad the way the world took you into its grip and chewed through your soul, blackening you, hardening you, changing you forever. And to have no choice in it, either. It was cruel.

  “Was it cold?” I miserably asked, watching him closely.

  “Freezing.” Noticing my deflated mood, he added, “Raining too.”

  Okay, so now I was envisioning him bleeding to death in the cold and rain, and my hear
t couldn’t take it. “Oh, Nixon.”

  “I ran with a twisted ankle too.”

  My misery faded as I shot him a wry look. “I think you’re trying to make me feel bad for you.”

  He grinned. “Is it working?”

  I held back a laugh. “It was up until the end.”

  He placed me down on my back and propped himself up on his elbow, looking down at me with a tender look. I covered my face because I couldn’t handle that look; it burned me everywhere. He pulled my hands away, though. “I want to see you, Vix.”

  “Then stop looking at me like that,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “You know what.”

  He gently brushed my cheeks. “I’ll stop if you kiss me.”

  I dropped my hands and looked up at him, waiting for that kiss. He dropped his head to me, searing me with one last look – a look wrought with hunger, with need, with affection – and then he kissed me.

  His lips moved tenderly over mine and didn’t last long. The second my heart started picking up, he pulled away and pulled me to his chest, leaving me wanting.

  He always left me wanting.

  Nixon…

  His little vixen was falling to pieces, and he didn’t know how to stop it.

  What triggered it?

  Was it letting her walk away from him? Did she feel as ruined as he did? Did her heart burst with panic? Did she feel the urge to turn back and run to him the way he felt the urge to chase her?

  He instantly regretted it when he couldn’t see her anymore. Nixon had paced, scratching at his jaw, rubbing at his face, feeling the maddening impulse to call his men out and chase her down and bring her back to him, where she belonged.

  He couldn’t take it.

  It went against his very nature. He felt like his limb was missing. This sick need to control her, to own her, wanting nothing more in life than to have her feel the same way he did.

  And did she?

  Behind her defiance, did she care for him?

  Ever since he spoke to Hobbs that afternoon, he couldn’t think straight. He knew he had to hear the truth. Vixen was going to get worse. She was going to defy him more and push her boundaries and she was going to keep asking that dreaded fucking question: when will you let me go?