I take in a deep breath and knock on her door. “Crystal?”
There’s no response, and I didn’t expect her to welcome me in with open arms either, but the silence beyond this door is telling.
“Crystal, I want to talk,” I say.
I knock a few more times.
I would’ve half expected her to have thrown the furniture by now, but it’s completely quiet.
Suspicious.
I fish my key card from my pocket and open the door, peeking inside with my foot jammed against the door in case she tries to ambush me.
But there’s not a movement in sight.
I push the door open farther and check her room. “Crystal? Where are you?”
Her blanket has been thrown over and her bed is empty, the closet raided. Her bathroom door is unlocked, and there doesn’t appear to be anyone inside.
My heart begins to race.
She’s gone.
Fuck!
If I tell Ares, he’ll destroy the goddamn campus just to find her.
I bust out the door and storm toward Blaine’s room down the hallway. Maybe he took her for his own selfish interests despite the warnings Ares gave.
“Blaine!” I yell before I burst into his room unannounced, but I come to a screeching halt the moment I spot him lying in his bed with a chain around his neck, both wrists locked to his bed, and a deflated dick clearly covered in cum.
My jaw drops.
“A little help, darling?”
Fucking hell.
“What the f—Did you do this yourself? How?” I ask, confused as fuck by the scene in front of me.
I always thought he was the dominant one when it came to his flings, but maybe I was wrong.
“It’s easy to unlock them. The key is on the nightstand,” Blaine says, nodding at it.
There’s no way he would let just anyone tie him up and leave him here.
My jaw tenses. “She was here, wasn’t she?”
He smirks. “Should I lie or tell you the truth? Either way, it seems like I’ll be dead.”
Damn right, he is.
My fist balls. “Where is she?”
“She took my master key card and her phone,” he replies, shrugging. “Sorry.”
My eyes widen.
She’s escaped.
I turn around and run off.
“Hey, aren’t you going to help me get out of here?” Blaine yells, but I pay no attention to it as I rush downstairs.
Ares will deal with him later. First, I gotta find her and get her back before he realizes she’s gone.
I grasp my car keys and storm out the door, headed straight for my car. I press a button to open the gates to the property before I hop inside and hit the gas. The tires screech as I dial her number and wait until she picks up, but of course she won’t.
“Pick up, goddammit! Don’t you know what’s at stake here?” I growl after the beep. “Where are you?”
My car veers around the corner, barely avoiding the cliff near the school’s gates, and I race down the mountain while I smash my fingers onto my phone. Lucky for me, I was fucking prepared for when she’d escape my grasp. I had Blaine install a tracking app on her phone, and it’d better be his saving grace, or I swear to God I will go in there and strangle him with his own dick.
I tap the app and wait until it does its work, impatiently hitting the gas until it finally finds her location. The street outside her mom’s house.
Got her.
I race down the mountain, not giving a shit about oncoming traffic as I speed through a red light. All this fighting death only gets me hard.
Does she really not understand what she’s messing with here?
She can’t save her mother from us just as much as she can’t save herself.
My car swerves through the streets as I turn a corner and head for her mother’s home. Time is ticking, and there’s no time to waste. If she so much as even speaks a single syllable to her mother about what we’ve done …
Fuck. If only Blaine hadn’t been a goddamn weak link.
I slam my hands onto the steering wheel in anger. The image of him lying there in his own cum is really seared into my mind.
What the fuck did he do with her?
Did she mess with his head and then chain him to his bed?
And why was he the one who was tied up?
I swallow away the lump in my throat, pushing the thoughts away. There’s no answer to them anyway, not until I find her, and I fucking will.
When I finally get to the street her mother’s house is on, the rage takes hold of my heart. Crystal’s right there, a mere two houses away.
I push the pedal and race until I finally catch up with her, swerving across the lawn until the car comes to a full stop in a sideways position, blocking her path.
“What the f—” She jumps back and gawks at the car. “Caleb?”
I push open the passenger’s door and bark, “Get in.”
Her face contorts, and she clutches the same little bag she brought to the party. “No.”
“Do I look like I’m up for bargaining?” I growl. “You took our fucking deal. You do what we say.”
“I don’t fucking care.”
She tries to pass by my car, so I open my door and jump out to block her way. “No. You’re not going to her house. You’re not going to talk to her. You’re not going to do anything except sit your ass down in my car, or so help me God … I will fucking end it all myself.”
Her pupils dilate. “What?”
I point at the passenger seat, allowing her one last chance to make the right choice. “Get in the car. Now.”
She shudders in place, glancing briefly at her mother’s door before lowering her gaze.
“I needed to know she was okay,” she says, tears welling up in her eyes. “That she could be safe regardless of my choices.”
I bite my tongue, but the strain to control my emotions is too much even for me as she unravels in front of me.
Even after escaping from hell, she first chooses to save the one person she wants to save at all costs, even if she has to risk her life doing so.
And something about that breaks the resolve inside my heart.
As the tears begin to flow down her cheeks, I let out a sigh before I wrap my arms around her and pull her into my embrace.
Crystal
Caleb’s hug comes so out of the blue, I don’t know what to do as his arms envelop me. I just stand there with eyes wide open and tears rolling down my face.
Why would he hug me? I thought he didn’t care?
His embrace feels so warm that I sink into it, not giving a shit that it’s the guy who’s been on my ass since day one.
“You have to forget about her. Forget she exists, for both your sake and hers.”
For a moment there, I almost believed something other than resentment could exist.
My brain finally finds its sanity again, and I push him away from me. “No. You’re insane. She’s my mother. I love her.”
“If you love her enough, you’ll leave with me. Right now.”
I frown, glaring at him and the Aston Martin he recklessly drove across her lawn just to stop me. “You came all this way to stop me from talking to her. Are you scared I’ll reveal your dirty secret?” I look up at him with disdain. “Don’t want your dad to know all about the filthy shit you’ve been up to with his step—”
He shoves his hand against my mouth, calloused, tattooed fingers pinching my cheeks.
“Don’t. Don’t say that fucking word out loud.”
I bite his finger, and he swiftly retracts, shaking his hand. “Goddammit, woman.”
“I’m not your fucking woman. And I can say whatever the hell I want to whoever the hell I want.”
“You’re not the shy girl I once pegged you as, are you?” he rebukes.
“I never said I was,” I retort.
“You just make people believe you are.”
I slam my lips shut while his tip up into a lukewarm smile. “Guess I’m not the only one keeping secrets.”
“Listen here, asshole.” I point my finger at his chest. “I didn’t go through all that effort to escape just to have you casually pick me up at my mom’s front door and put me back in that prison you call a room.”
“And when the fuck did I say I was going to do that?” he says, tilting his head before gripping my finger, his warm hand making me all too aware of just how comforting that hug he just gave me felt. And how badly I want to crush his skull underneath the tires of his own car for making me feel like I needed it.
“Then why did you come?”
“Because I can’t let you do this. I can’t let you blow it all up. Your life is not the only one at stake here.”
“You’re the one who’s been threatening her,” I grit.
“You think I’m the one you should be scared of?” he retorts.
I frown, but slowly, it begins to dawn on me. “Ares …”
Caleb’s face darkens, confirming my suspicions, and my jaw drops.
“Ares? Why would Ares want to keep me away from my mom? Why would he care?”
“Because he wants you.”
My whole body suddenly feels cold as ice. “He’s using my mom as leverage to keep me as a prisoner.”
Caleb slowly nods. “I told you I wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to you.”
I jerk my finger free from Caleb’s grip. “Why? Just because your father wanted to marry my mother, I deserve to be treated like a toy?”
When he doesn’t say a word, I slap him. Hard. And he doesn’t even flinch.
He just stands there and takes it … like it does nothing to him.
Or maybe the exact opposite, I can’t tell at this point.
I slap him again. “You asshole!” When he doesn’t respond, I add, “Fucking say something, dammit! Why would it matter if your father fell in love with someone? My mother isn’t trying to steal your goddamn fortune. She just wants to be happy.” More tears sting my eyes, but I slap him once more until his cheeks are red. “My mother deserves to be happy. My father would’ve wanted her to be.”
I sniff and push back more tears, but the way Caleb gazes at me completely catches me off guard. The complete and utter distraught look in his eyes undoes me.
“Your father?” he mutters, his face contorting.
“He’s dead,” I growl, ignoring the shock riddling his face. I’ve seen that look of surprise and pity so many times before that it does nothing to me anymore. “My mother is all I have left. I wished for so long she’d smile again. Why are you so desperate to destroy their relationship that you’d try to ruin my life over it?”
His teeth grind together, but then his hand rises, and I almost expect a slap back.
Instead, he picks up one of my leftover tears on his thumb, caressing my cheek so softly my breath falters.
Suddenly, he grips my arm and shoves me into the car.
“Stay,” he growls before he opens the driver’s side and gets in, locking both doors.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“You want to know why? I’ll fucking show you why.” He starts the car and veers across the street, plowing through my mother’s freshly mowed lawn, destroying it in the process as slices of dirt and grass are chucked in the air.
“My mom’s going to be pissed when she finds her front yard in the morning,” I say.
“Trust me, she’d be much more pissed if she found a gun in her face instead,” he replies.
I stare at him in shock as he continues to drive. “You’d actually kill her?”
“What makes you think I was talking about me?”
I slam my lips shut and look out the window, angry that he’d found me in the first place. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Blaine.
“How the hell did you find me anyway?” I ask after a while.
“I had Blaine install a tracker on your phone.”
I snort, shaking my head. “Of course, you did.”
“You think that’s funny?”
“Of course. Everything’s a fucking game to you guys.”
“This ain’t no fucking game, Crystal,” he growls. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“Yeah, well you’re doing a damn bad job at it,” I say, pointing at the red light he just ignored. When a truck shoots right past our rear while honking, I scream, “Look out!”
The car veers sideways to avoid another oncoming car, and I look at him, wondering if he’s gone insane or if he has a death wish. Maybe both.
He bites his lip and swerves from left to right, headed for a direction unknown to me, and that’s what scares me the most. The only thing I know for sure is that we’re not going back up the hill to Spine Ridge U, which means he won’t put me back in that room like a bird in a cage. At least for now.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask.
He races around the curves of the road, narrowly escaping a bin.
“You’ll see.”
But every time I glance at him, I can’t help but trail my eyes down his body, remembering just how good it felt when he licked me while Ares fucked me. And something tells me he’s thinking about it too, judging from how his bulge just grew.
He’s glancing at me with his provocative eyes, and I swiftly look away.
A vehicle approaches us from the side, and he makes no attempt to avoid it, making me scream once more. “Caleb!”
He swerves just in time, but his hard-on twitches again, and he groans in frustration … or is it excitement?
“You’re getting hard,” I say. “Because you’re putting me in danger?”
He shakes his head, gripping the steering wheel tightly. “Because I’m putting myself in danger. It makes me feel alive.”
My lips part to let out a gasp, but nothing escapes because the shock is too great.
Putting himself in danger? As in … the thought of getting killed turns him on?
The car slips on the streets as we make our way downtown toward a tall skyscraper. But when it finally comes to a stop, I feel like I’ve been tumbled through a washer because my hair is definitely sticking to my sweaty body.
“Jesus,” I mutter.
He gets out and taps on the hood. “We’re here.”
He walks toward a building and looks at me over his shoulder as though he’s waiting for me to follow him, so I open the door and hop out too.
The building looks intimidating from up close. I wonder what’s inside.
“C’mon,” he says, opening the door.
Downstairs is a lobby, and a woman at the front desk greets him. “Hello, Mr. Preston. Back for the usual check-in with—”
“Tell the staff to leave. I need twenty minutes undisturbed,” he interjects, waltzing to the elevator.
Undisturbed … with who?
I get inside too even though his penetrative stare makes me feel anything but comfortable while stuck together in an elevator. He pulls out a very peculiar key card and holds it in front of a pad, then presses a button. The doors close, and the silence is overwhelming as we go up and up and up, seemingly unending. And all I can do is listen to his breathing grow more rapid with every level we pass, as though he’s mentally preparing himself for what’s to come.
“What’s up there?” I ask, but he doesn’t answer until the elevator comes to a stop.
He clears his throat. “You asked me why I didn’t want my father dating your mother. I’ll show you.”
There’s a long hallway up ahead filled with doors, each leading to a numbered room, and I follow him inside.
“What is this place?”
“One of my father’s many properties,” he says. “He rents out the rooms. Except this floor.”
“What’s on this floor?” I ask, gulping when he glances at me over his shoulder without answering my question.
He stops in front of a door at the end of the hallway and holds the key card in front of another pad. Something beeps, and a lock springs loose. He pushes down the handle and heads inside.
It’s a two-part home, one bathroom, one bedroom, and a small kitchen barely large enough to make a coffee or a snack. To my right is a round beige leather chair, and to my left, a small table with two seats. But what draws in my eyes is the big bed in the middle of the room and all the machinery beside it beeping and churning away.
In the bed lies a woman with skin so pale it nearly turns translucent, her thin, brittle hair lying on top of her shoulders as her hands rest beside her lifeless body. Tubes go in her veins, and another one is connected to her mouth, pushing oxygen in and out to her lungs.
“Who … who is that?” I mutter.
My breathing falters as Caleb sits on the bed and grabs her hand. “My mom.”
