Chapter 14

Sadie

M y cheeks warmed as the sun shone through the passenger-side window glass. A slight crack in the window let in the cool breeze. When I slowly came to, opening my eyes, the car spun, and nausea climbed to my throat.

At this point, I knew I was inside Keelan’s car, but not where we were or where we were going. I had been slipping in and out of consciousness, tied to a seatbelt and listening to Keelan whistle his own tunes while the radio stayed silent. Beside me, my captor took me away from a home I had grown to love. A place, for the first time in my life, I felt safe in.

I slowly sat up straight and looked ahead of the road, feeling my stomach churn.

“Keelan, do you have anything I can puke in?” I asked, finally turning my head to look at him.

He reached into the driver’s door slot and pulled out a bag. “Will this do?” he said, handing it off. His eyes flashed with a hint of concern, though I wasn’t sure if it was genuine. I couldn’t escape the reality that I was being held prisoner in a car with Keelan, a real-life demon in human skin, who held my life in his hands.

Taking the bag in one hand while my other clutched my stomach, I leaned forward, my dry mouth hovering over the paper bag’s opening. But nothing came up.

“You slept longer than I thought you would. Nausea is normal, though. It’ll pass—”

“Fuck off,” I said, still waiting. All Keelan did was respond with a subtle and arrogant snicker under his breath while his eyes turned back to the road. My distress amused him, and as much as I didn’t want to show how much his presence bothered me, it was clear as I scrunched up my face and flared my nostrils at him. “I hate you. Do you know that? I hate everything about you. Especially this.”

Keelan turned to me, and this time, he didn’t smile; his eyes only focused on mine, and something dark flashed in them. Speaking to Keelan the way I did was moronic, but at this point, dying would be a gift.

Once I realized nothing would come up, I placed the bag on my side of the door, just in case I was wrong.

My heart was pounding so hard in my throat that I was sure I was going to pass out again right as a thought hit me. “Mason! Poe!”

“They’re fine, Sadie,” Keelan said, but my mind raced at all the possibilities of what we left behind when he took me from my home. “I mean, they’re probably fine. Mason should be waking any moment now, too, and the little Post-it note I left on his forehead instructed him to watch over your cat.”

My mouth gaped.

“So, you can relax. I didn’t kill your friend.” He reached over, placed his hand on my thigh, and softly rubbed it as if he were comforting me over this news, like he wasn’t the reason for all this happening in the first place.

He’s crazy.

“You stuck a Post-it note to his forehead?”

His lip turned up. “I didn’t want anything to happen to your cat. So … yeah.”

I blinked. “You … you …” Tears threatened to fall. I could see Keelan glance at me from my peripheral, his jaw muscle ticking.

“Come on, Sadie. He’s a cat. He’ll be fine.”

The tears started falling, and I let out a hard sob, my breaths coming in gasps. I pulled my knees into my chest despite the restricting seatbelt and the damned zip-tie around my right wrist. I pressed my eyes into my sweatpants, desperately trying to anchor my thoughts before anxiety consumed me.

“What the hell is the matter now?” he asked, squeezing my thigh. I slapped it away with my free hand and whipped my head in his direction.

“Poe is my only friend in this fucked up world. The only one who kept me sane when I felt so lonely that it strangled me. He’s not just any cat. He is my cat.”

Keelan’s eyes widened in shock at the ferocity of my voice, but his face remained blank. His eyes went back to the road. A few minutes passed while I cried quietly against my folded legs. Poe would be all alone if Mason didn’t wake up, and Keelan forced me to leave him behind. A new spark of anger burned in my chest, and I furiously wiped away the tears.

“Keelan,” I said softly. “You have to stop. Turn us around. You know that the moment Mason wakes up, he’s calling the cops. There will be a massive manhunt by every police force in every city we pass. Your face will be on the news station. What is wrong with you?”

I’d always known Keelan to be unhinged and careless, but I never thought he’d go as far as escaping prison to commit yet another crime: kidnapping.

“What’s your endgame here?” I asked. “What exactly do you want from me?”

Keelan gripped the steering wheel and kept his eyes on the road, his face taking on a more serious expression.

He cleared his throat. “You know your mom was the one who told me where to find you?” he said, causing my mouth to drop in surprise. I had been so terrified since I realized someone was in my home that it never even crossed my mind to wonder how he found me. But my mother? She wouldn’t have done that.

“You’re lying,” I said. “She would never—”

“Sade, you’ve been in that family long enough to realize that no one, not even your goddamn mother, can be trusted,” he said, cutting me off. “You’ve lived in this tiny bubble, thinking good people were bad and evil people were good. I think the only one you were ever sure about was your father. Your mother, though … you trusted her way too easily. All it took was a little threat to ruin her body, and she crumbled and revealed all the secrets you thought she’d keep to protect you.”

I swallowed, and tears burned my eyes. It was risky involving my mother to help me escape, but she had endured a lifetime of torture from my father. For once, I thought she loved me enough to ensure the monsters in our life never found me. I had hoped she would protect me from becoming like her, trapped in a life of crime, domestic violence, and exploitation. It wasn’t my father she shared my location with, but the man she, at some point, was sure would kill me someday.

“Did you kill her?” I asked. “Because if you didn’t, you know she’ll go to the police and tell them where to look first. Let me also remind you who those same police officers actually work for. They won’t arrest you, Keelan. They’ll kill you.”

Keelan smirked. “Oh yeah. Big ol’ scary Finn. Your father is the least of my worries. I’m sure your mother is busy ensuring all the footage of her sneaking into your dad’s office so that she could fuck the house chef is deleted. I think you’re good for a while before the ones working for your father go hunting for me.”

My mouth gaped open, and I turned away from him. My family was exactly the same as they were before I ran—no loyalty to anyone but themselves.

Self-serving assholes.

“Any more questions, princess?”

“Stop calling me a princess! I’m not Sadie anymore, Keelan. Sadie died before she left California. That spoiled little princess everyone thought I was is dead.”

Keelan ignored my rant and turned on his blinker, pulling off the highway onto a ramp that did a full three hundred and sixty degrees to head northeast on another highway. My stomach heaved as the car’s movements caused my head to spin.

“Okay, I need you to pull over, please.”

“Use the fucking bag.”

“Keelan!” That time, I shouted, puke involuntarily coming up, but I choked it back. This was going to be messy, and a small paper bag wouldn’t cut it.

“Fuck … alright. ”

Keelan veered off to the side of the road by a sign that named the city up ahead and put the car into park. I watched him reach into the glove box and pull out a switchblade, and my body stiffened. Instead of reaching over to me, he exited the driver’s door and walked to my side, swinging the door open and reaching in.

“Don’t move.”

He slipped the blade under the zip tie and snapped it off, then he gripped my upper arm and pulled me out of the car.

When my chest hit his as he yanked me toward him, his face hardened. “You try to run, I’ll chase after you. If I catch you, I fuck you, then I tie you down in the backseat with the luggage for the rest of the trip. Don’t be stupid.”

My stomach tightened at those words. I gave him a nod as more vomit reached my throat. Before I could step back, it all came up.

Unluckily, Keelan was able to move out of the way as I projectile vomited over the dead grass by the highway guardrail.

Immediately, I felt my hair pull back, and I kneeled, Keelan keeping my long red strands out of my face. Then, once I thought it couldn’t get more bizarre that Keelan was ensuring my hair stayed clean of puke, his hand touched my back, and long strokes up and down my spine caused my body to still. With each caress, my body warmed and tingled, and my mind raced in confusion.

“I know what you’re doing, Keelan,” I said. “But I’d like you to move back.”

He didn’t stop. He continued to invade my space, and the powerful aroma of his cologne overwhelmed me. It was a familiar scent that I never forgot. “I’d rather not have my car smell like puke,” he said. “I’ll keep doing what I’m doing. ”

When I was sure I had thrown up everything in my stomach, I leaned back, feeling his hand lift from my shirt, as I plopped my ass on the gravel-covered ground.

Relief swept over me that he was no longer touching my back. I would no longer have to fight how his touch made me feel. Though the sour taste in my mouth made my stomach recoil again, I kept it down.

“You know,” Keelan started, and I looked up to meet his eyes staring down into mine. “If your dad would have ever suspected your mom of knowing where you were, he would have done the opposite of what I did. Aisling shared your location with me, and I spared her little finger. Your dad would have cut it off despite her cracking under the pressure. Just for fucking kicks.”

I gaped. “You threatened to cut off my mother’s finger?” Of course, he did. “You’re a psychopath, you sick fuck.”

Keelan’s lip turned up. “A psychopath would have killed your boss and slept like a baby that night. I may not give a shit about most people and what happens to them, but I’m capable of empathy.”

Empathy? No one from my side or his ever showed me empathy. If he truly cared about me and how I felt, I’d be snuggled up on the couch with my cat right now and with a glass of white wine, watching reruns of The Vampire Diaries.

“What if she told you nothing? Would you have cut her finger off?”

I waited, hoping to see something shift in his eyes, but nothing did. “Yes,” he said. “I knew Aisling helped you escape. So, yes. I would have cut her finger off for not telling me where you were. ”

My stomach dipped. Keelan was indeed the heartless bastard I knew he was.

“You’re a lot different from how you used to be,” Keelan said, cocking his head to the right. “Who knew my wife would care so much about the mother who did shit to protect her from a father who beat her until her skin turned purple?”

I winced at his words. “I am not your wife. I’m not your anything,” I hissed. “You’re just an escaped convict who broke in and kidnapped me. My family might be unworthy of my love, but they aren’t the ones who abducted me from a life where I finally found peace.”

“Life? Like what, with that boyfriend of yours? Maybe I should have confronted him before he left and showed him what happens when you touch another man’s property. I guess it makes sense how you’d not think it was a big deal that the asshole put a bruise on your neck.” The coldness in his voice sent a shiver down my spine.

I clenched my teeth. “Brian isn’t my boyfriend. We’re just dating.”

I don’t know why I felt the need to make that crystal clear, but perhaps it was because of the deadly tone in his voice. Either way, Brian was now a roadblock he had to eradicate.

Keelan narrowed his eyes at me, and his lips turned up. “Not your boyfriend, huh? Like you’re not my wife? It sure seemed like a lot more than a fuck buddy who has been hanging around your house for the last two weeks.”

I scrunched up my nose. “Brian is a hell of a lot better man than you. He actually cares about my well-being and only wants me to be happy. Something you know nothing about. ”

“The bruises on your neck tell me otherwise. It sounds to me like Brian doesn’t care all that much if he did that.”

I clapped my left hand over the bruises and glared at him with my puffy, red eyes. Suddenly, Keelan kneeled in front of me and snapped his hand out, grabbing my wrist hard and yanking it away from my throat. The pain from his grip shot up my arm, and I hurled a series of insults while I shrieked in agony. With his free hand, Keelan reached out and gently touched my neck where the markings were, gingerly gliding his finger down before stopping. His face, though, held no love or compassion. If anything, he was looking at me with disgust and horror.

He’s going to do it here. I’m going to die right here on the side of the road.

“Just kill me now,” I demanded, my voice trembling. Keelan’s eyes … did they soften a little? His blue eyes changed, and his thumb released from my neck and dropped to my chest, resting there as he pressed his lips firmly together.

What the hell is going on?

“Little princess,” he said, “why the fuck would I kill you? You’re mine, Sadie—my wife. As much as the arrangement between our parents brings fucking misery, you and I are bound, and I don’t want to disappoint the family. Maybe I’ll go back and kill that … fuck buddy of yours. But, while I won’t harm you nor kill you—despite your hysterics—I will kill anyone who touches you. I promise nothing but violence on that subject.”

As we stared at each other for an uncomfortable amount of time, Keelan finally released his hand from me and walked over to his trunk, pulling out a water bottle and coming back to my side. I averted his gaze, grabbed the cool bottle, and twisted the cap off .

I quickly swished a mouthful of water around my mouth, hoping to rinse out the puke still coating my gums. After spitting out the water a few times onto the gravel, I swallowed the last bit, which helped quench my dry throat. “Thank you,” I said. I hated being polite, but being hostile with Keelan wouldn’t win him over.

At this point, I knew that whatever I did from here on out, I would have to earn his trust so that I could run the moment he let his guard down. Once back in the car, I leaned my head against the window and tried to watch the world roll by as we pulled off the side of the road and down the highway through Vermont. The intensity of what had just happened was frightening, but even beyond all that, he still pulled such sensations from the dark parts of me I was afraid of.

I shook the unspoken thoughts away and sunk deeper against the window. As we drove, I watched the endless sea of snow-covered trees roll by. Eventually, my eyes closed, and I drifted into a sleep filled with stars and butterflies.