When she looks up at me, I see the desperation in her eyes. Her questions aren’t rhetorical. She needs to know the answer. She needs me to give her a reason. So I do. “Me. I’m in Rockhead Point,” I tell her simply.
Spinning around to face me, her eyes narrow, and her brow furrows, making her look adorably confused. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you’re mine, Doll, and I’m taking you home.”
FOUR
OCTAVIA
“It means you’re mine.”
His voice plays on repeat in my head as I try to decide how I feel about his confession, but honestly, I don’t know how I feel. I don’t feel like I know anything anymore, and even if I did, I don’t know if I can trust myself. I thought I knew who I was, but then everything that’s happened with Abel has proved otherwise. I was blind to him. I thought he loved me. I thought he was Mr. Right. I thought he was my person. But it turns out, he was only mine if I was somebody else, some creation he molded in the way he wanted. What’s worse is that I had no idea he was squashing me into a box that was the wrong shape for me until I was already misshapen and deformed.
Abel might be an asshole, but everything that happened was as much my fault as it was his. I allowed myself to be manipulated…twice.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
I didn’t learn my lesson the first time. I let him do it again, and this time, I don’t have the excuse of love and sex and infatuation to blame. This time, I was just an idiot.
“It means you’re mine.”The memory of Knight’s calm, perfectly reasonable claiming words replay in my head again, pulling me from my own internal castigations and back to the present.
Knight thinks I’m his. He came all the way to Rapid City to bring me back to Montana. To bring me home. To him.
“Doll.”
A solid, firm hand lands on my thigh, and I snap my head to the side to stare at the man it belongs to.
Blinking, I wait for him to say something else, but instead of speaking, he just looks at me expectantly, the same way he’s been looking at me since my brain crashed after his confession earlier.
“It means you’re mine, Doll, and I’m taking you home.”
His words and the implications behind them did something to me, and everything he said and did after that is a blur. Abel would have demanded a response, but I don’t think Knight expected me to say anything. I’m fairly sure he didn’t say anything else or try to explain himself. Instead, he collected my makeup bag from the bathroom, grabbed my still full suitcase, took my hand, and led me out of the Airbnb and down to a car he’d parked on the street outside the building.
Before I even really processed what was happening, I was on an airplane, and we were in the air.
Blinking, I focus my attention on him and find him still staring at me intently.
“What about the rest of my things?” I finally ask, my voice rough.
“I’m handling it,” he says simply, turning his attention back to the panel of controls in front of us.
Did I mention that the airplane we’re in…Knight is flying? Right now, I’m sitting in the co-pilot seat because, apparently, Knight has his pilot’s license. He even pulled all of hiscertifications out of his bag when I started to freak out and showed them to me. He can fly several different kinds of airplanes and helicopters, and when he said he was taking me home, he actually meant he was flying me home on an airplane that only holds six people.
I’m not afraid of flying, at least not on a big, normal airplane. But this teeny tiny tin can with wings is terrifying, as is the view of nothing but sky ahead of us, and the view of the ground not as far away as it should be below us.
Honestly, I’m not sure if everything that’s happened today is real. It’s not even lunchtime, and so far, a guy I barely know has turned up at my rental, undressed me, bathed me, redressed me, done my hair, told me I’m beautiful and perfect and…his, then drove me to a private airfield and put me on a very, very, very small airplane.
Later, when my feet are back on terra firma, I’m sure I’ll think of a thousand protests, comebacks, and reasons I should have used to explain why I couldn’t just leave Rapid City but an hour ago when he so calmly said,“It means you’re mine, Doll, and I’m taking you home.”I couldn’t think of a single reason why letting him just take control wasn’t the exact right thing to do.
“Octavia?” Knight says, using my full name for the very first time.
I don’t hate my name. In fact, I think it’s pretty cool. But most people call me Octy, mainly because it’s easier to say. Only I don’t think he’s called me anything but Doll since he stepped into my Airbnb and took control of my absentee brain.
“I’m not okay,” I blurt, answering a question he hasn’t asked.
Something about what I just said must be funny, because his lips twitch at the corner, and he chuckles softly.
Oh, good lord. The hint of a smile changes his face, and the timbre of his amusement vibrates through me, making mynipples pebble beneath the bra he picked out and helped me put on.
