“My longtime boyfriend proposed to me two months ago with this ugly ring his mom picked out. I said ‘yes’ because we were in front of all my friends and family, but even at the time, I was wondering if I was making a mistake. My best friend Mikayla knows. I’ll just say I had to think about it by myself, and I had to be alone.” Oran’s expression flared in interest, and I flopped back in my chair to heave the most exhausted sigh possible. Mateo hadn’t woken up, yet, but he was doing a lot worse than me. Now, seeing him hooked up to tubes, lying on his front, his back covered in bandages— it was a beautiful sight. “The TV shows lied to me.”
“Mateo is . . . a very unique kind of person, Lucy. He’s been through a lot.” Sniffling harshly, I only gulped down the snot that pooled at the back of my throat, and Oran and I fell into a peaceful silence. Staring at the ceiling through bleary, achy eyes, the congealed week that’d slipped by flickered broken behind my sockets. An ache sprung up against my temple, and Oran only intensified it when he continued. “Lucy, if you want, we can set you up with a therapist of ours. Someone you don’t have to lie to.”
“I just want to go see my dog. That’s enough therapy for me.” Tilting my head to gaze at Oran, I frowned at the concern knitting his brows. “What?”
“I’d firmly suggest you talk to someone before you head home, Lucy.” Pursing my lips thinly, I only jerked my head in a nod, and Oran steepled his fingers as I laid my head back down on the edge of the hospital bed. I was tired, and I just wanted to go home, but I didn’t want to leave Mateo here alone. “It’s a difficult situation for you to be in, I know, but keeping those secrets pent up in you is going to eat away at you, Lucy. You were held hostage for a week, and even though it could’ve been worse, it was still a terrible thing you had to endure.”
“Yeah.” I just agreed with him, my blurred gaze fixing on the ring on my finger as it glinted in the low light streaming down from above. We were in a nice hospital, a small one by all accounts. I didn’t know if the place was empty because the wing was bought out or something, or if it was just a slow hospital, but the peace was nice. “If you say so.”
Maybe, Oran realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere with me, and he stood up to leave me in the comfort of the rank stench of cleaner and steady beeping of machines. When the door shut gently, Mateo squeezed my hand, and my breath hitched in surprise when he turned his head to face me.
“You’re awake! Oh, my God, you’re awake!” Relief and happiness leaked from my eyes, and Mateo cracked a small smile as he gingerly rolled his shoulders. The bandages on his back stretched, the tape crinkling quietly, and I reached my free hand to stroke his face with trembling fingers. “Mateo . . . ”
“Hey, I didn’t know your hair was blonde.” Blubbering a laugh at his croak, I sniffled hard, and my face heated as Mateo carefully rolled onto his side. His face twisted with a wince, and my heart leaped into my throat when he sat up with a low grunt. “Are you okay, Lucy?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine. Because of you.” Reaching to wipe my eyes with his thumb, Mateo smiled so beautifully, the relief palpably spewing from his pores as I nodded furiously. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
“I still think I might. I know Oran likes to do things quiet, but that was surreal. I keep thinking I’ll open my eyes and we’ll still be in that room.” Climbing onto the hospital bed, I wrapped my arms around Mateo’s neck to hold him tight, and the faint smell of him was calming and familiar. Goosebumps washed my arms and chest as he rubbed my sides and up my back, and I closed my eyes to bury my face in the crook of his shoulder. “I heard what you said about your alibi. Is that the truth about your friend?”
“Mikayla? She knows that I regret saying ‘yes’, so she’ll back me up. At least, in front of people, she will. There’s no way she’ll not know I’m lying, though. What do I tell her?” My mumble earned me a low groan of acknowledgement, and Mateo cupped the back of my head to knead my scalp.
“The best lies are the ones closest to the truth, so tell her you shacked up with a guy for a week. It’s as close to true as you can get. You didn’t cheat or anything, but you had a lot of time to think and someone to bounce your thoughts off of. If she asks how we met, just say we booked the same room by accident.”Thatwas an interesting way to spin things, and I nodded firmly as Mateo’s thickening beard scraped my temple. “If she keeps asking, just tell her it was a really rough, soul-searching journey, and you don’t want to give details.”
“I don’t want to leave you.” The confession dried my mouth, and Mateo’s hand paused against my scalp as his heart stuttered against mine. Tightening my grip on him, I held my breath as my lungs became small and tight, and he pressed his cheek against my temple firmly.
“You have to, Lucy. You have people to get back to. I bet your dog misses you like crazy.” A sad lilt in his tone nearly stopped my heart, and Mateo pulled back to cup my face in both his hands. His smile was hallow and shriveled, and I hiccupped a sob as he pressed his forehead against mine. “That’s reason enough to go back to Tennessee, right? For your dog.”
“Mateo . . . ”
“Hey, can you go get me something to eat? I’m starving.” His palms fell from my skin, leaving me ice cold, and I nodded mutely before throwing my legs over the side of the bed. Mateo arched and grumbled and hissed as he twisted, throwing his elbows out, and tingles shot up and down my legs when I put my weight on them. Dread gnawed through my gut, and I glanced back as he raised his arms above his head.
Even after the past week, he was toned and muscular. Maybe, that wasn’t a long time, but . . .
“Oh, Lucy, can you get the nurse for me, too.” I nodded again, and my soles barely left the linoleum as I shuffled out of the room. Shutting the door behind me, I swiped back my hair and rubbed my hands up my face roughly to heave a massive sigh. The hallway was quiet, and I made my way to the nurse’s station to get someone into Mateo’s room. Everything in me screamed to go back, to hold him and never let go, and I crossed my arms tightly over my chest to keep my heart from breaking through my ribs.
6
Mateo
“You sound different than you did before.” The words filtered through my scope of comprehension weakly, and I glanced over at Oran through the swirling, polarized glass. Water soaked my hair and stung my back fiercely, but I barely felt it. I was just glad to be clean, and I swept back my hair absently. “Wanna talk about it?”
“What’s there to talk about? All they did was whip me. Occasionally, I took a punch to the face. Standard stuff. Honestly, I was kinda disappointed.” Sourness dribbled from my teeth like acid, and I placed both my palms on the tiled wall to stretch. My sternum popped satisfyingly, and my lip curled up when the cuts on my back screamed in protest. “S-shit, I mean, there’s not much to say.”
“Lucy’s going home today.” That declaration hurt more than my back, and I ducked my head to pop the joints high on my spine. Every part of me was stiff, but the warm water helped. “Is it because of the kidnapping, or because of her?”
“Iswhat, Oran? I had a life-altering, catastrophic event happen, and you’re wondering if it did alter my life? Yes, it did. Yeah, it was her. What’s your point? Lucy’s going back to Tennessee, and me, I’ll go back to being Carlyle’s bitch.” He was quiet at the harshness in my tone, and I flopped my head back roughly to straighten and twist the water off sharply. Bitterness flooded my chest, and sourness coated my tongue as I pushed open the door and glared at my brother. “Do you know how hard it was topretendthat I knew for sure, with absolute certainty, that we were going to be rescued? That someone was looking for us? That you or Carlylewould find us? When I didn’t really believe that myself? I mean, where the fuck was,hewhen I was ready to jump out the window of a penthouse? Where wereyou, huh, Oran? Why does anyone care about me now when no one cared about me before? Oh, suddenly the only people who can abuse me are Carlyle and his fucking sadistic secretary?”
“You’re my brother, Mateo. Even if Carlyle abandoned you, I wouldn’t.” Gulping down the dense lump in my throat, I snatched the towel off the hook to wrap it around my waist, and Oran took off his glasses to wipe the lenses with his t-shirt hem. “I’ve offered almost every time we talked for you to come to Seattle, and you always said ‘no’. I know being under Carlyle’s heel like that is depressing. Idid that, remember? And, like you, I had to go through a horrible, horrible event to make me see it wasn’t worth it. Even if Carlyle didn’t approve, I would find you. It’d maybe take me a while, but I would.”
“I realized that, Oran.” My back burned, and I exhaled a heavy breath through my nose as Oran caught my gaze, fixing his glasses on his nose. The ugly feelings I held didn’t die down, though, and a frown twisted my lips as I stepped out of the bathroom. “I just . . . getting kidnapped and tortured is supposed to be a person’s low point. It’s not supposed to feel like one of the easier things I’ve been through.”
“You’re optimistic about the future, though, now . . . ” Trailing off, Oran arched a brow quizzically, and I clenched my jaw hard as my face heated in annoyance. “Unless that was an act for Lucy, too.”
“You know what they say— you lie enough to yourself, you start to believe it.” Scratching my scruff sharply, I walked over to the sink to glare at myself in the mirror. My brother was right, though— I sounded different. Ilookeddifferent. “I’m sure that once I go back, it’ll just end up the same again. That’s okay, though, Oran. It really is. This is karma at its finest, and, yeah, I exaggerated for Lucy because she doesn’t deserve any of this shit.”
“Neither do you, Mateo. You know- Carlyle’s not the only one that bosses people around.” The deep, dark tone rolled down my spine, and I turned to find my dad in all his aged-like-fine-wine glory standing in the doorway to my room. His usually bright, peppy bowtie was missing, his long, thin body draped in a powerful, all black suit. Normally, my dad tried to dress light to hide the fact that he was a soulless bastard, but now . . . now, he looked a heck of a lot like the Horseman Death inSupernatural.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” The last time my father and I spoke was almost a year ago, when he told me he’d give me an out, and all I had to do was take it. Nothing ever happened. Maybe, he just never got around to it. Maybe, he never cared enough to think up something to back up his offer.
