And I was lost.
Chapter 14
Charlie
My secret. Just under the surface of my lips, like the beating of a guilty heart, I feared it was loud enough for him to hear. He’d hear it. He’d catch me. He already knew I was lying. He'd find the truth and that shitty life he complained about would be blissful compared to the hell of knowing.
Walking back into the room, he called my name in a low whisper. His eyes pleaded with mine. I didn't want to see him hurt.
"I'm getting as many answers as I can. Right now," he said, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch, facing me. "How long have you been messing with the drug dealer?"
"I worked for his mother. I—"
"You're living in the middle of filthy animals. Lower than life. Scum.Why?"
"I loved you so utterly and so completely, Jase. When you left it destroyed me." I ran my hands through my hair and stood up. I needed to leave. I'd take Bren trying to hire a cop to have me killed any time, but telling Jase what his own father did, I physically couldn't do it. I had cold sweats thinking about it, remembering it. "I need to go. I'll get a room at a hotel. I'm sorry, but I don't feel comfortable here. I feel sick, actually."
I walked over to the window and leaned my hands heavily onto the sill. My thoughts were fractured, snapping and splintering, and I needed to leave before I told the only person left alive I’d ever trusted how much I needed him.
Suddenly, there was a warmth behind me, and I whirled around the instant I felt the heat. Jase was facing me, so close I had to lean back on my palms to hold onto the last drop of personal space I had. But, he wasn't having any of it. His arms came around me and before I knew what was happening, he hauled me off my feet and slammed me down against the wooden edge of the window.
Oh, my God, no.
My throat seized and choked on a scream as he locked my wrists behind my back and shifted his brick shithouse of a body between my legs. Cold metal slid roughly along the tender skin of my wrists as he pulled me flush against his chest, trapping me. I heard the metal zip and click of what I could only guess were handcuffs. A desperate sob tore out of my chest and my focus blurred and whirled.
He cupped my face in his hands, tilting my chin up to see him. My vision worsened as all I could see were the streams of my horrified tears.
"Give me this one last thing, Charlie. Just tell me and you can leave me and never look back."
His touch was so gentle; contrary to the tight grip of the cuffs, it made me dizzy. I tried to twist away, only to thrash myself against the thick cold glass of the window. Pain shot up my forearms and into my shoulders. It was insane to rather slam myself through the glass of the window and fall to my death than to face what he wanted me to tell.
Insane.
And right about then, I was damn near certifiable.
My pulse raced through my veins, thrashing a thunderous heartbeat behind my inner ear. All I heard was the rapid, hard thumps of my pulse slamming through my body.
I couldn't get in enough air. There just wasn't any. Only a vacuum of nothingness threatened to burst inward and implode, folding in on myself—until I was nothing more than shadows and darkness. The only thing that held me in place were the metal clasps at my wrists that my shattered mind irrationally changed into someone's computer cord from so long ago.
Involuntarily, my body sank to the floor. Dark black spots darkened and bit at the edges of my tear-streaked point of view.
Someone called my name from far away. It sounded beautiful and safe and perfect, like the most precious of distant memories.
Haunting blue eyes pierced through the tears. The same color as those that had filled my nightmares for years, and I was backthere.
The touches. The sounds. The sick, the filth and grunts, the rub of soap and the look in his eyes. The look in hers. The pity from the doctors. The suspicions from detectives.
"Youkilledme, Charlie.Youleftme.You vanished. You were my life. You were everything to me. Everything." Jase's voiced cracked through. A kaleidoscope of fleshy images and pain spun a design of madness before my eyes.
Jase's fist hit into the wall, "I couldn't breathe without you. So now, you tell mewhy!"
My head swam; my lungs ached. I threw my body weight at him. "Take them...take them...off...me. Can't stay like this. Jase!Please," I sobbed.
"Stop doing that! What are you doing?" He crouched down onto the floor with me and grabbed at my wrists. I didn't know what he was talking about. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just trying to get free. I felt a yank and my hands were free from the binds, only now they were held in front of my face, red and purple and raw.
"That's not normal. That's not what happens," he said, no louder than a whisper. "Innocent people don't react like that in cuffs!"
"Why are you doing this to me?" I cried through large gulps of breath.
