I wheezed as I got caught somewhere between a gasp and a laugh, choking on the sound. I wanted to ask who thought this was a good joke, but I knew better. There was something about this that was far, far too intricate for a prank. I could barely even catch a breath just sitting there,let alone when I was trying to talk. I needed to calm myself down before I started asking questions.
I had a feeling they needed to count.
The lights finally started to brighten, and I winced, bringing one shaking, weak hand to the side of my head. It pounded beneath the sudden increase in sensations. Christ, wasn’t a panic attack bad enough? Did I have to have dry mouth, a headache, and… Was I hallucinating?
Maybe I was still drunk. Maybe I was sick, and I was delirious, and this was some fucked-up dream.
I knew I shouldn’t have read those books, no matter how many times Oscar had tried to foist them on me.
I closed my eyes, counted to five silently, then opened them again. This time, I could see someone there. Dim LED lights lined the sides of the room like we were in a movie theatre, and it provided just enough light on the other side of the illuminated cell for me to see that there was a figure. Not much else, not when it was bright on the inside and so dark out there, but it was a man.
Obviously. The sound of his voice had given that much away.
My brain felt like someone had stuffed cotton inside of it, making it difficult to make sense of anything that was happening. I was still caught up on the whole “having too much to drink” thing, but there was a part of me that knew better.
“No, seriously. Who are you?”
“I already answered that question,” he said, stepping into the light to give me a full glimpse of him in all his… scarred glory.
Something tugged at my memory about the way he looked, but I couldn’t put together the pieces.
I shuddered as my eyes slid from the top of his head tohis almost melted-looking half of a face down to the casual t-shirt and jeans he wore to his shoes.
His eyes narrowed, and I knew he’d seen the way I’d recoiled from how he looked.
Who wouldn’t? It was human nature to hone in on imperfections, to know when people just didn’t belong with the rest of the pack. And this guy? He definitely didn’t belong anywhere near it.
“Whoever told you I’m into some Master/slave shit totally trolled you, man,” I said. My heart fluttered oddly as he put his hands into his pockets and just… watched me. “So there’s the whole kidnapping thing. People are going to miss me.”
“People are going to notice you’re gone, you mean.”
I scowled at him, lifting my hand to my forehead as it swam from the volume of his voice. “Same thing.”
“No one misses entitled brats like you,” he said, lip curving into the beginnings of a sneer.
“Entitled… What the fuck, asshole?” I demanded, only to cringe again. I made my voice quieter before I punched out my own eardrums with the pounding of this headache. “Of course they’ll miss me. My parents, my girlfriend, my frat, everyone. It’s not like I’m someone you can just make disappear.”
“Except I have,” he pointed out. “You’ve vanished without a trace, and no one’s going to look for long.”
I ugly-laughed. “All right. This isn’t funny. Just open the fucking door and help me out of here.”
Because my legs sure as hell weren’t going to support me, not with whatever was running through my system. They had me trapped firmly in the tiny bed-thing, where I could do nothing but snark off to him — and I couldn’t evendo that well, considering my brain was still trying to catch up to what was happening.
I wasn’t sure it even could. This just seemed like one of those impossible scenes in a movie, where some kid got taken and their badass parents rescued them. Except I didn’t have badass parents. My mom was an investment banker, and my dad was a retired lineman. Plenty of money, but not so much with the personal badassery.
“You’ll understand better when the drugs wear off,” he told me, hands finally coming out of his pockets as he got closer. His fingers gripped the bars of the cell, and it was clear that thing wasn’t going anywhere. There was no simple sliding lock. There wasn’t even anything I could see that made it open or close.
I’d have to get up and look when I could.
This was also the part in the movie where I figured out how to disengage some mechanical lock using the zipper of my pants or something.
“Now it’s time for your first lesson.”
I stared at him, incredulous. “Even if I was going to listen to you, I can’t even move. Your goonies pumped a little too much into my system.”
Or I’d given myself too much to drink — tomato, tomahto.
“You can do this task,” he told me, his voice low in the darkness, but somehow taking on this cajoling property I recognized as the one I used when talking to my fucking dog. “It’s just something small, and I’ll give you a blanket when you do it.”
