CHAPTER SEVEN
Allison
It felt like an eternity that I stood there with my back glued to the wall. I couldn’t catch my breath or seem to stop my legs from shaking. Even if he made me feel like the whole thing meant nothing to him, it didn’t stop the insane feelings that I had.
He was an asshole, and that wasn’t even a strong enough word to call him. He played me and my body gave into him the second he touched me. I wouldn’t lie, there was something dark about him that scared the crap out of me. But there was also something that I just couldn’t explain. It was like deep inside there was some part of me that felt like I could trust him, like he was safe. Which was confusing as all get out because the things he did to me—the way he seemed to get off on how he held his power over me—were the total opposite of safe.
My mind was all over the place and I felt flustered and thrown off balance. It shouldn’t have surprised me but for some reason it did. I mean, given all that I’d been through you would think that I’d want something more subdued than what had just happened. Something more boring, if you would. Dare I say, something that would be normal. Whatever normal was. Truth was, I had no idea what sex should be like.
I walked to the couch as calmly as I could manage, and tucked myself into the opposite side from him. I pulled my legs up, feeling like I needed some sort of shield in front of me.
“Why are you here? What’s your story?” he asked and his tone was completely flat. I felt like he was bored more than anything.
What should I say?
Burke had told me that if I was faced with this situation to do my best to stick as close to the truth as possible. It was easier to make your lies believable and keep them straight that way. Burke told me that I should give the shallow details. I tell them just enough to let them know that I was a woman on the run from an abusive man. I was to leave out names, how I’d come to be there, and the big one, that I’d had any kind of help.
“My name is Allison. I’m twenty-four years old and I have an eighteen-month-old boy. I like chocolate but only if it’s mixed with peanut butter. I prefer coffee over tea. I’m terrified of drowning so I never take baths or go swimming.”
And I’ve never had someone touch me like that before.
Obviously, I couldn’t say that to him. Even if I was brave enough, I feared it would lead to too many questions.
I did my best to hold my ground. I knew he wanted deeper but I wasn’t going to crumble and give him things so easily. Really, I just wanted the whole thing to be over and I wanted him gone. It had been an exhausting couple of days and all I could think about was crawling into bed and falling asleep.
“Allison…what?” he asked his eyes shooting lasers into mine. His look told me that he was going to get things out of me whether I liked it or not.
“Callahan,” I said almost automatically.
It was the first name that popped into my head that wasn’t directly mine but something I knew I’d remember. And for the first time in years, I thought of my childhood best friend. I hadn’t allowed myself to think about her all this time. I did my best to push away my past life seven years ago and along with it, all the good memories.
Some people said that holding onto the best times and the great people in their lives was how they made it through. I knew this because I watched a lot of TV. My favorite were the shows on survivors. The people who’d been through something traumatic and still made it out in the end. I loved to hear how their life had some sort of happy ending after it all. I ate those shows and interviews up like they were candy.
But for me, the only way I could make it through each day was to forget. To leave it all behind and embrace the cold darkness of my future.
Saying her last name out loud had my mind drifting back. So far back to when we were running around in tiaras and playing dress up. My mind started to wonder about what she was doing now and how seven years might have changed her.
“Callahan?” he said, jolting me back into reality. His brows rose as his eyes pinned me with a look that said he didn’t quite believe me.
His gaze made me uneasy. It shook me to my core with a confusing feeling. Not confusing because I didn’t know what it was. The thing was, it was maddening as hell because I felt split in two when he looked at me. A rolling dark anxiety spread through me as a blazing fire followed behind.
“Yes,” I managed to say with unfaltering certainty. How I pulled it off, I had no idea. But his head nodded like he believed me…just barely.
“And little bit? He have a name?”
“Neiryn.”
“Hmm…” He paused and I waited for more questions. “Chocolate and peanut butter?” His lips tipped up with amusement as his face softened.
“Yeah, I think it’s more of like a texture thing. You should try it.” I said actually feeling the tightly wound coil in my core unwind a little.
“How is it that you ended up here?”
“I was driving, looking for a fresh place to start over. I pulled off for some gas and I saw the ad for this place.” I held his eyes as I spoke.
“So, you just what? Barely drove into town and decided this was a good place to settle down?”
Well, crap. When he put it that way it did seem suspicious.
“I had a gut feeling,” I replied, forcing a smile to make it believable.
He raised up and scooted closer to me. I couldn’t breathe as the warmth wafted off of him and onto me. I couldn’t think as his fingers grazed the side of my face. I couldn’t even swallow the lump in my throat as he peered into my eyes, his face so close that our noses were almost touching.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what the problem is,” he said, his tone so flat it somehow shook me, but the light in his eyes flickered with a genuine concern.
Stupid tears fell from my eyes. I hated it. I hadn’t cried in years because I’d made myself become numb to everything around me.
That was the moment Neiryn chose to let out a scream that caused me to jump to my feet without even thinking. I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time and hoping I wouldn’t trip.
I found him standing in his playpen, bouncing up and down with a nervous energy as his eyes spilled a never-ending river of tears.
“Mommy,” he said as his arms reached out for me.
I was sad that he was scared but if I was being honest, I was thankful for the escape. I felt like I was two seconds away from throwing everything that Burke had told me out the window and spilling my life story to Axe. This allowed me to collect myself before I had to face him again.
I picked Neiryn up and rocked him as his head dropped to rest on my shoulder.
“Safe,” I whispered over and over against his hair and he nodded as if he understood. I knew it wasn’t exactly true but we were a lot safer than we had been.
I looked over at the doorway and was relieved when I didn’t see Axe’s form looming there. He let me have the space I desperately needed and I only wished I could stay up here and not deal with him anymore.
Neiryn fell asleep after a few minutes and I lightly placed him back down in his pen. With my shoulders pulled back, I walked down the stairs.
Axe was still on the couch. His body was hunched over and his arms were resting on the tops of his thighs. He stared down at his fingers and I could tell he was lost in thought. I found myself wondering just what was going on in that head of his, but before I could linger on that crazy train, I cleared my throat. His head turned slowly to face me. If that wasn’t creepy as all get out, I didn’t know what was.
“It’s late. I should go up there in case he wakes up again. I don’t want him to be alone, being in a new place and all,” I said, motioning to the door as a big, fat hint for him to leave.
The smirk that spread on his face told me that he wasn’t leaving. In my mind, I growled. I couldn’t show him that he was getting to me.
“I’ll be here when you wake up,” he said as he kicked off his sneakers and got comfy on the couch.
“Fine,” I ground out through gritted teeth before I turned and headed for the stairs.
“Night, bitch,” he called after me but there was something strange there that made me pause.
Bitch wasn’t exactly a nice term to call someone, and though he’d used that word towards me before, there was something different in his tone this time. It was almost like he meant it as a compliment, a term of endearment. And I couldn’t even let myself go down the path of over-analyzing the fact that he actually had some sort of emotion in his voice. The whole time he had been here, every word he’d spoken had been as flat as an opened can of soda left out for days.
I forced my feet to move up the stairs. They felt like they were in tar and for some strange reason, all I wanted to do was turn around. At the top, once I was hidden behind sturdy walls, I let out the breath that I didn’t even realize I’d been holding.
I brushed my teeth and washed my face. As I caught my reflection in the mirror above the sink, I startled at the girl looking back at me. I wasn’t used to the new darker color of my silky strands. I ran my fingers through my hair almost feeling like it wasn’t real. I felt like the color was going to brush off onto my fingers and when I would look back up, I’d be blonde again. I’d be back there again. I’d be trapped again.
Somehow my brain convinced me that this was reality and I shut off the light, then made my way to the bedroom. I could hear the TV on downstairs and I wondered what he was doing down there.
Was it really no big deal to him to just hang out at my house when he was unwanted? Didn’t he have a girlfriend or whatever to get to?
Considering his fingers were just inside me not that long ago, I sure hoped there was no girlfriend, for her sake. I knew first hand how little I was valued for being a woman and not that I was trying to judge him or his brothers, but the lifestyle wasn’t exactly known for its monogamy.
I climbed into the bed, grateful that I had already put the sheets on earlier in the day. A shiver ran through my body as I tucked my hands under my head. I didn’t have a pillow, but that was alright because I was able to breathe, in a sense. I had my freedom, sort of, and I had my son.