SOPHIA
I woke again, startled by the eerie silence screaming around us. My head tilted toward Jameson, thankful he wasn’t asleep this time.
“We’re in the center of the eye,” he whispered to me, motioning for me to come to his side.
It was like he had told me a secret, warning me that if I didn’t keep quiet someone would find us. Ironic. That was my life now. As long as I was with Jameson. I comfortably found myself cradled against his side, protected by his right arm as it wrapped along my body and held my knees.
“Creepy, isn’t it?”
His question was a quiet hum against my hair and I only nodded, silently observing the room. The power had long since gone out, our only source of light coming from a single flood lamp attached to the small generator in the corner. My nerves were beginning to fizzle and snap in anticipation of the final half of the storm. We were waiting in silence, entirely mute, as the eye of the hurricane passed over us. We were held hostage, possibly even preparing for the end.
“You’re safe.” His frighteningly observant method of mind reading distracted my negative thoughts. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I tried listening to Jameson’s words and let my heart consider their significance, but their weight mixing with the last twenty-four hours spun my heart into an unforgiving mess. I felt angry. I know I was confused. And Simon? I still don’t understand why I was part of his file. I couldn’t ask Jameson about it in front of Thomas because I knew Thomas despised me, although I didn’t know why. As I exhaled an entire lung’s worth of emotional exhaustion, I felt Jameson’s grasp tighten against my knees.
“Soph,” he cooed above my head in a dangerously low whisper.
I shook my head, nuzzling against his shoulder, and closed my eyes again. My fingers were crossed, invisibly of course, hoping that I could wait out the storm and pretend to sleep through whatever emotional hurricane was soon to follow. I remained mute, comfortably held in a secure bubble where nothing would hurt me until the storm was over. The artificial peace that blanketed my restless mind was interrupted by a low, monotone metallic sound. I felt Jameson’s weight shift as the floor creaked from across the room. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes.
“What’s that noise?” Thomas stood from the couch, pulling throw pillows and blankets up as he searched the furniture. Elizabeth met his posture and continued to investigate for the beeping intruder.
“What?” Jameson questioned, releasing his grasp that bound our bodies.
His long fingers ran through his hair as he stood to meet Thomas and Elizabeth across the room. Jameson looked young and exhausted, snuggled into sweatpants and a sweatshirt, with his messy hair raked into a deadly mix of wildly gorgeous and matted from lying around for hours.
As I woke to join their frantic investigation, I heard the sound coming from my side of the room. I leaned over the arm of the couch, sorting through the pile of clothes and personal items Jameson had carried into the room earlier. The hard case of my dying phone was buried in the pile and I pulled it out, amazed it had any life left in it at all. I guess I could say that about everything right now.
“It’s just my phone,” I apologized. “It’s dying. I’m sorry.”
“Your phone?” Thomas’s head shook. “That thing shouldn’t be functioning after you were in the water, Sophia.”
I held it out to him, encouraging him to inspect it. “It’s fine. Here.”
Avoiding eye contact with me, Thomas took the phone from my hands and pulled off the white case to access the battery.
“What are you doing?” Jameson questioned, squeezing my hand and pulling me closer while Thomas broke my phone into pieces along the hardwood of the safe room.
“Thomas!” Jameson shouted, grabbing his arm. “What are you doing?”
Thomas’s heel stomped against my phone, continuing to grind the plastic into mere particles against his floor. His slick hair fell over his forehead, which now grew furiously crimson, as his face lifted to glare at us. Elizabeth placed a hand on his shoulder, but he quickly swung it away.
“This…” Thomas bent down to take something from the disintegrated phone. “…this is exactly what I feared, Jameson.”
Thomas lifted a small black chip, smaller than my pinky nail, and held it toward Jameson’s face.
“What is it?” I questioned, glancing between the Kerrys and Jameson, all of whom ignored my question and avoided eye contact with me.
“Who gave you this phone, Sophia?” Thomas turned to me. Ah! He speaks!
“Simon and Jules.” I noticed Jameson’s face contort as he and Thomas stared at each other.
“That’s a tracker,” Elizabeth sighed, her face full of regret and sadness as her eyes burned into mine. “Someone’s been following you. Someone’s following us.”
“It’s just a phone.” My head shook, entirely confused and already fatigued with this much conversation. “It was a gift from Simon and Jules.”
I felt Jameson’s eyes shift to me; he noticed my body shivering with nerves.
“What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything,” Jameson reassured me, pulling me against him and kissing my hair. “Thomas?”
“What?” he snapped, causing me to flinch beneath Jameson’s security. I watched Thomas’s face grow into an explosive rage that he struggled to stifle while he turned to glower at me. I wanted to vomit.
“This is exactly what I warned you about, Jameson,” he repeated, as though whatever this meant was entirely Jameson’s fault. “This…you’ve been tracked. Someone has been following you and that someone has known about you for longer than you thought.”
“That’s impossible,” I scoffed, suddenly aware I had disregarded Thomas’s authority and buried my face into Jameson’s chest.
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. What is happening? Is this storm over? I need to vomit. I want my mom. I’m eighteen and all I want is to be tucked against my mom like I was four years old, entirely innocent and naïve to whatever the heck was happening around us.
“Sophia.” Elizabeth clenched my free shoulder. “Sweetheart.”
“Nice job,” Jameson snarled at Thomas. “I told you she has panic attacks, you asshole. The next time you’re going to accuse my girlfriend of being part of some intricate web of lies, do it in a less invasive way so you don’t traumatize her with your interrogation.”
“Sophia,” Elizabeth continued. I could feel her tug at me beneath Jameson’s hold, but he refused to let go.
I couldn’t imagine why he was still holding on to me. I had brought something to him, or someone to him, who wanted to hurt him or hurt me. I don’t even know. Wait. Girlfriend?
I was hunched against the front of the couch, holding my thighs against my chest. I didn’t know when it started, but I was rocking back and forth in this tight ball, frozen solid with fear. I pretended my mom was there, listening to her sing in French. I could faintly smell her crepes. That didn’t work to calm my nerves. I was shaking even harder. I felt a hand against my face. Two hands. They lifted my face.
“One, two,” Jameson whispered, inches from my ear while our cheeks touched. “Three, four…”
By the time he reached ten, his right cheek was glued to mine and my breathing had calmed.
“Your uncle’s a prick.”
His soft chuckle tickled my ear. “And for that, I’m thankful he’s not really my uncle.”
“My chest hurts.”
“It’s the panic,” he reminded me, slowly pulling his face away from me in the dark. “Can you stand?”
My head shook and I couldn’t straighten my legs from the hold of my arms. Jameson’s hands pulled from my face and I felt his body at my side before his arm hung around my shoulders.
“Then we’ll sit,” he softly whispered.
I welcomed the pressure of his head against mine as he continued to calm me with merely his existence. I could hear Thomas and Elizabeth in the background, disturbing the deceptive serenity of my moment inside Jameson’s hold. I could barely see him in the shadow of the floodlight, but I looked up at him and tried to study his muted features.
“You called me your girlfriend.”
“I did.”
“I thought…”
“That was before,” his whisper was quiet. “Soph, I thought I explained what happened and why they made me leave you…”
The memory flooded over me, reminding my heart of the agony with which his absence enveloped me.
“That’s what you’ve been to me since that first night in your bedroom.” His whisper continued above my ear. “I thought I couldn’t date anyone because of my secret, but in reality, I couldn’t date anyone until I met you.”
My gaze was locked on Jameson, mesmerized and intimidated by his words.
“I was waiting for you, Soph.”
The howling winds were returning, blowing their whirling cyclones around the house.
“Kids,” Elizabeth shouted from across the room, “this is the wall. You need to take cover. Go in the crawlspace!”
My body lifted against my will before I could even process her words, and I was pulled into the crawlspace.
“We didn’t hide during the first half,” I mumbled, hiding against the safe Elizabeth had previously opened.
“The back wall’s worse,” Jameson clarified, “or so they say. Front, back, or eye…I’m here with you. Come over here.”
I jumped with the cracks of thunder and violent rain that unforgivingly pelted the house. My eyes remained open, afraid if they closed I would miss the roof blowing away and not be able to hold Jameson. My fingers were numb, holding myself around his thin waist for the entirety of the storm as we cowered in the crawlspace.
My overwhelmed and saturated mind stopped processing anything except the gentle tickle of his fingertips along my back. That was all I remembered.