CHAPTER TEN
Michaela
Hammers were beating on the inside of my skull, the thunderous pulse traveling down my temple to slide along my cheekbone that felt hot and swollen. I wished it was one of those moments where you wake up from something terrible, but your mind shields you, erasing all the scary parts so you don’t panic when your eyes open.
But it wasn’t one of those moment. I remembered all the scary parts, they were playing behind my eyes like a movie, over and over.
Blinking the space around me into view, I knew instantly that my hands and feet were bound because I could feel the pinch of rope on my skin. My mouth was gagged. I wasn’t outside. It was in a bedroom instead. Not mine. Not Jack’s.
Holden’s.
I recognized it from the video Delilah had shown me of Holden playing guitar. Tears stung my eyes, the nagging fear that Jack had been right - Holden was crazy.
Only a crazy man would lose it the way Holden did. Only a crazy man would carry me back to his house and tie me up. Only a crazy man would be sitting on the floor with his chin resting on his knees, covered in dirt and blood while staring at me. There wasn’t a drop of concern in his stare, either. Only pure, naked hatred.
“Did I do that to you?”
The question took me by surprise. Not just the question, but the depth of his voice, the fluid baritone that I knew could sing softly. I assumed he wanted me to answer the cryptic question, but being gagged made it impossible. Mumbling behind it, I tried to point out the obvious to him while he continued glaring in my direction, his blue eyes beaming.
A disgusted grunt rolled off his lips, but he got up, approached the bed, ripped the gag from my mouth and then went back to where he was sitting before. “Did I do that to you?”
Fear was heavy on my words, the weight causing them to shake and tremble, causing my voice to pitch higher in anxious fits. “Do what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you the one who tied me up?”
His head cut left. “No. Your face. Did I do that to you?”
I wanted to reach up and touch my face, evaluate the damage, determine if the bone itself had shattered when I was struck. But being bound made it impossible for me to move. And maybe that was a good thing. Holden looked like he was only barely clinging to control. His body shook, his jaw ticking furiously. Any quick moment or one wrong word could send him careening over the edge of control into violence.
Keeping my voice soft, calm despite the circumstances, I answered, “No. You didn’t do this. Jack did.”
Relief flashed in his eyes just before the hatred returned, but he didn’t say anything in response. I decided to fill the silence for him. I needed to convince him to let me go. Not knowing whether Jack was alive or dead, I needed to get out of this situation one way or another.
Thankfully my life had taught me to be complacent, had taught me how to deal with strong men who’d lost their damn mind. “Why am I tied up, Holden? Will you please let me go?”
Holden stared, the shaking of his body stopping as he went perfectly still. The silence returned, ticking by on anxious beats, the tension so thick it was drowning me. Fear trickled through my body, drip, drip, dripping until it was a puddle, a pond, a lake, an ocean churning beneath a turbulent storm.
“I can’t do that,” he finally answered, his tone curt, the words clipped and forced.
Swallowing down the dread crawling up my throat, I forced the calm tone to remain in my voice, added some sweetness, hoping like hell it would settle him down. “Why not?”
He was so big, massive when you were close to him, a man that looked like a runaway train heading toward you that could break you faster than you understood what he planned to do. Even folded over himself with his arms wrapped around his bent legs and his chin resting on his knees, he was as tall as the doorknob, his shoulders stretching as wide as the frame of the door. Black hair hung limp in his face, dried blood caked beneath his nose and on his knuckles. His jacket was ripped at the shoulder, dirt smeared over the knees of his pants. A nasty scrape made the skin of his forehead look raw and broken.
But his eyes, they were gorgeous, even with the hatred glittering behind them. I’d always noticed his stare growing up, had always been caught in the hypnotic pull of a set of eyes that truly saw me, that looked right through me until every last bit of my truth was revealed.
Holden knew my life was a lie. He saw past the prim and proper exterior.
“Because you couldn’t let things go,” he answered, his tone matter of fact. “You just had to make it worse, didn’t you? Had to take everything that was left.”
There was no fluctuation in his voice. Dead. Monotone. In shock. Holden spoke robotically, answering my question with whatever words filtered into his head, but not really talking to me. He was somewhere else.
“Where’s Jack?” Whispering because I was terrified to ask the question, I studied every muscle twitch in Holden’s arms, stared at the disgust and rage rolling behind his eyes.
Holden moved suddenly, which caused me to flinch in response. But he didn’t get up, didn’t do anything beyond stretching his legs out on the floor in front of his body, lean his head back against the door and cross his arms over his chest. Fear had mutated into something else, the shock still present, but fading. A grin stretched Holden’s lips. Feral. Unfeeling. Insane.
“He’s dead.”
My terror overwhelmed me, a curtain of dread falling down to distort reality. My heart was beating so fast and hard it must have been a drumbeat that even Holden could hear. My lungs were so frozen that I could only manage short, shallow breaths. My head fell heavier against the mattress and I closed my eyes, tried to stop the room from spinning. Tried to deny myself the truth that I’d just learned my boyfriend of five years had died and I didn’t care.
Not about him, at least. Jack Thorne deserved it. He’d asked for it by refusing to let his hatred of Holden go. It was sad that his life was over, but I didn’t pity his fate.
“You’re not crying,” Holden commented in observation. There was still no life to his voice. No warmth.
On a tremulous breath I answered, “Because I’m not sad.”
“He treated you like crap,” he barked out, “and you let him.”
“I know.”
As his voice grew in strength, mine softened and became weak. Silence swept in again, a tidal wave slapping over the earth, smothering the life that failed to outrun it.
“Why?”
My pulse was an imperfect rhythm fluttering non-stop beneath my skin. A butterfly trapped in a jar, bouncing and bouncing in search of freedom. “Because I’m not strong. I - I’m a-“
“You’re small,” he answered for me, “but that’s not what I meant when I asked why.”
His words sent me back two years, to another time I’d been called small. Delilah had screamed it at me over and over again while chasing me out of Holden’s hospital room, her voice so loud for such a tiny girl. I never understood what she meant by it. I just assumed she was so heartbroken and terrified for her brother that it was the only word she could think of in the moment. But judging by how Holden repeated it now, I wasn’t so sure.
Tears welled in my eyes, the cold in the room combining with my fear until every muscle in my body was painfully tight across my bones. “I don’t know what you’re asking me.”
“Why did you have to take it all?” He roared, his voice sweeping to fill every crevice of his room, booming from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, shaking the tears free from eyes that wouldn’t stop spilling. Curling into myself in terror, I sobbed, reality finally pulling the curtain of dread aside to shine brilliantly in its danger and torment.
“Why?” He bellowed again, not giving me time for an answer before he added, “Was killing my parents not good enough for you? Destroying my sister until she doesn’t know one day from the next. Was that not enough? Why couldn’t you just leave me alone and be happy with what you already have? I’m nothing to you! Nothing! I own nothing. I am nothing. You already made me nothing!”
His fist slammed against the wall and I flinched, expected him to jump up and storm over to hurt me, but he didn’t move. My eyes were clenched shut, but I didn’t hear the rolling thunder of his steps approaching.
Settling enough to gain minimal control over my voice, I forced out, “I didn’t do this. I didn’t want to do this. It was Jack.”
“It was Jack,” he repeated quietly, his words tumbling forth on a whisper of disbelief. “That’s funny because every time it was Jack doing something to destroy my life, you were the one right beside him.”
Sobs wracked me, my entire body shaking over the mattress as pain spilled from my heart, beating and pulsing just as bad as the burn along my cheekbones and the hammers still pounding against my skull. “I didn’t want to be there. Jack was shitty to me, too. He was a bully. Not just to you, Holden, but everyone.”
“That still doesn’t answer the question. Why, Michaela? Why come looking for me at all? There was nothing in life I had left to give. Just my sister. Just her. And now you took that away, too. I don’t know where she’ll go without me. I don’t know what will happen to her. Why? Why did you have to do this?”
His words broke apart as soon as he mentioned Delilah. She was alive. He’d said as much. But where was she? She couldn’t be in the house right now. She would have heard Holden yelling. Wouldn’t she come in here to check and see what was going on?
Without an answer to give him, I reverted back to a captive begging. “Please let me go.”
“I can’t. Don’t you understand that? I know you’re used to skating by in life, protected by your money and your expensive lawyers, but I don’t have that. So before I get carted off to jail for defending myself against you, I need to buy enough time to figure out what to do with my sister. I need to figure out how I can take care of her from prison. Do you have any suggestions for me, Michaela? What would you do if you were me? Go running to mommy and daddy? Let them make it all go away?” He barked out a humorless laugh, his voice softening, “I can’t even do that. You took them from me two years ago.”
Gaining control of myself wasn’t easy. My willpower was a slippery noodle bending and sliding to keep my hands from getting a good grasp on it. My strength was ebbing and flowing, there one minute, dragging me out to sea the next. I was trapped in place, the silence buzzing against my ears as static and white noise. “I can help you, Holden. I saw what Jack did. I know he attacked you first. I can tell them what you did was in self-defense.”
Another bark of sound. “Yeah. Sorry, but that’s not something I can rely on. You didn’t have a voice to protest when Jack was alive, what would make me think you’d have one now? As soon as you’re safe and sound, hiding behind your family’s power and money, you’ll go along with whatever they want you to say. You’re weak as fuck, Michaela.”
“I know the truth,” I pled.
“The truth doesn’t matter. It never does for men like me. We’re disposable. An easy answer to lock away so the police look like heroes and Jack Thorne will be remembered as the helpless victim against a crazy freak who wanted revenge for an accident. Your truth is meaningless. It’s as weak as you. To everybody that matters, it’s an inconvenience that will be shoved aside and forgotten.”
Holden wasn’t yelling anymore, he was rambling, talking so fast that I had to focus on each word just to ensure I didn’t miss one and lose track. It felt like I was spiraling right beside him, a picture being painted in front of me that revealed the ugly reality of life, the differences between people born into different types of families. While he ranted, I cried, absorbing every word, every insult, every heartbreaking truth he was shoving down my throat.
“And now, now I get to add a few more felonies to the pile. But hey, I guess it comes to me naturally. A trashy guy from a trashy neighborhood who was lucky enough to sit in the same classrooms as people like you. So while you lie there and cry, I’ll be out dealing with this problem before the sun comes up tomorrow morning. I’ll be figuring out what to do with a sister who can’t take care of herself. I’ll be coming to terms with the fact that you succeeded in taking it all. You broke me down until I was small like you. Does that make you happy?”
“No!” I cried out. “I’m not happy!”
“Good! At least I’m not the only one this time. I’m sorry to inconvenience you, princess, but I need time to make some last minute arrangements before I get hauled off and stuck in a prison cell to rot away the rest of my life.”
Standing up, he pulled the ripped jacket off his shoulders, dropped it to the floor and kicked it away. His hoodie was next, the stained garment deserted as he stood in a t-shirt and dirty pants. My eyes widened at the size of him, the sheer force of him, buckets filled with terror being poured inside me until I was saturated and bloated, my tears soaking the blanket beneath me. “Please don’t hurt me!”
His head snapped my direction. “Hurt you? Why would I hurt you? I’m not your psycho boyfriend.”
With that he stalked over to tie the gag back over my mouth before disappearing into his closet. Emerging from the shadowed interior, he carried a clean pair of jeans in his hand, a clean hoodie slung over his shoulder. He didn’t look at me or say a word as he left his room, slamming the door shut behind him.
Unable to move, I was left to swallow down my fear, to simmer in the cold anger Holden had left behind in his wake.
There was nothing I could do in this situation, so I just buried my face into his blanket and cried.