Nikoli tossed his empty beer can in the direction of the table and studied the crowd. His frat house was packed with drunken hot chicks, and he was finding it difficult to even look at one. He kept thinking about Lily. Her eyes haunted him. He hadn’t been back to the penthouse since their night there. God knew he’d tried, but the thought of going there without her was too much. Maybe it was time to put it up for sale. He was graduating this semester and leaving Boston. He and Luther were setting up their corporate offices in New York. They’d decided on that two years ago, but now Nikoli was rethinking the location. Lily was moving to New York after graduation.
Fuck. She shouldn’t be able to do this to him. He was seriously reconsidering relocating to a different city. She was just a chick. He tried to tell himself that every day, but he knew better. Lily Bells was special. She was kind, beautiful, full of love and joy, and she made him feel. Feel so much more than anyone ever had. She made him feel in a way that touched him to his core. It scared him. Enough that he let her walk away from him. Even after she told him she didn’t want Boy Wonder, that all she wanted was him. He’d broken her heart. Her eyes…fuck, he could still see the pain in her eyes. It cut him to his core, and he hated that she could do that to him.
Hated that he loved her.
At least he’d stopped drinking himself into oblivion every day.
He needed to get laid. One good hard fuck and he’d forget her. She was just a chick, after all. Same as the rest of them. Same as the other girl he’d thought he loved. She’d been easily forgotten, and so would Lily. His inner demons laughed at him, but he ignored them. Tonight he’d find a girl, take her to one of the rooms, and forget Lily Holmes existed. His eyes scanned the room and zeroed in on the blonde getting a beer. Nikoli appreciated the way her dress clung to her curves and the way her hips rolled suggestively when she moved. Here was a girl meant to be fucked. With a grin, he stood up and swaggered over to her, his only intent to take her upstairs into one of the rooms and get her naked.
Lily sighed. She’d finally relented to Janet’s constant demands that she come to a party. It was at Nikoli and Luther’s frat house, but she was pretty sure Nikoli wouldn’t be there. He hated these things. He’d rather be in a bar. At least she hoped he wouldn’t be there. She wasn’t sure she was ready to see him yet. It had been almost a month since he told her he didn’t love her. Every time she thought about him, her heart shattered all over again. No one except Adam knew how badly broken she was. She’d learned over the years to hide her pain well. They all thought she was fine about breaking up with Nikoli.
Breaking up. She laughed a little bitterly at the words. They had never been together, not really. It was all just a stupid bargain. A bargain Nikoli had come out of smelling like roses. Lily came out the other end a broken mess—no Adam, no Nikoli, and she didn’t even get the damn car. All she ended up with was a broken heart and the need to cry every five minutes. Which was why she gave in about the party. She needed to stop moping around and wallowing in her own pain. The only way to get past it was to go out and make herself do normal things. Like this party, even if it was Nikoli’s frat house.
Mikey saw her first and rushed over to give her a hug. He grinned from ear to ear when she returned it. “Hey, Lils, you made it.”
“Not like Jan gave me a choice,” she said ruefully. “I don’t think she was going to budge from my room until I came.”
“Well, you know my girl,” Mike said, a smile breaking free. “She’s bossy and always gets her way.”
“Hey!” Jan playfully punched him in the arm and then snuggled up to him.
“There’s my girl.” Adam wrapped an arm around her and hugged her tight. He gave her his one hundred watt smile and dragged her outside to the balcony where it was quiet. One other couple was making out in the corner, so he led her to the opposite end.
“Are you sure you can be here?” he asked. “Nikoli’s here somewhere.”
Lily’s face blanched and her heart twisted. Her flight or fight instincts kicked in, and she wanted to run far, far away.
“I’ll take you home,” Adam said softly.
“No.” She shook her head. As much as she wanted to run, she couldn’t. It was inevitable that she’d see Nikoli, and she’d rather do it here with her friends around her than somewhere else. “Jan will freak out if I leave, and then everyone will think I left because of him. I’m not going to run away like a scared little girl, Adam. That’s not who I am.”
Adam gave her a rueful smile. “I like this new more confident you, but sometimes I wish the old Lily would rear her head up when you’re about to get hurt again for no reason.”
Lily knew what he was referring to. Women loved Nikoli, and she’d heard he’d had women hanging off of him everywhere he went. Tonight would be no different, but she had to suffer through it. Not only for Jan, but for herself. She needed to prove she could get through the pain. That she’d be able to breathe again one day without feeling the burn of the ache scorching her insides.
“You know how much I love you, don’t you?” she asked, giving him another hug. She didn’t know how she’d have gotten through those first days without him. He’d lain with her on Janet’s bathroom floor for two days. They hadn’t said anything, he’d just comforted her. He’d been her best friend, and it had helped more than anything else.
“I love you too, Lily.” He hugged her back, and she made up her mind to talk to him, but she didn’t want him to take it the wrong way.
“Adam, I need to talk to you.” She leaned against the balcony railing. “I’ve wanted to say this for a long time, but I didn’t because I thought you were happy.”
“Have you reconsidered my proposal?” The hope in his eyes hurt. She didn’t want him to hurt like she was hurting.
“No, Adam, it wouldn’t be fair to either of us, and you know it, but I do want to talk to you about Sue.”
He sighed and settled down beside her.
“The only thing I want is for you to be happy, you know that.”
Adam nodded.
“Are you happy, though? The very fact that you were willing to dump her for me says a lot. Are you marrying her because you want to, or because you feel it’s what’s expected of you? Are you going to be happy with her five years from now, ten?”
“I honestly don’t know, Lils,” he said. “The closer the wedding gets, the more nervous and anxious I get. I start to question myself. Sometimes I think she manipulated me into asking her. I felt so pressured.”
“Promise me that before you stand before God and all our family and friends, you’ll think about what you’re doing. Promise me you’ll call this off if it’s not going to make you happy. Please, Adam.”
“I promise.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s get back inside. Janet wants to show you all her wedding stuff. She has it all over here for some reason. I’m not sure why.”
Janet attacked as soon as they came back into the main room. “I’m so sorry, Lily, I didn’t know until Mike told me. I swear I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay, Jan.” I laughed. “It’s fine, really. Now what’s this I hear about wedding stuff? And why is it all at a frat house?”
Jan looked madder than a wet hen. “Mike was trying to fix the sink and ended up flooding the apartment. We’re both staying here until it gets fixed.”
“Oh, my,” Lily murmured. That sure sounded like something Mikey would do.
“Come on, I’ll show you everything I’ve picked out so far. I need help with the flowers and the bridesmaids dresses…”
“It’s a party, Jan!” Mike shouted from across the room. “Let’s party!”
She shot him a death glare, and Lily giggled. Janet started muttering about stupid men on the way up the stairs. The three drunken guys who stumbled down the stairs past her suffered the same look. They didn’t waste time in getting out of her way. Lily laughed as she followed Jan down the hall, listening to her ramble on about colors and flowers.
Nikoli had his lips plastered to the blonde when he heard them. He’d know Lily’s voice anywhere. He tore his mouth from the girl’s and stared in horror as the door slowly opened. Jan looked up, her expression going from shock to outright rage when she saw him with his hands under the girl’s shirt, his knee pressed up against her. It was Lily he saw, though.
Her eyes widened. They went from him to the busty blonde he’d shoved up against a wall. Her eyes, while they had been shuttered, now pooled with pain and hurt. A single tear escaped before she turned around and walked away.
Nikoli cracked. Seeing her again, after all these weeks, all the lies he’d told himself laughed in his face. The pain he’d seen in her eyes, the pain he’d been responsible for putting there not once, but twice, was a the slap upside the head he needed. He loved her. He’d tried so hard to convince himself he didn’t, but she haunted him. He loved her, and dammit, it was time he told her. It was time he put them both out of their misery.
If she’d have him after this.
He started cursing and detached himself from the girl, meaning to follow Lily, but the little bit of fluff in the doorway stopped him.
“How dare you!” she shrieked. “Do you know what you did to her? Do you even care that she laid on my bathroom floor for two days? Do you care that she sobbed so hard she lost her voice? Who the fuck do you think you are, Nikoli Kincaid? You’re nothing but a worthless, no good…”
“First this is my frat house, and I didn’t expect her to show up here. Second, I sure as hell didn’t mean for her to see that. Now get out of my way so I can check on her!”
“Check on her?” Janet yelled. “You stay the hell away from her! She doesn’t need you causing her any more pain.”
Nikoli simply picked up the pixie-like woman and set her aside, ignoring both women shouting at him as he ran down the stairs. He looked and didn’t see her anywhere, but everyone was staring at him.
“Where?” he barked, and several people pointed to the front door. He wasted no time and ripped the door open to bound down the steps. He knew exactly where she’d go. The small gazebo up the street in the center of the outlying buildings. She loved it there, said it was peaceful.
He stopped dead about twenty feet from the gazebo. There was a cell phone on the ground, with a trail of blood leading from it to the street. He took several more steps, and dread and panic froze his heart.
The phone was Lily’s.
***
A wave of nausea woke Lily up. She groaned and rolled over, but found she was in a small, tight place. She opened her eyes to darkness. The first thing she noticed was that she was moving. Calm down, she told herself. Calm down and focus. She listened and heard the sounds of the highway. She was in a trunk and moving. They weren’t going fast, probably under the speed limit.
Her head was killing her. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what happened. She’d been running, running away from Nikoli and the girl he’d been with. She’d run smack into someone. She’d mumbled an apology and tried to go around him, but he’d caught her arm and pulled her around. He’d told her to be quiet and come with him or he’d cut her. Her upper arm started to sting as soon as she remembered him saying that. She’d tried to get away, and he had cut her. That hadn’t quieted her down. Adam’s dad had taught her to scream and fight like hell if she ever got in this kind of situation, and that was exactly what she’d done. The last thing she remembered was the guy’s fist barreling down at her, and then it had been lights out.
If she panicked now, she’d end up dead and missing instead of just missing. She ignored the pain in her arm and started feeling around the trunk. The first thing she looked for was a trunk latch. All new cars had them in case someone got locked in. There wasn’t one, which said this was an older car.
Next, she examined the taillights, and this was her first bout of good luck. She turned and kicked the taillight several times as hard as she could, and it knocked the light out. Wiggling around, she managed to turn so her head was now looking out of the broken taillight. They were surrounded by cars. How to get their attention?
She searched the interior of the trunk as best she could but found nothing. It was completely empty. Think, Lily, think, she told herself. Her bra! It was white. She rolled so she could unsnap it, and then worked until she got it off. She wrapped one strap around her wrist so the wind couldn’t rip it out of her hands. Then she thrust it out the taillight’s now empty hole and started waving.
She prayed to God someone would see it and call the police.
***
Nikoli called Luther and explained what was going on. He asked Luther to call 911. The campus police were not the ones to handle this. His thoughts kept running to the one place he didn’t want them to. The serial killer. He’d been getting closer and closer to the Boston Campus for months now.
Kade. He’d call his brother.
“What?” Kade barked into the phone when he answered.
“It’s Lily.” Nikoli’s voice cracked, but he didn’t care. “She’s gone, Kade. Someone took her.”
“Tell me.”
“I came outside to find her, and all I can find is her phone…”
“She might have accidentally dropped it,” Kade soothed.
“No, you don’t understand,” Nikoli said. “There’s blood leading from her phone to the street. Someone forcefully took her, Kade.”
“How long ago?”
“Maybe five minutes.”
“Stay where you are, I’m coming. Text me the address.”
Nikoli did as he was told, but he knew enough about these kinds of situations to know every second counted. He looked up when he heard running steps. Luther, Mike, Adam, and several other guys were barreling toward him.
“Stop!” he shouted. “We can’t track the area up in case there’s a clue.”
“What happened?” Adam growled, getting right up in his face. “You piece of shit…”
“Look, now is not the time for this,” Nikoli cut him off. “We can bitch slap each other later. Right now we need to find Lily.”
Adam nodded, but his eyes promised Nikoli a world of pain.
“How many people do we have sober enough to drive?” he asked.
“Not enough,” Mike said grimly, “but we can get more here.”
“We need to all spread out and start looking. I know it’s probably not going to do anything, but at least if we’re out there looking and she’s trying to get away, we might see something, anything that can help us find her.”
“I’m on it.” Mike took off toward the house, Adam hot on his heels. Less than a minute went by before people started to stream out of the fraternity, some climbing into cars, others on foot, to look for Lily.
Kade arrived about the same time the police did. Campus security showed up bursting with indignation the police had been called first. Nikoli repeated his story to countless people before he finally got fed up and stalked over to his brother.
“They have my statement, and they can question me all they want after we find Lily. I’m going to go look for her.”
“Nik, just slow down. You don’t even know where she is…”
They both hushed when news of a bra waving out of the broken taillight of an old sedan was reported on the highway. “With me,” Kade said, and they climbed into his FBI issued SUV. Nikoli gave him directions, and before long they were on the highway, breaking every speed limit they came across, sirens wailing and lights flashing.
It took them twenty minutes, but they caught up with the unmarked car following the sedan. Nikoli spotted Mike and Adam closing in as well. He’d forgotten Mike’s dad had installed a police scanner in his truck. They would have heard the call too.
The sedan sped up, weaving through traffic, having seen the police lights. Nikoli cursed when the car started to cut in and out of traffic. It was dangerous, too dangerous. He was going to crash. Kade came to the same realization and barked an order for ambulances to start heading their way.
Mike’s truck was even with the SUV, and Nikoli rolled down his window. “They’re gonna crash!”
“We know!” Mike yelled back.
Kade sped up, twisting the SUV in between cars in a way the poor thing had never been meant to. He sideswiped two vehicles to keep the sedan in sight. The old, gold colored Saturn made a sharp turn to the left, and the momentum was too much. It couldn’t stop the force that plowed it into the car in front of it, and then went rolling, landing on the other side of the median where a tractor trailer hit it head on.
They all stared in horror as the car came to a stop against the guardrail, mangled into a mess of metal and plastic.
Kade came to his senses first and drove over the median to get to the other side. Nikoli had the door open and was running before he’d even come to a stop. This reminded him of the day Lily had run to him in Miami, but this was so much worse. His wreck had been minor. This was…she could be dead. God, please don’t let her die.
He skidded to a halt, looking for the trunk. He saw a tiny piece of white material and said a prayer of thanks. His hands roamed until he found the seam of the trunk and pulled. Nothing. It wouldn’t budge. Adam, Mike, and Kade joined him, and together they forced the lid up.
“Nononononono,” Nikoli whispered, looking at Lily’s lifeless body lying as twisted and mangled as the car. He reached for her, and Mike and Adam grabbed him.
“Don’t,” Mike said. “We need to wait for the paramedics. We could hurt her more if we move her.”
“I need to know if she’s alive.” Tears streamed down his face, and he didn’t care. All he saw was Lily, bleeding and so still.
Kade leaned in and put two fingers to the pulse point on her neck. “She’s got a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there.”
They could see more lights in the distance. Nikoli tuned it all out. All he saw was Lily. He knelt down in front of the trunk and prayed. He hadn’t prayed to God since he was a small boy, but he prayed now. He promised God that if he let Lily live, he’d spend every minute of the rest of their lives making it up to her. He promised so many things if only God would let Lily live. He was barely aware of the tears running down his cheeks or the sobs torn out of him. All he saw was his Lily Bells.
Kade gently pulled him away so the paramedics could go to work.
“What the hell?” Mike muttered. Nikoli’s head whipped around to see Mike staring at the driver. He went over to see what had Mike so startled.
Brian Greggory.
Brian Greggory from the football team.
A slow rage built in Nikoli, and he ripped the door from the hinges. Kade tackled him before he could grab him.
“Let me go!”
“You can’t beat the guy up, Nikoli. You’ll get charged with assault and battery!”
“After what he did to Lily?” Nikoli shouted, enraged. “They can arrest me!”
“Lily needs you right now,” Kade reasoned. “What is she going to do when she wakes up and you’re in jail? Think, Nik. Just think for two seconds. What’s more important? Lily, or beating an unconscious guy who won’t even realize the beating he’s getting?”
Nikoli stalked back over to where the paramedics were loading her into the ambulance. Adam climbed in behind them, and the paramedic said they could only take one passenger. He didn’t argue the point, just headed for Mike’s truck. Mike was waiting for him.
Mike pulled out behind the ambulance, and they both sat in grim silence as they followed the flashing lights.