She let out a shaky breath. “I just keep thinking about him here in this house alone and so terrified. They say he died of a heart attack, but I think it broke. I think it just broke in two. He couldn’t stand the torture of not knowing what was happening to me. He couldn’t stand another sudden loss.” Tears welled in her eyes, and he took her in his arms, rubbing circles over her back. He’d wanted to do this so many times over those long weeks when she’d come back from that upstairs room, the one that would be burned into his memories for all time, kept in the dungeon of his soul. He’d wanted to comfort her this way, but he hadn’t been able to. He was able to now, though, and it soothed him as well.
He kept rubbing her back as she cried, and then he began whisper-singing. “If all the little snowflakes were candy bars and milkshakes, oh, if I the little snowflakes, were candy love and milkshakes, oh what a you that would be.”
He felt her lips move into a smile, even though her tears were still wetting the crook of his neck. He leaned back so he could look at her and offer her a smile, too, as small as the one she wore, as pulled by that unseen current.
Their eyes held, and something shifted, some deeper need that each realized could be fulfilled with the other. His heart beat harder, and he saw her pulse pick up speed in her throat as she exhaled, her tears ceasing.
The sex was the same as that in the motel room in Mexico. Frantic, confusing, yet so desperately wanted. Like that day, he both rushed toward his orgasm and regretted it after it’d exploded through him. It wasn’t the point of what they’d done, and yet maybe he should have tried to make it pleasurable for her. She hadn’t seemed to want that, though, and truth be told, neither had he, necessarily. His body was different, however, and it simply couldn’t be stopped.
Whatever need they were fulfilling in each other, it was like a drug, and like any good narcotic, it made him briefly numb.
“Noelle,” he said, when he’d rolled away and they both lay staring up at the ceiling, “we didn’t use anything, this time or the last—”
“They did a rape kit on me at the hospital,” she said, her voice monotone. “They gave me a morning-after pill.”
“Oh.” He reached up, running his fingers through the front of his hair and clenching a handful in his fist. “But this time . . .” God, he hadn’t even thought about that. Both times, he’d just become pure need, no thought. Jesus.
“I got an IUD put in at the hospital,” she said. She sat up, bringing the bedspread with her and bending to retrieve her clothes. He hated the look on her face. She looked remorseful and confused, and just plain sad. This was hurting her. He was hurting her, and it was the last thing he wanted.
“We have to stop doing this,” he said. He felt confused and upset. And he’d felt like he needed the release, or her touch, or just her, but he didn’t know why, or if it was right or wrong anymore. Because it’d stopped the pain for a moment, but not longer than that.
“Yes,” she agreed without turning. “We do. We need to stop this. It’s not right.”
That was the thing, though. It didn’t feel wrong exactly either. It just felt like they were substituting sex for something else, and for the life of him, he didn’t know what the fuck that was or how to get it. If he could have, he would have. He opened his mouth to say something just as loud banging met their ears from below.
Evan sprang off the bed, going to the window and pulling at the slat again. “My dad,” he said, letting out a whoosh of breath. What the fuck was his dad doing there? They both dressed as rapidly as possible, he rehooking his sling and rushing from her room to the stairwell and looking over to where Paula was arguing with Evan’s father in the doorway.
“Where the hell is my son—”
“Dad, what are you doing?”
His father pushed past Paula the way Evan had, yet with more force, and Paula jolted backward, giving his dad a death glare as he passed her.
“Let’s go,” he said to Evan, standing at the bottom of the steps.
“Let’s go? How did you even know I was here?” Oh. He took his phone from his pocket, holding it up. “You put tracking on my phone?”
“Do you blame me?” his father practically yelled, face reddening. “Jesus! You were abducted. You don’t get to just run off without telling me where you’re going.”
“I’m not a child, Dad,” he said between clenched teeth.
“As long as you’re under my roof, you’re my responsibility. And you may. Not. Come. Here. Again.” His father’s jaw clenched like his own, and the older man was studiously refusing to even glance at Noelle standing behind his son. Evan felt her heat at his back. He felt her anxiety.
“She didn’t do this!” Evan yelled, his frustration boiling over. His father wanted to blame someone, and she was the only option. He’d noticed how his father had quietly seethed over the past few days as he spoke with the police and the FBI and his own personal security, whenever Noelle’s name was brought up. “She was there with me. She’s a victim too! For the love of Christ—”
“Evan.” Noelle put a hand on his shoulder, and he sucked back the words he wanted to spew at his dad. This wasn’t fair. None of it was. When he looked back at Noelle, he saw the hostility in her face too. “If my father knew this man was in his home,” she said, glaring at his father, her words cutting off as she pulled in a breath. “Please leave.”
“Noelle would like you to leave her home.” He heard Paula’s voice from behind him and turned to see her looking at his father. Her eyes moved to Evan. “And your father is right. You two probably need some time apart.” She gave Noelle a look, and he saw the sympathy there, but it pissed him off too. “You went through something terrible together,” she went on. “Give yourselves time to process it.”
“No one asked you,” he spit out. “You don’t know a goddamn thing.”
Her nostrils flared, and Noelle let out a quiet cry. He hated that stupid girl, but she was protecting Noelle too. A part of him was glad to know she had someone else on her side. He turned back to Noelle, and the sorrow on her face broke him. “Evan,” she said. “I’m planning my dad’s memorial service. Maybe Paula’s right. Maybe your dad is too. Let’s take some time. At least a few months.”
“A few months? You don’t mean that!”
“I do. I do mean it. I need that. And so do you.”
“The girl has some sense. Let’s go, Evan,” his dad said. The girl. The way his father said it enraged him. She had been destroyed by the animals that had taken them too. She was the biggest part of why he was alive. Was his father so filled with hate that he couldn’t see that?
He turned back to Noelle again, and she’d already taken a step backward, away from him. His chest felt like it was caving in, and he was having trouble catching his breath. “Evan,” she said gently. “Both of us . . . our thoughts, our emotions, they’re tangled. Conflicted. We both have to remember what it’s like to live in the world again. To find new footing.”
He stared at her. What she was saying made some sense. Yet it also made him want to scream and claw the same way he did when he woke from those night terrors. Alone. It made him feel alone.
“Noelle—”
“Please, Evan,” she said. “I have to plan a service for my dad. I have to say goodbye. He deserves that.” She looked behind him at his father. “The police, they’ll find answers. I feel good knowing you’re working with them and focusing on that so I can . . . so I can grieve. Please, let me grieve.”
He felt like she was falling away from him, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, watching her disappear, not because he’d let her go, but because she wasn’t reaching back. “I—”
“Goodbye, Evan.” And with that, she turned and jogged back up the stairs, turning the corner out of sight.
Evan waited only a moment, his heart in his throat, before he turned in the opposite direction, joining his thin-lipped father and walking past Paula without looking at her.
Outside, the sun was a mere slip on the horizon. Night was coming, the place where nightmares waited.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Collector sipped his cup of tea and then placed it down on the saucer, enjoying the small clatter of porcelain against porcelain. The liquid was piping hot, dosed liberally with sugar and a slice of lemon. A man he’d once known long ago had drunk this exact tea prepared in just this way, and now he did too.
Not because he had revered the man. But because he had hated him. Because he sought to keep that hatred alive. In his heart. In his soul. Even in his mouth. He took another sip. Despite the sugar, this one tasted bitter.