Question everything.
“What did you do today? After we hung out,” I said, trying my best to continue a conversation. She blushed again, like she had when we first met.
“I waited for it to be midnight so we could meet again,” she said.
I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. To me, in that moment—she was paradise. I didn’t know what true love was supposed to feel like, but I guessed that was it.
I wasn’t thinking rationally—like how I didn’t know her at all. I didn’t even know her last name. But it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was how she made me feel, and she made me feel like a grown up.
“I waited to see you too,” I said. Our eyes met and I leaned towards her for a kiss. Even though she blushed, and it looked like she wanted to kiss me too, she held back.
I stared into her face and then she looked over my shoulder again.
“What’s going on? Don’t you want this?” I asked, a little annoyed. If she rejected me, it’d have bruised my ego.
Christie shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Tristian, I do want to kiss you but…”
She never got to finish that sentence because two pairs of hands were clamped down on my shoulders from behind.
I struggled in their grip, kicking and flailing, but I had no chance of escape against grown men.
Someone came over and tugged Christie away and she’d started crying now. But she wasn’t struggling to get away. She wasn’t in danger. She had just been the decoy. She’d lured me into a trap.
The men carried me to a van and threw me inside. Then there was darkness.
At the age of eleven, I was kidnapped and held as a prisoner by our family’s enemies for over a week, and it was all because I’d trusted a pretty girl.
I must’ve fallen asleep at some point because I woke up in my bed in the morning with a start.
I’d dreamt about Christie and the kidnapping. The look of sorrow on that girl’s face as I was dragged away—I’d never forget. Neither would I forgive her for it. She may not have been a willing participant, she definitely wasn’t the mastermind of the plan. But she was still the reason why they were able to lure me away from the safety of my family and kidnap me.
I woke up and jumped out of bed, rushing to the shower because I wanted to wash off all traces of Elsie from my body.
Now that I’d spent the whole night mulling over the details about Christie, there was no way I’d forgive myself for fucking Elsie.
It didn’t matter what my family thought of her. I still wouldn’t trust her. That’d be a stupid thing to do.
After my shower, I changed and stepped out of the bedroom to find Elsie cooking breakfast in the kitchen. The smell of bacon and eggs filled the apartment. Coffee brewed in the machine, and it even looked like she’d cleaned up around the place.
I was shocked by how quickly she’d assimilated into the environment, how she’d treated my place like her own. She had managed to integrate herself right into my life, and I didn’t even notice.
I took personal offense to this.
Especially the fact she looked amazing in the tiny pair of shorts and long t-shirt she wore.
“Breakfast?” she asked in a cheerful mood. Maybe she hadn’t noticed how sour I was being, maybe she didn’t care.
“No, I don’t want any breakfast,” I snapped.
That caught her attention and she looked up at me with narrowed eyes.
“Is everything okay?” she asked and I was on the verge of telling her it wasn’t. That nothing was ever going to be okay in my life because I couldn’t trust a single person outside my family.
It made me miserable, but I couldn’t move beyond it.
I grunted under my breath and headed for the door.
“Are you just leaving?” she asked, gaping at me with trembling lips.
“I have stuff to do.”
“But you haven’t eaten anything,” she insisted, in a weak voice. It was almost like she had run out of all the things she could’ve said to make me stay. I just stared at her like she’d suggested something outlandish.
It was.
That statement was too domestic.
“I’ll eat when I’m hungry, not when I’m told to,” I growled, leaving the apartment, banging the door shut behind me.
And now that I wasn’t looking at Elsie anymore, I was relieved the spell was broken, at least temporarily.
I had to figure out how to keep the spell broken permanently though.
Thirteen
Elsie
I’d hoped we had turned a corner last night.
Not only was the sex unexpected and amazing, but he held me afterwards, in a way that told me he may have actually cared about me. That he cared what happened to me and my safety. That I was more than just a task his family had given him.
Even though he abruptly went to sleep, leaving me on the couch, I hoped by the morning he’d had made a decision.
And it looked like he had made a decision. But it was one that wasn’t going to be in my favor.
Tristian wanted to have nothing to do with me.
He hadn’t even noticed how I’d cleaned up his place. How I made breakfast and had the coffee ready for him. He just woke up, showered, changed and left.
I didn’t know what I thought. Once again, I was rejected by him and once again I felt like I had pushed too hard.
I shouldn’t have trusted him, I should’ve put myself and my priorities over everything else. Just like my father had taught me to.
He may have made some mistakes and some poor choices, but he’d given me a few lessons that’d remained true for the rest of my life.
I couldn’t eat the food I prepared. I put it all away after Tristian was gone,
