Pieces (24 page)

“You alright?” he asked, pulling her close.

“I think so.” Lying back down, she snuggled into him. He smelled like spicy soap from his shower earlier. She took in a deep breath, savoring the feel of him holding her.

Remember why you fell in love with him.

Shut up, Finn!

She wanted to scream the words into the silent bedroom, but couldn’t. She loved Jesse because he loved her. It was that simple. He sacrificed things for her. He wanted to make her happy, and she wanted the same for him. She had left everything to be with him.

A knock on the front door made Naomi jump. It frightened her to think of who might knock on their door so early in the morning. Jesse stirred again, mumbling something she couldn’t understand.

“You want me to get it?” she asked, almost afraid to wake him.

Groaning, he sat up and blinked. His hair had dried in spikes. “Where the hell is my phone?” he asked. “Why are the curtains wide open?”

He was always cranky when he was woken up too early. “I wanted to look at the stars as I fell asleep.”

Turning to her, he blinked again. The sun made his green eyes pale. “How did that go, then? Last night? Did you read it all?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

She looked away. “I was so tired I’m not sure how much of it stuck.”

“It’s all in your head now. You can start sorting through it and face it all.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Another series of knocks. Jesse cursed and got out of bed. He was in his boxer shorts, and pulled on a pair of sweats before grabbing his phone off the dresser. He walked out of the bedroom. Curious, Naomi slipped out of bed and peeked down the hallway as Jesse looked through the peephole. She asked herself if she cared that he had lied to her about his parole, that he was a fugitive. Did it matter? Her stomach clenched.

“What is it?” Jesse asked, opening the door a crack. His body blocked her view of whoever was on the other side. There was an answer. A man’s voice. A shudder went down Naomi’s spine.

“No,” Jesse said, “she’s here.”

Naomi gripped the door handle to steady herself.

More mumbles. Every muscle in Jesse’s back tightened as he hissed, “Damn it,” and glanced behind his shoulder. She backed away, catching a glimpse of the man outside the door. Dark hair to his shoulders. Intense, light-colored eyes.

Turning on his phone, Jesse started whispering to the man. Naomi backed away until she couldn’t see him anymore. For a terrifying moment, her world turned ice-cold as she wondered if this was the rest of her life.

When she reached the bed, she sat on the edge as her last thread to everyone she had ever cared about twisted tighter and tighter, snapping until one fiber remained, and no matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t sure it would hold. Jesse was all she had left. Her mother would kill her if she ever tried to go back. It would be exactly like when she had returned home from the kidnapping. Constant awkwardness. Fights. So much therapy and so many reporters wanting stories. She couldn’t do it again. She looked around the bedroom at what her life had become—at her phone Jesse had rendered practically useless, at the slinky black dress hanging in the closet, at the stack of Jesse’s favorite novels he liked to read to her, at the dozens of drawings she had created of places she had visited—and she asked herself who she was and what she wanted. She knew what Jesse wanted. She knew what her parents wanted. She knew what Finn wanted. Okay, maybe she wasn’t sure what Finn wanted. But what about herself? The scariest thing, she realized, was that maybe it wasn’t about her at all.

She looked up when Jesse returned to the bedroom, his face red from frustration or anger, she couldn’t tell. “We have to leave,” he muttered.

“Leave? You mean the apartment?” She straightened.

Jesse’s jaw flexed. “Yes. It was the texts and phone calls to and from your phone. The feds are already attempting to track it all. This is why I didn’t want you to have a phone, but I didn’t think they’d catch on this quickly. They shouldn’t have. Nobody should have known I was missing until a few days ago.”

Her stomach clenched again. “So now you’re going to take my phone away completely? I didn’t know you were
hiding!
If you’d told me the truth, I—”

“It’s done now,” he snapped. “We’ll need to pack and leave today, just in case.”

All the words from her journal swirled around in her head. Sentences like, ‘
He’ll take care of me forever’
and ‘
I’ve never felt more at home than when I’m with him’
stabbed her. Tiny daggers. Jesse was right. Reading her journal had opened her eyes, but probably not the way he wanted.

She looked at the cheery sun shining into the room. It was warm on her face, but she was a cold statue. She imagined what it might be like to stay with Jesse. Her life would be hiding, she realized. Not only hiding from the law, but from herself. At one point she had been willing to accept such a life, but now she remembered the men in the suits and the dread in her stomach when she had seen them. Now there had been some strange man she didn’t know knocking on their door at eight in the morning, warning them they had to leave. This was only the beginning. Jesse would never stop. He hadn’t changed. He didn’t belong to her. He would never be what she needed, no matter how hard she tried to pretend he was.

“Last night,” she said in a soft voice, “I dreamed about dragons.”

Jesse nodded. “You wrote about those in your journal.”

“In my dream, there were four of them—one for each of you who took me. I flew away with one of the dragons. He was you.”

He stepped forward. She couldn’t back away. “That’s one of the reasons I thought this could work,” he said, reaching a hand out to her. “When I read your journal, I saw parts of you that made me believe you could deal with this. You’re
that
kind of personality.”

She scrunched her nose. “What kind of personality?”

Placing his hand on her arm, he inched closer. “Stubborn but submissive. Eric saw that in you. He tested you, and when he was convinced you were wired that way, we all agreed to push you into wanting to stay with us. Eric knew if we could nudge your stubbornness in the right direction, you’d be ours forever. He also knew heavy violence wasn’t the way to push you, so he forced himself to be as gentle as possible. We all did.”

Naomi let out a deep sigh, knowing everything he said was true. “That was all while I was captive. I’m not kidnapped anymore. I’m trying to break out of that frame of mind. I’m trying to be stronger.”

Jesse was close to her now. She felt as if the walls might be falling in on top of her. “This will take time to sort through,” he said as he wrapped an arm around her waist. “I love you, Naomi. I’ll love you forever.”

Looking into his eyes, she felt her heart melt into oblivion. She did love him more than she had loved anyone, but how far could that stretch if he was going to take her into dark places she didn’t want to go? How could she be sure he wasn’t doing the exact same thing he and the other kidnappers had done before?

And then the thread snapped.

Naomi pulled away from him, sliding along the edge of the bed until she was free of him. “I have to ... I have to ....” She swiped a hand across her mouth as her stomach churned. Running to the bathroom, she slammed the door behind her. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t. She had made her choice and it was over. She knelt in front of the toilet and let everything come up her throat. There was nowhere to go and nobody to turn to except for Jesse. Always Jesse. He had made sure of it.

XXII

T
HERE WERE TWO THINGS ON HER MIND AS
she sat retching over the toilet for the next ten minutes. The first thing was did she want to leave? And the second was did she have the courage to leave? She didn’t have an answer for either one. It was like the house all over again. She wasn’t technically being held against her will, but she might as well have been. In fact, it was worse because most of it was inside her head—and everyone knows your head can be a worse prison than anywhere else. Like at the house, she had a choice to wait things out and see where they went. Or she could suck it up and leave already. Jesse wouldn’t dare stop her. Then again, maybe he would.

There was a knock on the door before he came into the bathroom and looked down at her.

“Go away,” she snapped.

“We have to pack and leave,” he said, leaning down to take her by the arm.

She yanked away from him. “What if I don’t want to go with you?”

He folded his arms, and even though he wasn’t touching her, she felt as if he was holding on to her so tightly she couldn’t escape. She knew arguing was pointless.

“I’m not letting you leave on your own,” he said. “Right now, you’re going to pack your bags and get in a taxi with me. When we’re settled again, we’ll talk things over. You’re emotional. Do you want to make such a big choice when you’re a complete wreck? Look at yourself.”

She glanced at the toilet bowl filled with her vomit, and the fire inside her spluttered to a wet pile of ashes. She
was
a wreck. He had a point she couldn’t ignore.

Refusing his help, she got to her feet. Her knees wobbled. “I hate it when you’re right,” she snarled.

He shrugged and walked out of the bathroom.

P
ACKING THEIR
bags took less than an hour. Naomi bundled up her drawings and managed to stuff all of her art supplies into the corners of one of her suitcases. When she reached for the new sheets on the bed, Jesse told her they’d have to leave them behind along with everything else they had bought for the apartment. As they walked out the door and she looked at the apartment one last time, he assured her where they were going would have everything they would need.

“And where is that?” she asked as they tromped down the stairs with their luggage.

“A safe house just outside of Rome.”

Stepping down each stair behind him, she mumbled, “Safe from the good guys, you mean.”

Pausing, he set down the suitcases he was carrying in each hand. The sound echoed off the concrete walls as he turned around to face her. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.” She was sure he had heard her clear as day.

“The world is not split up into good guys and bad guys,” he hissed as she looked down at him. “Is that the category you put me in? ‘Bad guy’?”

The luggage in her hands pulled hard on her muscles, making her lean against the wall to support her weight. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “All I meant was things are upside down from what I expected them to be. I thought you had changed and nobody could tell me you were bad anymore.”

He tilted his head. “And all those years ago when you told me you’d rather run away with me than live without me, were you lying? Would you have done it?” He glanced at the luggage she carried. “Or does the fact that you’re with me now mean you would have?”

She stumbled a little, but caught herself. “I don’t know about back then, but this time I thought I was making a different choice. Now it’s too late. I thought I loved you. I mean ... I do love you ... but maybe it’s not ... oh, I don’t know.” She gritted her teeth, angry that nothing she wanted to say would come out right.

He looked into her eyes. “Of course you love me,” he answered in his maddeningly calm, level voice.

She stared at a big chip in the concrete stair below her, squeezing the luggage handles in her hands. Yes, of course she loved him.

“Jesse!” Lalia’s voice echoed up the stairwell. “Your taxi here! You coming down? I hear you talking.”

Jesse cringed. “Yes!” he yelled out. “Be right there.” He turned around and lifted his bags. Naomi pursed her lips shut as she followed him, determined not to say another word while she was still so upset. When they reached the lobby, Lalia was holding the door open for them.

“I sad to see you go,” she said, looking straight at Naomi. “You such lovely girl.”

Naomi saw her differently now, knowing she ran an apartment building to house criminals. Perhaps it was best they were leaving. She hadn’t stopped to think about what other kinds of people might be living here. Of course, the place they were going probably wasn’t any better.

After giving the old woman a brief hug, Naomi followed Jesse out the door. The taxi driver helped them load the trunk with their luggage. Soon, she was sitting in the back seat watching the heart of Rome slip by in a blur of sunset colors.