Dark Savior: A Dark Bad Boy Romance (9 page)

"Look at me," I urge her.

She obeys and opens her watery eyes to meet mine.

"Are you okay?" I want to know.

She closes her mouth and gulps. A few seconds pass before she softly shakes her head.

"You know I'm not," she whispers. "I'm anything but okay."

She has a point there. I nod and wipe away a strand of hair that's been sticking to the salty rivers on her face, a gentle gesture that I've never made before.

"True," I agree. "You're fucked up. But I didn't hurt you or anything?"

She shakes her head. "On the contrary."

A sad smile graces her face and it stings my heart in an uncomfortable way. Her pain is running so deep, it seems to color every aspect of her, except in those rare moments when she's overtaken with pleasure.

"Can you...?"

She hesitates, her eyes flickering.

"Can I what?"

"Can you... just hold me?" she asks. "For a little while?"

There's a heartbreaking hopelessness in her voice. It's impossible for me to say no. Hell, I couldn't say no to anything from her right now. She's getting to me.

I don't say anything, but wrap my arms around her and lift her up from the kitchen counter. She loops her legs around my waist and rests her head on my shoulder as I carry her over to the sofa, wrapping the blanket around both of us after I set her down and sit next to her. She leans against my chest, listening to my heartbeat while I can feel her own heart throbbing against my pelvis. We're entangled, skin on skin, holding each other as if we're scared of what's waiting for us outside of this room.

"Who are you?" she asks, breaking the silence.

"Kade," I tell her. "I've told you my name."

She huffs. "Yes, but who is Kade?"

This was bound to happen. Questions. Intimacy. All the things I've been so good at avoiding.

"You'll have to be more specific," I say, trying to dodge her questions.

She ponders for a few moments, breathing calmly.

"Who's living here?"

"That's a completely different question," I argue.

"But a more specific one."

That much is true.

"No one," I reply honestly.

She lifts herself out of my arms and looks up at me quizzically.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said," I retort. "No one's living here. Except for you."

She frowns.

"But it must belong to someone," she insists. "And there was someone living here until recently."

I nod. "That's true."

She rolls her eyes. "Do I really have to worm everything out of you?"

She may have to, even though I hate interrogations.

"I used to live here," I say, surprised at my honesty.

Her eyebrows arch in surprise.

"You?" she asks. She scans the room. "This looks more like an old lady's place."

I chuckle. An old lady. My mother would hate to hear this. According to her, she was neither old nor a lady. She insisted on that to prove how little she needed my help and protection.

"Wait," Meadow interjects, her eyes wide with understanding. "You didn't live here alone."

"Smart girl."

She looks at me, and her expression is colored with sadness as she concludes, "You lived here with your mother? Before she died."

"Something like that," I say. "I moved out a long time ago. She was living by herself for the past few years."

"I'm so sorry," she replies. It strikes me as silly that she feels the need to console me. I'm not the one who tried to jump from a bridge.

"When?" she asks, obviously meaning the time of my mother's death.

"A few months back," I say.

"A few months back..." She gulps, looking as if she was trying to hold back tears. Why is this affecting her so much?

"Where's your father?" she wants to know.

"Gone," I say. "Dead to me."

She understands that I don't want to talk about that bastard and nods, closing the topic. He left my mother when I was still a toddler and never tried to make up for it in any way. Why would I waste a thought on him?

"Why do you still have this place?" she asks next. "Did you live here after her death?"

"No," I say, shaking my head. "I just didn't have time to get rid of her stuff."

I pause and look at her through narrow eyes. "You know, to wrap things up."

She rolls her eyes at me, realizing that I'm mocking her.

“What’s behind the other door?” she wants to know. “The locked room.”

“That’s private,” I say.

She casts me a look that could mean anything from confusion and aggravation. “Private?”

I nod. “You don’t need more than two rooms to live in, do you?”

“No, of course not,” she says hastily, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be nosy.”

She lowers her eyes as a shadow of insecurity casts over her. I know this didn’t help with her curiosity, but she will be well-served by leaving that room alone. For her own safety.

Another thing she doesn't have to know is that I'm only telling half the truth. I've actually spent quite a bit of time at this place, even stayed overnight a few times for no apparent reason. Of course, there was a reason, but that's nothing she needs to know about.

After all, I had to be close for Joseph's and my plan to work. I had to be around and I had to familiarize myself with the neighborhood as it is now. It's been years since I moved away and my recent return presented me with  new surroundings, new problems, new people.

Meadow can't know about any of these things, not only because it would reveal my darkest secret, but because it would scare her to be here.

I don't like for her to be scared.

CHAPTER TEN

Meadow

"Have you seen Sonya?"

I'm met by the drunk’s fogged eyes as he lazily turns his head to me.

"Who?" he slurs.

"Sonya," I repeat. "My sister. She came with me
—
I introduced you to her just a few hours ago!"

He shakes his head. "No idea."

That's what everyone's been saying. It's almost four a.m. and I've been looking for Sonya for more than two hours. I wasn't worried at first, as this is a big party and there are plenty of places she could be hanging out, and if she moved as much as I did, we might just keep missing each other.

So I tried to relax and have some fun of my own, like I usually would. This is a party after all, and I'm here to have fun. If Sonya is finally able to do the same, I'm more than happy for her. She deserves it after all these years of hardship.

I can't deny that her having fun would also silence my own conscience, because I've felt bad for everything she's done for me over the past few years. She made sure that I would be able to get through school and be able to go my own way once I graduated, and put her own dreams behind that endeavor. She has done more for me than any big sister should for her sibling, and I don't know any other way than this to thank her. With some fun, relaxation, and a possibility to forget about her troubles for at least one night. I brought her here to celebrate the fact that everything worked out as she hoped it would. I graduated, and I have a place in a community college not far from here with a scholarship attached to it. She doesn't need to worry about me any longer and can finally start to pursue her own dreams.

Things are looking bright for the both of us, and that is mostly thanks to her.

But it’s getting late and I’m past that point where every drink adds to my enjoyment, instead just dragging me down even more. I've switched to drinking water to prevent my hangover from being as bad as the last one, and now I’m circulating through the many rooms in this place searching for my sister so we can go home. After I've circled the house twice in a very short time frame, I'm beginning to worry.

There's a pool outside in the backyard and for a terrible moment, I consider the possibility of Sonya drowning in that pool, too drunk to help herself. But when I run outside to check, I see nothing but happy people, standing and sitting around the pool with drinks in their hands.

I spot Lisa, a friend of mine who had been talking to Sonya for a while when we first got here.

"Have you seen my sister?" I ask her, interrupting the conversation she was having with her boyfriend. Lisa turns around to me and shrugs.

"Not for a while," she says, adding a little giggle. "She was pretty wasted the last time I saw her."

That's not exactly what I wanted to hear.

"I think she said she wanted to go for a walk," someone interjects from behind me.

I turn around and see Robert, a guy I've only spoken to once or twice before. But I remember seeing him earlier, while he was talking to Sonya.

"A walk?" I ask. "Where?"

Like almost every other person I've interrogated tonight, he shrugs his shoulders.

"Don't know, but I think she might have left."

"Left? Left the party?" I press.

He shrugs again. "I guess so, she was on her way out the door when she mentioned that whole going-for-a-walk thing."

I exchange a look with Lisa, who immediately realizes that I'm worried.

"Was she alone?" she asks, directing the question at Robert.

He nods. "I think so."

"That's weird," I hear myself say.

"Let's go look for her," Lisa says, handing her drink over to her boyfriend and following me as we head around the house to the street.

***

I think that's when it must have started. That's when I first thought that something must be wrong. We searched up and down the street for hours, I called Sonya's cell phone several times, but she didn't answer. After a while, almost everybody at the party was looking for her, inside the house, outside the house and in the surrounding area.

We called the police at six a.m. in the morning, only to be told that there was nothing they could do because my sister hadn't been missing long enough.

"I'm sure she'll turn up all right," the officer tried to calm me. "Call us again if she doesn't."

Just a few hours later, I had to make that second call, crying hysterically while Lisa was sitting next to me, trying to console me.

I don't know if those were the most terrible hours of my life, or if it was the ones that followed once Sonya was found. What's worse? Uncertainty and fear or actually having the worst you could imagine become a reality?

Both situations had their own form of terror. While we were still searching for Sonya, I was hoping for certainty. I just wanted to know where she was. But once we had that certainty, all I wished for was to go back in time.

They found Sonya three days later in a forested area about five miles from the place where the party was held. She was stripped half-naked and had been strangled. Raped and killed. Once I was confronted with those words, the cruel clarity of her fate, I collapsed and didn't speak or move for days. I was hospitalized because I stopped drinking and eating. I'm almost grateful that I was too drugged during that time to remember much of it.

I had to handle things. I was the only living relative , as far as we knew. All our grandparents are dead and there were no aunts or uncles that we knew about. I think my mother actually had siblings, but she hardly ever mentioned them, let alone introduced us to them.

It was just Sonya and me.

And now it's just me.

I'm alone. It’s been more than a week since Kade brought me here and we have developed our own little routine. He shows up every day to bring me food and usually stays to eat with me. The meals are always simple and prepared with very little effort, or it’s take-out food. We talk while we eat, but I still know very little about him and he knows just as little about me. He never directly asked why I was standing at that bridge, ready to call it quits, and I never volunteered the information. I never told him about my sister or anything that happened after her death. I did mention my parents at one point, telling him that they died in a car accident years ago because he asked about them. He had a somewhat sulky look when I told him about them, and he said none of the things people usually say when they hear the story.

He does have his own way of consoling me. I don’t know if he does it intentionally, but there is something about him that makes it close to impossible for me to think straight after I’ve been in his presence for very long. I always sit close to him, feeling comfortable and safe when I can feel the warmth of his body next to mine. His arms are so buff and strong, and the way his muscles flex when he reaches for something, or for me, is ridiculously sexy to me. He awakens a very animalistic urge within me, something I’ve never known before.

It might be purely hormonal, but I would almost call myself happy when I’m with him, and especially while we’re having sex. There’s nothing but pleasure and joy when he takes me. All the heavy sorrow is lifted and I float on a cloud of nothing but positive emotions, flying high, always certain that he will catch me when I fall. I’ve grown addicted to this feeling, and to him.

We never talk about us, about what this is between us. I have no idea how he feels about me, and I’m scared to ask. But at least he hasn’t mentioned me leaving this place again. It doesn’t appear he wants me gone.

He asked me whether I wanted to go outside or if there was anything I wanted to take care of, but I said no. He cast me a concerned look, and I was scared he'd threaten to throw me out eventually, but he didn't say anything of the sort. Instead, he just left, locking the door behind him like he did last time.

I know I can't hide here forever. I can't flee into mind-blowing sex with this man every time the darkness gets too unbearable. I might get addicted, or maybe I am already.

He scares me. There's a vibe about him that screams danger, and the way he eludes my questions only proves that he's hiding something. Just like I am.