Keeping Allie (Breaking Away #3) (2 page)

The man who was supposed to love me.

Love
me. He told me I was beautiful. Special. Important.

He lied.

A door creaks. Light filters in, and I turn instinctively toward it—the sound, the light, the everything. It’s Chase and Frenchie.

“She cleans up good,” says Frenchie, eyes eating me up. I watch him, avoiding Chase. One of my eyes doesn’t open as far as the other. It’s the one that the woman sprayed earlier.

“You beat her up good,” Chase says, shaking his head slowly. There’s no emotion in his eyes, no anger, no protectiveness, no outrage. Just the cold, calculated observation that I’m not as perfect as they might want me to be, to hand off to their boss.

“At least she’s not all greasy and nasty now. How many times can somebody piss themselves?” Frenchie remarks.

A retort pops into my head, and I want to say,
As many times as she has to, when she has no choice
.  

No choice.

I’m a piece of flesh. I’m like one of those packages in the meat aisle at the grocery store. I’m completely at their mercy, and they don’t care.

“Marissa,” I say, swallowing slowly. The back of my throat sticks together and I cough.

Frenchie rolls his eyes and reaches for a glass of water next to the bed that I didn’t see. I didn’t see it because I
couldn’t
see it. It was behind my head, and I’m tied down.

When I turn to watch him, I see that my hands are handcuffed to two poles at the top of the bed. That’s why I can’t move. The handcuffs aren’t as tight as the ropes. I’ll take what small mercies I can get. He puts a rough hand behind the back of my head and lifts it up. Hard enough to make the muscles in my neck tense and my back scream.  

Enough to make me choke from pain. And then the cup is in my mouth, and I’d better figure out how to swallow before it goes down into my lungs.  

Chase watches the whole thing and doesn’t say a word.

“Who the fuck is Marissa?” Frenchie asks, looking at Chase and then looking at me.  

Chase’s nostrils flare. His jaw tenses, but he doesn’t say a word. I take that as a hopeful sign. Is he protecting Marissa? 

His eyes are on me now. I’m searching them, clinging desperately to the idea that maybe there’s an emotion for me inside Chase. That maybe all of this has a reason. That maybe there’s a piece of hope inside him that I can reach. His face is haggard, dark circles under his eyes. He looks tired. His tan skin seems textured, and he has two days of stubble. 

I’m not supposed to care about him. I don’t want to even look at someone who could be so cruel. He’s my only hope, though. My wrists throb, the pain coming back into my head. My mind feels like a rat that’s drowning. I need to know. Whatever happens to me is inevitable. I have no choice.

But if Marissa’s safe, that’s something.

Frenchie nudges him and shoves the cup up to my lip. It hurts, but I drink. I’d better drink. I don’t know when I’ll get water again. My mind starts to realize that tiny moments like this have to add up to my survival. Drink when I can. Breathe when I can. Relax muscles when I can. Take in information where I can find it and store it away in case... 

In case
what
? I can escape? 

I exhale, a fast and sad sound.

I’ll never escape.

The desperation to find something in Chase that connects with me has become a luxury. Nothing I do matters. There will be no escape, but if Marissa’s okay, then maybe— 

Chase rolls his eyes and gives Frenchie a hard shove. “Marissa’s her sister, you fuckhead.”

“How the fuck was I supposed to know?” Frenchie protests, and slams the cup down on the nightstand next to my fingers. It’s out of reach, not that it would help me anyhow. I can’t even pick it up and bring it to my own head.

Chase just shrugs, quirking one side of his mouth up.

“What
about
her sister?” Frenchie asks.  

Chase shrugs. “I don’t know
what
she’s talking about.” And then he looks at me like I’m supposed to shut up about her.  

I do. It’s the first sign of humanity in him. And I’ll take any small moment I can get.

Frenchie gets in my face. He takes one hand and stretches his finger out, cupping my breast. He touches it the way you would touch a cantaloupe or a peach. “Nice,” he says, making a face that indicates approval. He squeezes, hard. “El Brujo’s going to like it. Fresh, pure.” He looks at Chase. “Maybe she’ll be the one to cure him.”

“Cure him?” I croak the words out. A little spark of fear starts clicking over and over again, like two pieces of flint against each other, trying to start something.

Frenchie snarls at me. His lip curls up in a sneer.

I’ve become hyper aware of everything. My eyes meet his. His eyelashes are beautiful. Long and silky, they crawl all the way up into his eyebrows when his eyes are wide open. The lower lashes are almost as long as the upper ones. I’ve always thought of him as this greasy jerk, a slimeball not worth paying attention to unless you have to. But as he stares me down, and I look right back, I see the beauty in him. The terrifying beauty.

“El Brujo needs virgins to help him get better,” he explains, his hand leaving my breast, riding up my collarbone, cupping my jaw. His hands are brutal, taking their time. My skin normally would crawl from the unwanted touch. His strokes feel like he’s telling me something. A message. I don’t know what, though. 

I’m overthinking this because the rat in my brain is flailing now.

Frenchie’s touching me because he can. He’s groping me because no one’s stopping him.

Chase
lets
him.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see Chase watching him touch me. His face is impassive. His eyes are dead, but the fingers in his left hand are curling into a fist. His thighs are tensing underneath his well worn jeans. That little shred of hope inside me starts to spark, too.

“The only disease El Brujo has is a disease of power,” Chase says, with a sigh. He nudges Frenchie again. “Look, man, we need to feed her.”

“I got something I can feed her,” Frenchie snaps, thrusting his hips toward me. 

Chase punches his upper arm. “You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Frenchie says back in a suggestive tone.  

Chase looks at me. “You hungry?”

I shake my head.

My stomach growls, revealing my lie.

He purses his lips and looks annoyed. “We’ll get Jackie in here, give you some food.” He looks at my hands and my feet, chained to the bed. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I catch his eye and hold it. It’s the only power I have. And then I say, “Thank you.”

His eyes widen, and then he scowls. Frenchie starts laughing. It’s a sound of torment.

“You got her thanking you for chaining her to a bed, Chase. Looks like you gave up a good one. Coulda had fun with her. Bet she’d enjoy some cable ties and duct tape, too. Too bad she’s saved for El Brujo.”  

Chase laughs. “Yeah. Too bad.”

I close my eyes slowly and focus on my breath. As long as I can feel it, I’m alive. My chest rises, and falls. I have to remember this. To breathe. All the processes in my body that I’ve taken for granted are shutting down.

My mind sprints forward to what’s coming. How El Brujo will touch me. What he’ll do to me. And I shut it down, making a weird sobbing noise. I can’t cry now. I need to focus. Need to preserve energy.

Need to deaden myself.

This is hopeless.

Frenchie walks out, fingers on his ass pocket. “Somebody’s texting me, gotta go.” He leaves me alone with Chase.

The second Frenchie’s gone, Chase walks over to my head, bends down, and whispers, in the lightest of butterfly sounds, “I’m going to get you out of here. Don’t talk about Marissa. Don’t talk about me. Just do what I say, and I promise Allie, even if they kill me, I’m going to do everything I can to
get you out
.” His words come so fast I’m not sure I heard them right. 

Maybe I imagined them. The difference between reality and my imagination is a really blurry line. 

“Chase, what? Uh, uh...” I stumble with my words, because I can’t believe it. Am I hallucinating? Chase can’t be saying these things.

I’ve been hoping for this, praying for this.

I don’t pray.

I do now.

Chapter Three

“Listen,” he says, in a rushed, tight voice. “I don’t have long. Once Frenchie comes back, I have to go back to pretending. I don’t know what’ll happen next, and I can’t stop them if they hurt you part of the way.” His jaw tightens and he takes a swift step forward, sitting on the edge of the bed. The movement makes my hips twist and I moan in pain. 

He stands abruptly, his face contorted with too many emotions for me to figure out.

“Part of the way?” I whisper. “What do you mean?”

He squeezes my hand. The comforting touch of Chase makes me think that maybe I’ll get out of this. Maybe I won’t get hurt. Maybe they won’t give me over to El Brujo.

“I can’t get you out of here right now,” he says in a strangled voice. His eyes are filled with love and pity and fury. “If I try, they’ll kill me and they’ll...” He pauses and frowns. “They’ll do worse to you.”

“Your own dad would kill you?”

He shrugs and caresses my cheek. His touch is soothing. It also hurts. I must have a bruise there.

“My dad threatened to kill me if I left the motorcycle club. What do you think he’d do if I tried to get
you
out of here?”

My body goes limp. It goes numb at the same time. The pain’s gone. He’s looking at me with so much concern, and his voice is so soft and gentle. I think for a minute.

“What about Marissa?”

He shakes his head. “She wasn’t there when they came and got you.” Oh, thank God. She had left to go get cigarettes and food. She must have come home to an empty house and now she’s freaking. I hope she called the police. Maybe they’re searching for me. 

Wait a minute.

Right. Allie Boden, the prime suspect in Jeff’s murder. I disappeared. They’re searching for me, all right. I’ll bet they think I skipped town. They’d never look for me
here
, at the Atlas motorcycle club compound.

Something Chase just said makes the back of my neck tingle.

“They?”

His jaw tenses. “Frenchie, someone else. I don’t know who.” He takes a deep sigh and then whispers. “I hear footsteps. I got to go back to being an asshole.” The sweetness in his eyes drains out, like someone’s pulled the plug. He steps back, crosses his arms over his chest, and looks at Frenchie as he walks back in.

“What the fuck. El Brujo’s delayed,” Frenchie says.

His eyes take in my body. I watch them crawl from my head down to my toes. It’s the least of the awful things he could do to me. 

“He says he wants her delivered to his mansion.”

Chase gives Frenchie a nasty look. “Now we’re a fucking delivery service? What do I look like, a pizza driver?”

Frenchie snorts. “You deliver money for the club. You used to deliver smack and crank for the club. I deliver beat downs.” He gives a wide, malevolent grin. “Now I guess we deliver whores.”

Chase’s eyes remain neutral. “Guess so. Can’t call her a whore, though. She’s a virgin.”

Confusion clouds Frenchie’s eyes. “Good point.” He gives Chase a clap on the shoulder and shakes Chase’s body in a good-natured buddy move. “Future whore, right? After what El Brujo’s going to do to her, you ain’t gonna be able to call her a virgin.”

Chase laughs, the sound ringing through my ears, like someone twisting my heart and squeezing all the blood out of it. One of his eyes narrows as he looks at Frenchie, and if I didn’t know better.... 

It’s only pretend
, I tell myself.
He’s only pretending.
I know I can trust him now. Chase is going to do everything to get me out of this. I will be safe. I will see Marissa again. I will be okay. The question is, will I be whole?  

That seems like a luxury now. I’m never going back to the way I was. The only question left is: how damaged will I be from all this?

Actually, that’s the second question. The first is:

Will I come out of this alive?

Frenchie leans down and grabs my wrist, yanking hard. I make a sound of pain in the back of my neck as his grasp pulls on my raw skin, his pull hurting my hips. 

“Shut up,” Frenchie says. “You think that hurts? Oh, Girlie, just you wait.” He pulls a tiny key out of his front pocket and unclicks the cuffs.

“What the fuck you doing?” Chase asks him in a rough voice.

“Unlocking her. They want her to pretty herself up.” He unlocks the cuffs on my feet. “Eat, take a real bath. You know, they want her to be all nice for her deflowering.” Frenchie shakes his hips in a vulgar, sexual gesture. He thinks he’s funny. He’s actually disgusting.

“What do you think you’re shaking, Frenchie? It’s not like you have an actual dick in those pants,” Chase says to him.

I move slowly, inch by inch, while the two argue. My body’s not used to moving on its own. For the past—however long I’ve been here—it’s been tied up, or bent over or laid flat. I’ve been restrained constantly. My own flesh doesn’t know what to do when it comes to moving normally.  

The strain on my tendons as I move my legs over to the edge of the bed and sit up makes them feel like tight rubber bands ready to snap. My abs clench hard, so tight it’s like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. My arms hang from my shoulders like pieces of spaghetti. It’s hard to keep my head up on my neck. It’s so heavy. 

I take a deep, careful breath. Another one. Another one, as I sit up. I’m wearing red silk underwear and a red half bra. I look down. There are scratches all over my belly, my ribs, my upper thighs. Deep bruises mottle my legs and arms. A thick gash on one hip that is an angry red. If I look in the mirror, what will I see?  

I lick my dry lips and watch the two men arguing over whether or not Frenchie has a penis.

“You think I don’t have a dick?” Frenchie says, beginning to unsnap his jeans. Before Chase can protest, he’s unzipped the fly and whipped it out. Frenchie apparently goes commando.