Rock Bottom (17 page)

Chapter Thirty-six

After my financial education, Rafe left me on the same old familiar corner where Marissa waited anxiously for him to pull away before she practically mauled me.

“Where have you been, sweet cheeks? I’ve been worried sick. I thought he . . . You look terrible. Are you sure you’re alright to work tonight?”

“Do I really have a choice?” A wave of lightheadedness crashed over me, toppling me into the wall.

“Here. Sit here.” She lowered me against the brick wall and I complied, happily allowing gravity to have its way with me. “Christ, you can barely stand. What did he—?”

I was saved from having to answer her by the blowing of a car horn. My heart turned over at the sight of a rusty white station wagon parked at the curb. I tried to get to my feet, but my body simply wasn’t allowing it. My knees gave out and I hit the pavement hard.

Elijah was out of the car and by my side in an instant. I wanted to wave him off, tell him not to let the others see him, but he ignored my protests, scooping me up in his arms.

“I don’t think she can—” Marissa tried to step in, but Elijah was having none of it.

“I’ve got her.”

“You can’t just—”

“It’s okay. I want to go with him.” The look I gave her revealed more than I probably should have knowing she was supposed to report back to Rafe, but Marissa was one of the few people in my world that I trusted.

“How long should I tell Rafe you’ll be gone?”

“Twenty-four hours,” Elijah answered for me.

“He won’t accept that. He needs her back tomorrow.”

“Then . . . tell him overnight. Tell him she’ll be back tomorrow.”

Elijah didn’t speak again until after he’d carefully lowered me into the passenger seat, buckled me in, and pulled away from prying eyes—and ears.

When he did, there was no disguising the tremor in his voice. “What happened? Where the hell have you been?”

In all fairness, I was still
having difficulty forming a coherent sentence. The fatigue and utter torture my body had been put through might have had something to do with it, but mostly . . . it was
him
.

“You’re still here.” A fact that my brain was failing to compute.

He pulled to a stop at a traffic light and turned to look at me like I’d grown a second head. “Of course I’m still here. What? You thought that little goodbye note you left back at the hotel would be the end of it? That I’d just . . . leave you here?”

“But I told you—”

“I know what you told me. I read the note. About a dozen damn times. It was just as stupid every time.”

“I—”

“I can’t just ‘let you go’,
Ry. I can’t ‘move on’. I
love
you
, Rylie.”

I’d honestly believed myself beyond shocking, but his words rocked me to my very core.

“You . . .?” He
loved
me?
Still?
It wasn’t possible. “You can’t.”

“Well, that’s just too damn bad, isn’t it? Because I do. I never stopped.” We pulled into the same hotel we stayed at last time. “Don’t move. I’m coming to get you.”

Under normal circumstances, it would have been a cold day in hell before I let him carry me around like some baby, but these weren’t normal circumstances. Wrapping my arms around his neck, he cradled my weight as I breathed him in, allowing the familiar scent of cinnamon and spice to ease some of the tension from my achy body.

After wrestling with the key card, he took me inside and laid me on the bed, but he didn’t stop there. Removing my shoes, he tucked the comforter around me until I was snug as a bug and had a vague understanding of what a mummy must feel like.

“There.” He settled on the edge of the mattress and brushed the hair from my forehead. “Now talk to me. What happened to you?” His fingers glided over the yellowing bruise under my left eye from where Rafe had punched me. His voice dropped to a frightening growl. “What did he do to you?”

I considered lying. Elijah already knew too much—more than I ever wanted him to—but I couldn’t bring myself to go through with it. I kept the ugly description of my time in the basement minimal, but it was impossible to hide the results. My eyelids drooped with exhaustion and my hands trembled as I spoke.

Elijah didn’t say a word. He sat there, stone faced, listening to me until I’d finished. As the minutes drew on, his silence became maddening. I needed to know what he was thinking.

“Elijah?”

“A week and a half.”

“What?”

“A week and a half. That’s how long that bastard kept you
locked up
.” He spit the words as his fingers carefully traced the torn flesh around my wrist. “Starved, in pain, all alone.” Elijah shook his head and took a shuddering breath as though he were trying to remove the image I’d tried not to paint for him. “You . . . you could have
died
down there, Ry.”

I didn’t tell him that I honestly thought I might for a while. Or that it hadn’t really mattered to me, one way or the other.

“And it would have been all my fault.”

My half asleep brain jolted back to consciousness and I wrestled myself free enough to sit half propped against the headboard. “What?”

“It would have been my fault, Rylie. All of this, all of it, is my fault.
I
did this to you.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because it’s true. Who called you predictable? Who told you that you needed to have more fun? Who introduced you to the drugs? Who introduced you to
Rafe,
for chrissakes?
Me
, Rylie.
I
did that. All this shit started when you met me. If you hadn’t . . . Christ, you’d be at fucking Harvard right now.”

The reminder of my previous life brought with it an acute, intense pain. “Don’t, Elijah. Don’t do this to yourself. Not over me. I’m not worth it.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m not.”

“Princess—”

“Don’t you get it? I’m not a
princess
. . . I’m a
whore
.”

Shutters slammed into place, hardening his expression. “I’m going to kill the son of a bitch that made you think that.”

“I don’t
think
it, Elijah. There’s some pretty damning evidence to the fact.”

“I don’t give a shit about any of that. I don’t care where you’ve been or what you’ve done. I care about
you
.”

“You say that now, but—”

“I
mean
that.
Always
.”

Why are we even arguing about this?
‘Always’ wasn’t something we had the luxury of debating. Our time together was limited. Finite. And running out.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Before our time together was up, there were things I needed to know.

“Elijah? My . . .”

My fingers ached from how tightly I’d knotted them together until Elijah gently pried them apart and threaded them through his. “What is it?”

“My parents. Are they . . . are they okay?”

Elijah shifted and drew a deep breath. His thumbs swiped idly across the back of my knuckles while he seemed to be collecting his thoughts.

“Your parents are . . . alright. I mean . . .” He sighed, resigning us both to the ugly truth. “I don’t know what you want me to say. They’re healthy . . .  physically. They’re still together. But your disappearance . . . it tore them up, Ry. Your mom was—
is—
devastated. Your dad tries to hide it, but anyone can see how messed up he is. You know your parents better than I do. I’m sure you already know all of this. Please don’t use me to torture yourself.”

“I’m not. I swear I’m not.” It was just a side effect of my vicious curiosity. “I just need to know what happened after I left. Please?”

His gaze dropped to the comforter bunched between us and he shook his head.

Fear that he was going to refuse to tell me rooted in the pit of my stomach in the form of a cold, hard lump. Not knowing would kill me. “Please, Elijah.”

“After you left my place, I went looking for you. Called your number a million times. Checked everywhere I could think of . . .” His voice was flat, almost robotic, reciting events as though on auto-pilot. I wondered how many times he’d repeated them. “When I hadn’t heard from you by Monday, I caught Angela and Carrie at school. Asked if either of them had seen you. They hadn’t, so I left and went straight to your house. Your dad wasn’t thrilled to see me there, but I didn’t care. I
needed
to know you were alright. That you were safe.” His gaze turned distant and I could see the grief I’d caused him. “When he told me you weren’t there . . . that you hadn’t been there since . . . He thought you were with me. We called the police. Filed a missing person’s report. I told them everything I knew.

“The cops talked to some people from school. I know they were looking for Rafe for a while, but by then he’d cleared out of his old apartment and left no forwarding address. Then they found your car at the bus station. Your parents tried to tell them that you wouldn’t just leave on your own. That someone forced you or tricked you, but no one knew anything, and with the recent drug use on your record . . . the case stalled. They labeled you a runaway and . . .”

He didn’t finish, but I knew that was the end of the story. The police had given up on me, but he hadn’t. Not Elijah. He’d never given up on me. He
still
hadn’t.

“What happens now, Ry?” When Elijah’s eyes found mine again, they’d turned to steel. My knight in shining armor. My
Prince
. He was preparing for battle. But the fight had already been lost.

“Nothing. Nothing happens now. You found me. You can stop looking, but you can’t tell my parents. Please. Don’t tell them about any of this. Let them hold out hope that I’m living some happy, selfish life somewhere. It’s the best I can offer them.”

“They don’t want
hope
, Ry. They want
you
.
We
want you.
Come home.
”

“I can’t. As of tomorrow, Rafe’s planning to rent me to a friend of his. If he decides to keep me, I won’t work the streets anymore. I won’t . . . be able to see you anymore.”

“He’s renting you out?” Elijah’s jaw clenched so tight I feared for his teeth. “No. This is insane. I’m not letting that happen.”

If only life could be so simple. “Elijah—”

“
No, Rylie!
No way. Come with me. Run away with me. You don’t have to ever go back.”

And if wishes were fishes . . . “Elijah . . .”

“Don’t you want to? Don’t you trust me? I know I’ve let you down before. I know that. And there aren’t words to tell you how sorry I am for that. But I swear to you, I’ll keep you safe. I won’t let you down again, Ry. I
swear.
”

“No. Elijah. Of course I
want
to. And I trust you with my life. That’s not the issue.”

“Then what is it?”

“Rafe. The debt I’ve built up to him . . . I could work all night every night for the rest of my life and never come close to paying it back. Not even my parent’s money could put a dent in it. He owns me and if I try to run . .
.”

“That’s bullshit.” The edge in his voice matched that in his grip on my shoulder. I think he wanted to shake sense into me, but he refrained. “You don’t owe him a damn thing, Rylie. You’re scared. I get it, but I can protect you.”

“And who’s going to protect
you
?” Scared was one word for what I was feeling. Terrified, horrified, and petrified were a few others. But the bulk of that fear wasn’t for myself. “The kind of money I’m worth to him . . . He won’t stop until he finds me and he won’t think twice about going through anyone standing in his way.”

“Then we’ll get help.” Determination flared to life in his eyes like a flash of lightning. “Rafe can’t touch you if he’s behind bars.”

“You want to go to the police?”

“He’s a pimp and a dealer, Ry. He forced a minor into . . . prostitution. There has to be some serious time associated with that.”

I wracked my brain for the million reasons why this was a bad idea—and I found them, and more—but none sounded as bad as allowing myself to be
sold
and
owned
for the rest of my life.

“Can we talk about it some more in the morning?” My head wasn’t in the right place to be making important decisions.

I struggled to keep my eyes open and Elijah’s softened. “Of course. You must be exhausted, but do you think you can stay awake just a little longer? I’d really like you to try and eat something before you sleep.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“Try? Just a little? I have some peanut butter and bread.” The mattress bobbed as he climbed off and I forced myself to watch him slap together a sandwich just to stay awake.

The minute he handed it to me the smell started my stomach rolling. “I don’t think—”

“Just a bite, Ry? Please? I’m really glad you’re off the drugs, but your body needs nutrition. The calories and protein in the peanut butter should help you feel better.”

What he said made sense, as usual, so I held my breath and took a bite. Chewing slowly, I savored the flavors. It’d been so long since I’d truly appreciated food. Since I’d truly tasted it. The soft bread and smooth, creamy filling stuck to the roof of my mouth, making it difficult to swallow, but when I did . . . nothing happened. I was prepared to run for the bathroom should the situation warrant it, but my stomach seemed to appreciate the donation. There was slightly less caution behind my second and third bites. Before I knew it, the sandwich was gone and my stomach was happier than I could ever remember it being.

“That’s my girl.” Elijah’s words made my heart squeeze with equal measures of joy and pain. “Now, come lay down. Get some sleep. We’ll figure the rest out in the morning.”

I snuggled into the soft pillows and felt Elijah crawl in behind me. His warm arm wrapped around my middle and he whispered into my hair, “Sweet dreams, Princess.”

And I knew . . . I already
knew
, no matter what kind of wrath it brought down on the both of us, I couldn’t walk away from him again.