Stolen (17 page)

Slipping out of the slackened hold mom has me in, I
collapse onto the floor. Breaths are caught in my throat. I deserve this. I
deserve never to take another deep breath for as long as I live.

I clutch my chest. The pain in my heart is too much.
My eyes are blurring shut with tears, only adding to the torment of the reality
that my life has changed irrevocably. I’m a sixteen-year-old girl with a
stalker, no friends, and a dead boyfriend—make that a murdered ex-boyfriend,
and he never knew why I couldn’t be with him. He never knew what was going on.
He never knew that he did nothing to cause any of this, that no one knows who’s
causing any of this. He’ll never know.

I’m so cold. Why is it so cold? Strong, warm arms hold
me from behind. I know it’s Bruce, but I don’t fight it. My teeth are
chattering as I shiver from the freeze that I feel hardening everything inside
me, starting with my heart. I’ll let Bruce warm me, but only because he owes
me, and he might as well begin by taking away the miserable icy feeling biting
into my skin like piranha picking the skin from my bones. I’m no more than a
carcass to be feasted upon—at least I’m worth that much.

“Just breathe, Jess. I’m here and I’m not going
anywhere. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll always keep you safe. Just breathe, focus on
my voice, and try to calm down,” he says while brushing the hair out of my
eyes, wrapping it behind my ear.

“I have you. No one will hurt you for as long as I’m
alive. There are no words I can say that will make this better, I know that,
but I’m truly sorry. Just breathe. Stay with me, Jess,” he whispers while
continuing to stroke my hair.

Between his touch, the warmth of his hold, and the
soft, even tone of his voice, the pain is numbing. I feel like I’m floating and
drowning all at once. Is that even possible? If Rogan really is dead, I suppose
anything is possible. 

Three
Years Ago . . .

“Jess? Baby, wake up, I don’t have long, please wake
up.” My eyes don’t want to open, but I feel the urgency in the voice coaxing me
awake.

Blinking repeatedly, I realize I’m in my bed, in my
room, covered by my own magenta pink cotton sheets. I thought I got rid of these
sheets? I’m pretty sure I threw them out the day I first learned of my stalker,
the last day Rogan held me as his own. These were the sheets I had laid on
after our anniversary night, and once I knew I couldn’t be with Rogan anymore I
didn’t want the reminder of the best night of my entire life, knowing I might
never have another night like it again. These sheets were a reminder of a life
that was no longer mine. Yet another thing my stalker had stolen from me. So
why am I lying between them now?

“Baby, please wake up,” the voice urges once more.

“I’m awake. What’s going on? What time is it?” I ask
sleepily, still not completely aware.

“That’s not important. There’s something I need to
tell you, and I need you to listen. There isn’t much time.”

Recognition snaps me instantly out of the remnants of
my sleep—it’s Rogan. He’s sitting at the edge of my bed, nearly landing on the
floor after I throw myself into his arms. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in
years. I miss you. I don’t want to be without you anymore. I want to tell you
everything that’s happened, and I want to be with you forever if you’ll still
have me once you know what’s going on.” I rush the words before I lose all my
nerve with my willingness to confess all the sordid details I’ve been avoiding
telling him.

“None of that is important right now. Besides, I’ve
never really been away from you. I’ve always been with you. We were meant to be
together in this life and will find each other again in the next life. It’s you
and I forever, no matter where we are, no matter what happens to either of us,
we’ll always find each other.

“That’s why I’m here. I needed to tell you that I love
you and that nothing that has happened is your fault. You did nothing wrong. I
know you’re going to blame yourself, but please don’t.

“Knowing you and loving you made my life mean
something. I know you’ll carry me with you, but I don’t want you to use me to
weigh you down. Take me with you wherever you go, but don’t die with me. Live
like I’m down the street. Love someone like you loved me. Make friends again.
Don’t be afraid to take chances, because you never know how many chances you’ll
have. Life is short. Very short as it turns out for some of us,” he says
dejectedly. “So don’t miss any of it.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t know what
you’re saying. Are you going somewhere? I want to come with you if you are. I
hate my life without you. I hate everything right now. Please, take me with
you,” I beg.

“I can’t, baby. I wish I could, but I can’t. Please
don’t cry”, he says while wiping tears I didn’t know were falling down my
cheeks. “I have to go now. I love you. I always will,” he says softly with a
pained expression.

He skirts out from my grasp, holding my pleading hand
as he stands. There are no words I know that will say what I need them to say
since I don’t know what I’m even trying to say. Do I beg him to take me with
him? Do I beg him to stay? Do I apologize for what I’ve put him through by
leaving him out of my life? Do I just tell him how much I love him?

Shutting my eyes as he leans over me, kissing me
gently on the forehead, lingering longer than normal but not nearly long
enough, I savor the feeling as if I’ll never feel it again. My heart breaks at
the prospect that that might actually happen.

Cool air tenses my skin; I know I’m alone. He’s gone.
Rogan is gone. I don’t open my eyes again as I lie back down on the sheets I’m
happy I never threw away. Curling into a ball, I breathe in the scent of my
Rogan, the sound of his voice, the feel of his skin. I put all these things
into a box in my mind, somehow aware that I’ll open that box more than I want
to think about right now.

My head is throbbing. I feel stiff and hot, and my
throat is burning. I’m looking at the feet of the coffee table. The TV is on,
but the sound is muted, and an arm is surrounding me, resting heavily on my
hip. An image on the large screen of the TV slaps reality in my face like a
hammer to the gut.

Pictures of Rogan are sliding across the screen, him
as a baby, him in a hallway at school, him in the stands of a football game.
It’s too much to see, but I can’t look away. I’m seeing it all while lying on
the family room floor with Bruce still holding me from behind, a sleeping Bruce
based on the tone of his breathing. I guess we both fell asleep. I’ve never
been as awake as I am now, though.

Rogan is gone, like really gone. I thought he was
here, but it was just a dream. He came to say goodbye. Tears burst mercilessly
down my face. I’ll never see him again.

What am I going to do now?

Bruce moves his arm right as I’m preparing to throw it
off me. I need to sit up, I need to move, I need answers. What the hell
happened?

The TV goes blank. Mom is sitting on the loveseat,
clearly having turned the TV off after realizing I was awake. “Turn it back
on,” I say brusquely. I have no decorum left in me to care about my attitude
toward anyone right now. Hesitantly, mom hits the ‘on’ button of the remote,
bringing his face back into my view.

I’m frozen in place, but only briefly, before I’m
crawling toward the screen where he is. This is as close as I’ll ever be to
him, and I need to be as close as I can right now.

“Jess,” a soft voice calls for me. “Why don’t we go
into the kitchen for a while? I’ll make you some tea, something to eat maybe. I
don’t know when you last ate something,” mom says in the same hushed voice, the
voice used in a library or a museum, the voice used around skittish animals so
as not to scare them. I guess she thinks I’ve become the skittish animal.

“Leave me alone, mom!” I shout when she tries to pull
me from the TV. My eyes are frozen to the screen, to the images of the boy I
loved. I can hear her sniffle from behind me but I can’t look away, I can’t
look at her. She’ll make me leave.

“Bruce.” She says his name as a plea, clearly looking
for help in handling me.

“Jess, why don’t you come sit by me so we can talk
about what happened?” he says in his familiar assertive voice, the voice of
reason when there seems to be no reason left.

I hear the click of the television remote. Not needing
to look, I know mom turned it off; probably for the best.

Like a moth to a flame, a ship to a lighthouse, a dog
to a bone, whatever stupid cliché out there, I stand and walk to him, drawn to
him as I’ve always been. I know I’m supposed to be mad at him, I wanted to kill
him not that long ago, but I also know I need him. I know he didn’t do anything
wrong. I know he didn’t hurt Rogan, and I know I can’t bear to lose him now.

“Sit next to me,” he says while patting a vacant spot
on the loveseat. “Do you want to know what happened? Or would you like to
wait?” he asks bluntly.

Thoughts run rampant through my mind. Do I want to
know? Do I have to know? What will I do once I know? The answers are yes, yes,
and who the hell knows.

I nod reluctantly.

Resting his hand on my knee closest to him, he tells
me to stop him if any of this gets to be too much. I don’t like where this is
going, but I suck it up, prepared to endure the pain soon to follow.

“Rogan didn’t go to school today. Like most students,
he skipped since it was only a half day. His mom was off from work, but had
errands to run this morning, so Rogan was left alone for a few hours. She went
up to his room when she got home to see if he wanted something for lunch, but
found only a wide-open window. The wind coming through it was blowing
everything around the room. She went to close the window, realizing there was
no screen. She looked outside to see if it had fallen out. That’s when she saw,
well, when she saw, she saw . . . Rogan.” He finally spits out. “He was lying
face-down on the lawn outside his window.”

Sucking in a sharp breath, I nearly pass out from this
news. Bruce gives me a moment, asking if I need him to stop, but this is like
pulling off a Band-Aid—do it fast or not at all. I close my eyes, make a silent
plea with the Cosmos to keep my stomach where it belongs, and squeeze tight to
the sofa cushions as life preservers. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

“Keep going,” I whisper.

“She ran out to him, but it was too late. When the
ambulance arrived they believed it was a suicide.”

I feel like I’m going to be sick.

“I heard the call come in on my CB radio so I
immediately went to see what the hell was happening. The EMT’s on scene were
examining a note when I got there, a suicide note they thought, but it didn’t
make much sense to them. When I saw it, I knew instantly that that’s not what
it was.” He takes a calming breath. “It said, ‘Now you’re mine forever, my
lovely Jess.’”

He
did this?
He
who
has no name to me, yet who has ingrained himself into my life so deeply I don’t
remember a time before him? I’m his forever? I don’t even know who
he
is,
yet I’m forever bound to him. He’s my shadow, my nightmare I can’t awake from,
my tears I shed, the breaths I take. He lives inside me, touches every part of
who I am, of everyone who surrounds me. I thought I could keep Rogan safe, but
I couldn’t. I can’t keep anyone safe. He’ll find a way, always find a way.
 

I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to run and
never look back. My hands are clammy, yet that now familiar freeze is surging
through my body, leaving me shivering in its path. I stand from the sofa.
Looking down at Bruce, I wonder what will happen now. What will life be like
now? He has no answers for me; there are no answers for me.

Running my hands through my hair and down the sleeves
of my shirt, I pace the room, debating whether to turn the TV back on, but
deciding not to. I can’t watch any more of that. The reporters act as if they
know him, but they don’t. They don’t know anything about him except that he’s
dead. He’s just another story, a story they’ll get tired of soon enough before
moving on to some other poor person’s trauma—Vultures. 

Mom walks back in the room, holding a cup of tea, her
solution to everything! She looks terrible, though, so I don’t protest when she
hands me the cup. “Where’s Cass?” I ask. I doubt she’s handling this very well
considering what happened with Luke.

“How are you doing?” mom asks, evading my question.

“I’m worried about Cass, that’s how I am,” I say
louder than I intended. Setting my untouched cup of tea on the coffee cable, I
walk around mom and Bruce toward the stairs. Cass must be in her room. I have
to see how she’s doing!

With one foot on the landing, preparing to go to
Cass’s room to find out how she is, I’m stopped by the doorbell ringing. The
house seems still. Apparently, I’ll be answering the door myself.

Flinging the door open, I’m blinded by lights. “What
the hell!” I shout, shielding my eyes from the bombardment of camera flashes
snapping loudly in front of me.

“Jessica, did you know someone was after Rogan?”
stranger number one asks.

“Do you have any idea who it might be?” stranger
number two asks.

Adapting to the fluorescent lights, I count four, no,
make that five, reporters and their cameramen, standing on my front porch,
hitting me with question after question about Rogan.

“Do you think whoever killed him will try to kill
you?”

What the hell? What kind of question is that?

“What kind of question is that, you asshole!” I smile
as Bruce reiterates my inner question, with a little more flare than when I
thought it, of course. “Get the fuck off this porch before I arrest all of you
for trespassing!”

Four reporters and their cameramen scurry toward the
street, one man walking casually behind the others. The door slams in front of
me before I can process any of what just happened. Why are reporters
interviewing me? What do I have to do with any of this?

I don’t care! I just have to find Cass.

Leaving the entryway, a nervous looking mother, and a
fuming Bruce, I bound up the stairs as if a pack of wolves is behind me, or a
horde of reporters. I have to find Cass!

I nearly fall backwards down the stairs when large
arms close around me from behind. A hand covers my mouth, silencing me from
screaming, though I try anyway.

“Shh, just relax, my sweet. I’ll take care of you,” an
unfamiliar voice instructs.

My sweet?
No one calls me that, except . . . No! It can’t be! How could he have gotten in
here?

“Ple—Jus—Go—” I attempt to beg for release, though
mumbled words are all that come out.

Darkness shrouds my eyes. Sleep demands my
cooperation, forcing me into a restless slumber.