Taken: The MISTAKEN Series Complete Third Season (6 page)

T
oday

S
he had
no idea what she was doing to me, touching me like that, even just my knee. I had been hard at the thought of seeing her again—having her touch my leg … it was almost unbearable. I pulled her hand into mine. Fuck, her skin was so soft—exactly how I remembered it. My heart was hammering just having her touch me again—it was like no time had passed at all. It was like we were back in Montana for a second—like I could be happy again.

She was saying something, but I could barely hear her over the pounding of my heart—over the thought of being this close to her again. She was all I had thought about. She was in my dreams—in every single thought and thing I did. And she was right here, touching me again. I hoped to hell I wasn’t dreaming this—it had been too long. I had given up too much.

Her words finally seeped into my consciousness—she was apologizing. What the hell did she have to be sorry for? I had been the one who had fucked everything up. I had been the one who had been involved with Ryan Agostino in the first place—all those years ago when working for Krystal had seemed like the worst possible thing I could be doing and I left thinking working for someone like Ryan would better. Hell, working for my sister had been pleasant compared to some of the shit Ryan had forced me into. I thought I could work for my sister—helping out every asshole, corrupt politician in D.C. for the rest of my life if it meant I never had to do another dirty deed for Ryan Agostino. It wasn’t pretty—this life I had chosen. It wasn’t pretty at all, and I was sorry I had ever even come to be involved in it, especially since it had affected Jen.

“You have nothing to apologize for, sweetheart. This is all on me.” How could she blame herself for any of this? Everything that had happened—every single, fucking thing—had been my fault. It had started years before she and I had even met—how could she possibly blame herself for anything?

She pulled her hand away and stood up, walking over to the tiny kitchenette on the other side of the room. “Are you thirsty? I’m thirsty. I have bottled water.” She turned back to me with an awkward smile. “It’s my one vice from before—bottled water. It’s ridiculous, you know, drinking water that’s been bottled. It’s just tap water in a bottle, but it seems like it tastes better.” She turned back to the small refrigerator, pulling out two bottles of water. “I still drink water from the tap, you know, but mostly only if I make tea or something. I’ve been trying to give up coffee, but it’s hard. Coffee is just so expensive.”

Jen didn’t babble. I knew her—maybe not every single thing about her, but I knew her. And I knew goddamned well that she never babbled.

She sat down across from me on the edge of the bed, handing me one of the bottles before opening her own. “My throat is just really dry, you know? It’s weird, because I drink a lot of water…”

“Stop.” I reached out and touched her knee. I could feel her tremble under my touch.

“I don’t have any scotch, or I’d offer you that. I know you like scotch. Or vodka. I don’t have any of that, either.”

I shook my head. “Jen, stop. I haven’t had a drink in over six months. You don’t have to do this.”

She took a long drink from the bottle, staring into my eyes. “You don’t know…”

“What don’t I know?”

She shook her head. “It was my fault. That they found you.” She reached out and touched my knee again, placing her hand in almost the same place it had been before.

My cock had been hard since before I had even come in here—and having her touch me like that threatened to make me lose it. I stood up and walked over to the nearby table that must have served as her dining area. “No. None of this was your fault, Jen. I don’t know what you were told, but this was all on me. As usual…”

“No. It was. It was my fault.” She stared down at the floor. “I did it. I didn’t believe you … remember? Remember when you told me that there was no cell service in the cabin? I didn’t believe you. The day before they took you … it was my fault. I turned my phone on to see if there was a signal. There wasn’t, but…”

“But your phone had that GPS thing built in.” I sat on one of the two chairs that surrounded her tiny dining table. I scraped my hands over my jaw, trying to make sense of what she had just told me. Fuck, it probably had been her fault. That part of it, anyway. The damned phone had probably pinged something that Ryan or his co-workers were watching and they found out where we were. Maybe not the exact spot, but it wouldn’t have been that hard to find us if they had an idea of where to look. The cabin might have been remote, but it wasn’t like it was completely off the grid. It also wasn’t as though they couldn’t have done a title search in the area—if the roles had been reversed—if I had been looking for Ryan, it was exactly what I would have done. It was smart—smarter than I usually gave him credit for. But he had apparently learned a lot from me, too—just as much as I had learned from him over the years.

“It doesn’t matter, Jen. I can’t believe you’ve been hiding from me for all these months because of that. Because you thought that whole thing was your fault. Because it wasn’t.”

Even if she had pinged some GPS tracking software, I knew damned well that they would have found me eventually. I had just been hoping it wouldn’t be until spring—until things had died down a little.

“I’m so sorry, Brandon. I mean … I just…”

I shook my head and looked back over at her. I could see the tears starting to swim in her eyes and felt a pang in my gut. “Don’t cry, Jen. None of this had anything to do with you. This isn’t how I imagined this—how I imagined it would be when I found you. I wanted the fairy tale. I wanted you to see me and come running into my arms. I imagined lifting you into the air and kissing you so hard you would remember why we fell in love.”

She swung her legs over to the other side of the bed so that she could face me. “We can’t have a fairy tale, Brandon. That isn’t how our story plays out. We both know that.”

I shook my head again. “I imagined how I would kiss you, then I’d kiss that spot on your neck that makes you melt. I’d take you to bed and make love to you as many times as it took to make you remember. It
is
our story, Jen. It
can
be the way it plays out. It can be that way, if you let it.”

“You think the only reason I live here is because I’ve been hiding from you? You think I live here because I was afraid of how you’d react when you found out it was my fault that Ryan found you?”

“I don’t know what to think. You could have called. You could have texted. Hell, you could have sent an email or a letter. You
should
have. You should have told me you were alive.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “You think I didn’t want to? I know you, Brandon. I know you would have traced anything I sent and been here within about five seconds flat. I only came here for one reason—to keep you alive. I hid from you because I want you to live. I want you to be happy. I want you to have the joy and light and happiness in your life that you deserve—but you have to let me go to find it. You can’t keep chasing me—you have to let me … let
us
go. We can’t have both—happiness and life. We can have one or we can have the other. But we can’t have both. There are too many people out there who will make sure of that.”

I unbuttoned the top of my shirt and pulled it over my head as I stood up and walked over to her. She leaned back—as far away from me as she could without scooting back on the bed, her body weight resting on her elbows.

I stood in front of her and traced my finger across the large scar that ran almost the length of the right side of my belly. “Do you remember this? Do you remember how I got this?”

She nodded, trying to crawl backwards on her elbows. I had no idea why she was so afraid of me, but I needed her to hear what I had to tell her. I needed her to understand once and for all how I felt. It was the only reason I had been searching for her for so long. “I almost died because of this. Remember that, Jen?”

She set her jaw, nodding again. Her attempts to crawl away stopped, and she met my gaze with her blue eyes blazing.

“I only lived because of you. You were the person I thought of when I was sure I was going to die. You were the only thing I thought about through all of it.
You
. Not anyone else. Not any
thing
else. Just you.
You
are the light in my life.
You
are my joy.
You
are the only thing that has ever brought me any measure of happiness. So don’t tell me that I deserve those things and then turn around and say I can only have them if I let you go. Because that is complete and total bullshit. If I don’t have you, I don’t have any of those things. And I’ll be goddamned if I let you or anyone else tell me I have to give up my life—give up
you
—in order to be happy. I’m done playing that game—I’m done playing all those games. I’m here—and you’re right, if you had so much as peeped in my direction, I would have been here months ago—and
I am not going to let you go
. It doesn’t matter what you say, or what you think, or what terrible things you think might happen if you let me have you. Do you understand that, Jen? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“Brandon…”

I sunk down onto my knees and reached into the pocket of my jeans, kneeling in front of her. I pulled out the small, black velvet box I had been carrying with me for all these months. I held it out to her.

“Remember that day you left San Francisco for D.C.? You went back there to make your parents happy—to do what you needed to do? I bought this the day after—the day before I came to get you. Before I came to take you away from that … that life. Daniel, as big of a pain in my ass as he is, it was all his idea. That I come to get you—take you away from there. I think he’d had enough of his parents playing him, too. And when he told me that, I bought this. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I should believe him after everything he put us through. But I did it. I bought it. And it wasn’t that I didn’t know before that day that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”

She shook her head. “Don’t. Brandon, don’t. Not now.”

I continued, trying to calm the butterflies that had suddenly taken flight in my gut. “I was going to wait until Christmas that year. I wanted to ask you every day we were in Montana, but it was never the right time. Now is the right time, Jen. Now, I’m going to ask you…”

T
his couldn’t be happening
. My stomach was almost roiling—
this could not be happening
. He was on one knee with the damned velvet box in his hand, just like I had dreamed. Just like every little girl dreams, but this was no dream. His words were beautiful, as usual, but this was a nightmare. I was almost certain that he didn’t know who he was dealing with by even being here. Who had been hiding me all this time. Who was going to have a major freak out if they found out he was so much as in the same state, let alone kneeling in front of me, getting ready to ask me to marry him.

I grabbed his arm—the one that held the box. My heart fluttered at his words, but began pounding upon the realization of what would happen if I agreed to this. “Brandon, this isn’t the right time. Not here.” Not that anywhere else would have been any better, but I wasn’t quite ready to let go of my fantasy just yet. If he waited—if there was some way to make this right, it would have to wait.

“I want you to have it, Jen. I want you to see it every single day, even if you say no.”

“I won’t say no. I just don’t want you to ask me here. Not like this.” That was at least true. I didn’t want him to ask me here—or like this. I wanted it to be somewhere romantic, not in my little shack with my dyed-red hair where I felt like I was a lot more Becky than I was his Jen. And we might be able to run. We might be able to make it work if we could wait it out here until after dark.

My mind was racing, trying to figure out if there was some way—
any
way to make this work. I had dreamed about this moment—the moment he would find me, but it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t with a ring in his hand, and I wasn’t ready yet with a plan to get us away from here.

“I want you to look at it and know you’re already the light in my life, Jen. I want…”

I couldn’t take it anymore. The words. The words he was always able to come up with, always able to say, no matter what the situation. How he was always able to take my mind off anything that might be happening around us with his beautiful words. His words made it impossible for me to think—they just made me want him to take me. Claim me and make me his.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and tilted my head, silencing him with my kiss. He stood, pulling me into his arms without breaking the lock he had on my lips. He claimed me with a hunger I had never felt from him before. He pulled me into him, so close that I could feel he was already hard for me. I felt the familiar warmth of desire pooling in me, settling between my legs. I had never wanted him more.

I ran my hands through his silky, black curls, trailing my fingertips down to touch his shoulders. I traced the muscles of his chest—he had long accused me of allowing that part of him to be my favorite, and it was true. I could feel his heart pounding under his sculpted muscles and I felt my knees begin to go weak.

I traced my fingers down the length of his abdomen before dropping to my knees in front of him. I unbuttoned his jeans and pulled his zipper down. I pulled the clothing out of the way, releasing his erection, and dipped my head to take his hard cock in my mouth.

His hands fisted in my hair. “Jen, don’t.”

My voice was barely a whisper. “God, Brandon, I have to…”

I dipped my head again, caressing his cock with my tongue, licking him from the base to the tip. I wrapped my hand around his thick base before taking his full length into my mouth.

He groaned and placed his hands against my cheeks, gently pushing me away. “Jen, it’s been nine months. I won’t last…”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it—
that
was what he was worried about? Not lasting? I whispered to him again. “I don’t care.”