He flexed his jaw, scrubbed his chin with his thumb, and the whole night came rushing back.
Shane’s admission that he’d come up with a plot to get ‘even’ with me for something my father had done.
My panicking.
My running.
My accident.
“Cherry was off-duty tonight, so I had her come and run some tests on you.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “How did I get back here?”
“Shane pulled you out of a wreck. Do you not remember that?”
I sat up.
“I remember a truck bearing down on me…”
“Me too. That fucking semi that came barreling down the two-lane,” Shane added.
“Wait. Wait--” I rubbed my forehead in an effort to unscramble my thoughts. “How did you see the exact same semi?”
Cherry’s eyes flashed down. I looked up at Shane, who crossed his arms.
“I followed you,” he growled.
My heart started to beat like crazy.
“You...stalked me?”
He grinned. “I prefer ‘escorted,’ actually.”
“And thank God he did,” Cherry chimed in. “You’d have died.”
I gave her a dirty look. “I’m still trying to process how you think it’s okay to stalk me. How is that okay?”
Shane sighed, seeming amused. He looked at me, then at Cherry, who was sitting in a chair next to me.
“Looks like she’s all better,” he said.
“Let me just run some concussion tests first,” Cherry added.
“Are you not going to answer me?”
Shane grabbed a chair, flipped it around, and sat reverse facing me.
“Look. There’s something we need to talk about.”
“No,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. “I feel trapped here. I don’t care about any accident.”
“Would you rather feel uncomfortable, or frozen to death?” Shane gritted out.
I stood up, with a little more effort than normal. My body hurt from the impact of the airbag, and somewhat sore from where the seatbelt had yanked me. All things considered, I felt good but definitely not normal by any means.
“Thanks for coming by here Cherry, but I’m fine. I feel totally fine,” I said.
Shane nodded. “She’ll be okay. We’ll run the concussion stuff tomorrow. It’s not like she’s going anywhere tonight.”
I walked to the front of the house, following Cherry’s lead in putting my boots on.
“Yes, I am. I’m going back to my father’s house, sleeping with a sleeping bag and the electric heater. It’ll be like camping.”
Cherry threw her coat on and glanced back and forth between us.
“This seems like none of my business. I’ll be leaving. Call me if you need anything else, Shane.”
“You’re the best, Cherry.”
She whisked out the door, and shut it before I could get my second boot on.
When I finally stepped to the door, Shane had stood in front of it, crossing his arms like he was a bouncer and I was nineteen years old.
“Take your boots off,” he commanded, unamused.
I wiggled my eyebrows. “I told you, I’m leaving. I don’t feel safe here.”
“And exactly how are you going to get to your father’s house?”
“I don’t know, how did Cherry get to her house?”
“Cherry lives down the block.”
“Oh.”
“Your car is still in a ditch, and it’s still snowing like crazy. Take off your boots. Nothing is going to happen. Do you not trust me?”
I scoffed. “Why do you need me here so bad? You’re not my father. What do you care if I freeze to death or not?”
“Sit. The fuck. Down,” he gritted out. “I just saved your life, and you’re this ungrateful? Jesus, I’m glad we didn’t fuck if this is what you’re really like.”
My blood boiled. “If you hadn’t planned to fucking kidnap me, I wouldn’t have had to leave.”
“You knew I was acting shady, I admit that. Which is why I decided to come clean.” He shook his head.
“No. I don’t care if I freeze. I’m leaving.”
“The fuck you are.”
“Why are you so protective of me? I’m grown and I can do what I want.”
“What do you not understand about the fact that there is a snowpocalypse happening outside right now, Florida, and you almost just fucking died?!”
I blew out a frustrated sigh, and he took a step toward me, covering me in his shadow.
I hated to admit that all of my muscles tensed, and my breathing shortened when I inhaled his scent. I might hate him, but I still wanted him.
“Alright,” I relented. “I’ll stay.”
“Damn right you will. And I’m sleeping in bed with you.”
“What?! I don’t think so.”
“I don’t trust you not to leave in the middle of the night. Come on. Up the stairs.”
I led the way up the stairs, Shane right behind me. Part of me wanted to give him a break. He had come clean, and that counted for something.
But the bottom line was that I could never fully trust him again. Not while he talked about his “friends” who wanted to kidnap me like they weren’t villains.
“Do you know,” he whispered once we were in his room, a tongue’s length from my ear, “how Louisa died?”
I leaned back and crossed my arms. “You never told me. No one told me. So no.”
“It was a night just like tonight. She went out to see her boyfriend. In the meantime, she’d taken some drugs that had been laced with something.”
“She died from an overdose?”
Shane shook his head somberly.
“No. She froze to death in the middle of a snow storm. The drugs just made her drive more erratically, we hypothesize.”
“Holy shit,” I gritted out.
“Yes. And you’re acting weird tonight. Natalie, this is for your own good. You can’t leave here. If you do, and something happens, I’ll always feel responsible for you. I can’t have that on my conscience.”
My nostrils flared. “So what are you going to do, chain me up?”
Just then, I heard the sound of metal clinking together as he reached a hand in his dresser, and my heart did a tumble.
“I’m sorry. I have my reservations about all this. But I need to do this. Your eyes are dilated, and you’re not thinking straight. But it’s for your own good, until Cherry can come back tomorrow to run the tests.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
My hair stood on end. Was this actually happening? “Shane, are you fucking serious? You’re not chaining me up! Let’s go to the cops! They’ll make sure nothing bad happens to me.”
He shook his head. “We can’t they’re all relatives of Jared’s. That’ll just put you on their radar.”
“I refuse to stay here.”
“And that’s exactly why this is the one place you’re safe tonight. They’ll never think to look here.”
My eyes zoomed in on multiple pairs of hand-cuffs clinking together in his hand.
“This isn’t happening.”