Chapter 229: Madeline
This can’t be happening. No, no, no.
I’m halfway down the street when I realize I left my phone at Reid and Jake’s, but I figure I’ll grab it later—straight to the harbor, quick—when a hand hooks my arm and yanks me into the narrow alley between the fish market and the bait shack. Brick slams my shoulder; my head cracks the wall hard enough that stars burst behind my eyes.
When they clear, my nightmare has a face.
Nick.
He’s here. He found me.
I suck in air to scream and his palm clamps over my mouth. I jerk my knee, try to kick, scratch, anything, but he pins me in three places at once—forearm across my collarbone, thigh between my knees, hips caging mine—like he’s practiced. His breath is hot against my ear.
“If you scream,” he whispers, soft and vicious, “I will hurt you so badly you’ll beg me to kill you.”
I go still. He’s threatened me before, but never like this. I feared for my life that night in my dorm, but he never said anything out loud like this. Something cold pulls tight in my gut.
“You’re going to walk nicely with me to the boat,” he says, the tone he used to use when he was being charming, “and if you make a move—if you look at anyone the wrong way—I’ll make sure your boyfriends find your body first.”
Boyfriends. Body. I flinch behind his hand. I nod because I can’t do anything else, and when he lowers it I can’t get my mouth to work anyway.
He folds me into him like we’re lovers, like we’re sharing a secret. To anyone else we probably look like a couple—his arm around my shoulders, hands threaded, heads tipped together. But the way he’s holding my wrist, his hand easily wrapping around all of it—thumb grinding bone—tells me exactly what we are.
“Let me show you that I’m not kidding,” he murmurs, and before I can brace he snaps my wrist.
White explodes up my arm. I don’t know if I scream because his mouth is already on mine, kissing me only for the sake of swallowing the sound, forcing it back down my throat until it burns. Tears just start coming on their own, hot and useless. He wipes them with his thumb like a lover, then pastes on a small smile and says conversationally, “Don’t alert anyone.”
I keep my head down and walk. My wrist is a live wire; every step makes it throb. We cut past the bait shack; the smell of diesel and pennies makes me gag. The Vigil is there like she always is, lines neat, fenders bumping—home—and something in me breaks at the sight. He hustles me aboard, keeps a hold on me while he fumbles at the panel, the key, the breaker—he’s memorized something and it makes me sick. The engine coughs to life. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look at anything.
We nose out. Rain needles the windshield. The hull starts slapping at the chop—bang, rise, bang—and I’m on the floor of the wheelhouse with my back to the bulkhead, cradling my wrist, breathing through nausea and the constant threat of passing out. Nick stares ahead, jaw clenched, hands too tense on the wheel. He hasn’t said a word since the alley.
“Nick,” I manage, my voice so small I almost don’t recognize it. “What are you doing?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You don’t know how to steer a boat,” I say, because it’s true and because maybe logic will puncture whatever this is. “You could kill us.”
He snaps then, eyes cutting to mine, mean and bright. “Which of the two tall guys are you dating?”
Every muscle in my body goes cold. How does he—?
“I watched them bring you home,” he says, and grins—sharp, nothing in it. “Which one. And don't say I won't know who is who because I did my research, and I know who they are.”
If I say both, he’ll explode. The look in his eyes is glassy, manic; my wrist is already a mess. He never took it this far before. Never. Is this what he was going to do to me in my dorm? Or is this months of it building up? All I know is I can’t give him more fuel; I have to take it away, appease him somehow.
“Reid,” I say, picking the safer lie. “I… like Reid.” I shake my head, make my eyes soft. “We’re not dating, though. I just—like him. I don't think he likes me back.”
He scoffs, then laughs, ugly and pleased. “You moved on so easily.”
“It’s been over a year,” I say quickly. “It wasn’t easy. That’s why I needed distance from you. To get over you.” I make my voice gentle, conciliatory, the way I learned to do when staying calm was the only way to stay intact. He seems to like that answer; his mouth eases a fraction.
“Nick,” I say, slow, careful, pushing my luck, “I think my wrist is broken. We should turn back. You should take me to a hospital.”
He looks at me—regret and hysteria fighting in the same pair of eyes—and then looks past me at the windshield, at the gray water. “Even if I wanted to, which I don't” he says, “I have no idea where we are.”
I push up off the floor, dizzy, and look around. Water to the horizon. No shore, no cliffs, no comforting lines of the cove—just the vague smudge of cloud and sea meeting, the compass jittering, the chartplotter dark because he didn’t touch it or doesn’t know how. We’re far. I don’t even know which way home is without my phone, without maps, without data—without my men.
My eyes burn. My wrist throbs in waves, hot-cold-hot, keeping time with the engine. He fixes his stare on the water like he can will it into telling him what to do next, like the ocean cares.
Am I going to get out of here alive?