Reckoning (Sacrifical Duet Book 1)

by Riley Ashby

  After your birthday, I came so close to telling you everything. I’m so sorry, baby girl. Please forgive me. Every time I tried to speak about what happened, the weight of all those years came crashing down on me, and I couldn’t breathe. Your father wanted to move, but I knew he would find us no matter what. All I could do was pray that he would forget. I see now how horribly, horribly naïve I was.

  I hope Meyer gives you this note. I hope you are holding onto your contagious optimism. I hope … God, I hope he hasn’t hurt you. The Meyer I knew was sensitive and kind, but as I said, that was a long time ago.

  I love you so much. You are and always have been the light of my life. You helped me heal from years of abuse and oppression. And I believe that someday I will hold you in my arms again. I’ll walk you down the aisle as you wed your love; I’ll hold your child and shower him or her with more love than you can possibly imagine.

  We are working on everything we can to find you and bring you home. I won’t stop until we’re together again.

  With all my love and more, your mother

  I stared at the final words in shock. My father wasn’t my biological father. I’d never known my grandparents not because they’d passed on, but because we were hiding. And my mother … my mother had been kidnapped and raped as a teenager, and imprisoned for years. I waited for the tears to come, but they didn’t. It wasn’t sadness or grief I felt, it was red-hot anger.

  I was fucking furious with Meyer.

  All this time, he’d made my mother out to have abandoned him, running out on her obligations. In reality, she was just trying to survive. He had been eight when she left—surely, he could have seen something was wrong! I crumpled the paper in my hand but then immediately smoothed it back out, not wanting to mar my mother’s handwriting. No, he needed to answer for this. I wasn’t going to let him get away with twisting the truth anymore. If he refused to see reality, I would hold his eyes open until he couldn’t look away.

  My footsteps sounded loudly on the hard floors, soles smacking against wood as I hunted down my captor in his own house.

  “Meyer!” I yelled. “Come here!” I wasn’t going to let him fuck with my head anymore. Any inkling that my mother was in the wrong or that I somehow deserved even a fraction of what was being done to me was gone. Conrad was a worse man than I had ever thought possible. Where was Meyer’s mother? Someone else he’d kept captive for years before he grew tired of her, or killed when she tried to escape? And all this time, he’d tried to make me feel bad.

  “Where the hell are—”

  I came up short, walking into the sitting room. I’d never spent much time in here, but Meyer looked at home now in front of a roaring fire, legs crossed at the knee and studying a piece of paper identical to the one I now held in my hand. At home except for the shake of the paper as he read it one final time before crumpling it into a ball.

  “What do you want, Madeline.” His tone was deadpan, no real question in his voice.

  I set my feet on the floor gently as I approached, trying not to disturb the silence that suddenly felt too precious to shatter.

  “What did it say?”

  “I will die before I tell you.”

  I sank to my knees before him, set my letter to the side, and placed a hand on his leg. He laughed out loud.

  “You said you’d never get on your knees before me, yet here we are.”

  I wanted to slap him, but he was hiding so much pain. He’d been drowning in it for so long, and it was only when his hand nearly slipped below the surface that I finally noticed. What did my mother want to say to him? “Meyer, please st—please talk to me.”

  “What is there to say, Madeline?” He dragged his hand down his face and then threw the paper into the fire before him, eyes glowing in the flames. “Things will always be the same. We are who we are. No letter is going to change that.”

  God, he was insufferable. I’d seen the man break down twice in twenty-four hours, but he still wouldn’t open up to me.

  He picked up a glass from the table next to his chair, drinking deeply from the amber liquid. I doubted he was supposed to be drinking again, but it didn’t seem wise to say so. My heart was rubber, bouncing around my chest uncontrollably.

  “Why did my mom have to come visit you right before my sixteenth birthday?”

  He leaned forward on his elbows and exhaled heavily through his nose, but he answered without hesitation. He stared into the fire as she spoke. It had to be burning his retinas away. “I tried to kill myself. The first time. Anita found me bleeding out in the bathtub and called an ambulance, but no one rode with me to the hospital. I don’t know how Eva found out what I’d done, but when I woke up, she was sitting beside me. I’m sure Conrad was monitoring me while I was admitted, even if he never came to see me himself. The day they released me to go home, he told me to pack a bag because we had to go to Iowa.”

  So it was true. My mother’s heart had broken for her other child, the one she left behind. And when she tried to comfort him, he ended up throwing it in her face. “Didn’t you fight him? Try to talk him out of it?”

  He snorted. “Of course not. I’d been released into his care. I had no autonomy while under psychiatric supervision. He threatened to have me institutionalized if I didn’t come along. He barely saw me as human as it was, so it wouldn’t have been that much of a stretch. I didn’t know about you, of course, but he must have.” His tongue darted out to run across his lower lip. “He’d seemed so excited. He must have already decided what he was going to do.” One of his cheeks moved as he gnawed on the inside of his mouth. “I built this house after that. It was the only way I could get distance. There was nowhere else for me to go.”

  I picked up his free hand and turned it in mine, running my fingers over his wrist. He barely had a scar, but when I looked, I could see a faint line over his pulse point stretching up to his elbow. It was nearly invisible next to the deeper scar on top of his arm, one that had never healed as well for some reason.

  “What’s this one from?” I touched the other scar, running my hand over the bump that spanned the length of his forearm. He shook off my hand.

  “That’s a story for another time.”

  I took the glass from his hand and set it to the side, looking at his other wrist. There it was again, the faint scar running up his arm and disappearing beneath the rolled-up sleeve. I placed my finger just over his pulse, the place where his blood must have poured from, and looked up to find him watching me.

  “And you did it again? The night I came here?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Fucking Joshua. He took my pills after that, but I snuck them back.” He pumped his fist with a sardonic smile. “Still didn’t fucking work.”

  I bit my lip before asking the next question. “Why did you change … I mean, this time, why did you use pills?”

  He paused before answering this time. Using his free hand to finger a lock of my hair, he finally turned to meet my eyes. “I didn’t want you to have to see all that blood.”

  I sighed and rose to my feet with him following me. We didn’t move, just stared at each other, the fire heating my back, and his face illuminated before me. I reached up to his face, skin dewy from the warm fire, but somehow still as cool as it always was.

  “You see? We can always change,” I whispered.

  “I’ve never wanted to.” He put his hands on my side, thumbs stroking my breasts through my shirt. “Before. I never wanted to before.”

  “And now?” I could smell his whiskey.

  “I still don’t think it’s possible.”

  “We’re standing like this, aren’t we?”

  His forehead pressed against mine, both our breaths coming faster. My eyes burned.

  “And what do you think that means?” His lips moved to my forehead. “Do you think it even matters?”

  “It matters to me,” I whispered, and then I kissed him.

  I thought he would crush me with his desire, given the way he�
�d attacked me previously, but he didn’t move for several long seconds. When my tongue stole out to lick his lips, he woke up. His hands reached up to cup my face as he opened his mouth, plunging his tongue past my barely parted lips to claim me. The way he walked me backward once more to press me against the wall with his body became more possessive than anything he had ever done before—even his attempt to seduce me in the shower.

  My own breath caught, surprised by his surety even though I had been so confident in it moments before. One hand floated to my lower back, his wide palm pressing against my skin just above the waist of my jeans and pulling me tighter against him. Our tongues danced with a fury that betrayed my own conflicted feelings, and his need to dominate the situation that was being overtaken by his craving for me. I let one of my own hands wander higher, burying my fingers in perfect golden hair that was as soft as it looked.

  Both hands were on my waist, sliding lower until they dipped into my back pockets and squeezed my ass hungrily. I groaned and tugged his hair harder, my other hand now gripping the back of his neck. I could feel his length pressing against me, growing steadily with each passing moment and each subsequent kiss. I was completely lost, unaware of the reason I had been so angry with him moments before. He was crushing me, both with his body and the force of his emotions I could feel pouring into me. This was as difficult for him as it was for me. Even now, I knew. He wasn’t just looking to mark his territory or claim me like a trophy. He felt something for me beyond ownership.

  We burst apart when he bit my lip and looked at each other in the flickering light. His face was flushed, warm for once, lips swollen where I had nipped at them as I let my guard drop. His finger came to my face, brushing across my lip, and when he pulled it away, there was a speck of red on his skin. He never broke eye contact as he brought his thumb to his mouth and licked away my blood.

  “Go to bed, Maddie. I want to be alone.”

  I clutched his shirt. “You shouldn’t be. It’s not safe for you.” It was too scary to leave him alone again, especially when he’d been drinking. Did he have a stash of pills? Would he go back to a razor?

  My thoughts scattered as his hand cupped the back of my neck, and he pulled me against him, lips landing on my forehead. “It’ll be all right. I won’t disappear.”

  I couldn’t make myself pull away. My pulse pounded in my eyelids; I wanted to kiss him again to rid my mouth of the taste of my blood. He wrapped my hair around his wrist and pulled my head back and to the side, kissing my neck.

  “This isn’t what you do when you’re trying to send someone away.”

  He tilted his head to press one cheek against mine. “I don’t really want you to go. I don’t want you to leave me ever again.”

  How could he be like this? So harsh and cold, angry at the entire world, and then turn so pliant in my hands. I wanted to hate him. I did hate him. But we shared so much more than I ever could have imagined. And beneath every incidence of animosity, I felt more and more connected to him, a primal pull between us that I couldn’t fight.

  “Go to bed.” His lips brushed my ear, but then he pushed me away and turned his back. “I’ll join you later.”

  That took some of the weight off my shoulders. He promised. I reached out to him, fingers brushing the back of his shirt as he stepped just out of reach. Like always.

  Back in the bedroom, I pondered what to do with the letter. Where could I keep this? Peering around the room, I ran into the closet and pulled down a pair of shoes that I’d never seen Meyer wear—they were coated with a fine layer of dust. I removed the shoe tree from the left and tucked my mother’s letter into it, then replaced everything and changed into my T-shirt and shorts before washing my face and climbing into bed.

  This was a turning point. It had to be. Somehow, my mother had gotten to him, and he’d been convinced to bring me this letter. He couldn’t be unaffected by this. If I could keep tonight’s feeling, wedge myself a little deeper between him and his father, maybe there was a chance to fracture them permanently. I just couldn’t let tonight slip.

  I lay awake for hours, counting the minutes until he joined me in bed, but he never came.

  Meyer

  I didn’t like to break promises. I hadn’t read Madeline’s letter, after all. So when I told her I’d join her later, I meant it. But it wasn’t later that night.

  Joshua came into the room after she left, shaking his head at the glass in my hand but pouring himself a drink all the same.

  “You could go yourself, you know. I don’t have to be the one who takes her.”

  I sucked in a breath, quelling the anger that rose in me at the thought of him taking her away. Only a day ago, I’d resigned myself to die, believing that killing myself was the best way to escape this madness and keep her safe.

  I’d had the same thought the night I brought her home, paralyzed with anxiety and darkness that had seeped too deeply into my soul to ever be washed out. The night I tried to kill myself so I wouldn’t have to go through the pain of hurting something so beautifully breakable.

  She was passed out on the floor of my bedroom, blood still leaking out the side of her mouth. I crouched next to her, checking that she was truly unconscious, then licked my finger and wiped away the stain. She didn’t deserve to be marked like that. And if she stayed with me, she’d only be hurt again.

  In hindsight, the mistake was texting Joshua. I didn’t have time to leave him proper instructions, so I shot off a message right as I started to take the pills. Take care of her. That was all it said. But I’d only downed half of what I’d planned to before he burst into the bathroom, shoving his fingers down my throat and forcing me to spill my guts into the toilet. I never even lost consciousness.

  And when I woke up in the morning from a fretful sleep, I had no choice but to hurt her.

  So I wrote the note to Joshua and kept it safe, only sneaking it into his jacket pocket when I knew it was time for me to go. This time, the wrench in the plan was Madeline.

  And in the end, none of it mattered.

  I cleared my throat. “We can’t leave. You said it yourself. He’d hunt us down even if it cost him everything.”

  “Then kill him.” Joshua looked at me as he said it, but I avoided his eyes. He’d proposed this before, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last time.

  “You’re a piece of shit. I should fire you.” I dropped into the chair and extended my legs, letting my feet warm in front of the fire. The taste of Maddie’s blood lingered on my tongue.

  He walked over and stopped in front of me, holding out his fist. I stared into the fire until all I could see was the flare burned into my retinas. Raising my hand, he dropped a nearly weightless pill into my palm. I swallowed it with the whiskey, and the last taste of her was finally washed away. He cleared his throat in bewilderment.

  “I should try to be healthy,” I grumbled, not wanting any more shit from him. I can’t take care of her if I’m dead.

  “No argument. I’m just surprised.” He dragged a chair across the floor and positioned it next to mine before finally settling with his drink, mimicking my pose as he stretched his legs. “Do you love her?”

  The glass paused millimeters from my lips; I closed my mouth and rested my mouth against my finger instead. I was suddenly too hot, and I leaned forward to turn off the gas. Immediately, the heat from the fireplace dissipated, and my body rejoiced in the cooler air. I sat back in my chair, downing my remaining liquor.

  “I don’t know what that word means.”

  His heavy exhale was the only sound in the room. He copied me, draining his own glass, then set it on the bar as he rose and buttoned his jacket. “Stop selling yourself short, Meyer. I’ve known you a long time. Any other woman would be gone by now. You’d have handed her to your father just to keep him from bothering you about her.” He stood beside my chair, too close for comfort, looming over me until I looked up at him. “He’s going to come for her no matter what you do. You know he never intended to
let you have her. Kill him or disappear. Those are your only options.” He left the room as silently as he had entered it.

  My fingernail pinged against the empty crystal as I sat alone. A bodyguard who only cared as long as I was paying him slept in one bedroom while a woman I’d sworn to destroy waited in another.

  Growing up, I was constantly reminded of how wholly my life was controlled by my father. I’d tried many times to extricate myself over the years. Misbehavior at school didn’t get me sent to boarding school as I’d hoped, only more lashes with a belt buckle. I submitted myself for the Major League draft the day of my eighteenth birthday, but Conrad had cornered me when he found out and beat me with my own bat, eventually breaking my arm. Any hope of a baseball career went down the drain with the snap of that bone. He still kept the bat in his house, stained with my blood, as if it was some trophy he’d used to defeat a monster.

  And now, was I willing to risk that much more just because Madeline had worked her way under my skin? No. Joshua was wrong; things would be fine if I just kept playing the game. If we disappeared, he’d hurt us both beyond what I could imagine. I had a better chance of keeping her safe right here. She’d have to learn to live like I did, sensing his moods and avoiding contact whenever possible, but at least we’d have each other. We’d survive as long as I could convince her this was better than running.

  Throwing my shirt to the floor, I dropped onto the couch and kicked my shoes across the room, then sent my belt to the carpet as well. I’d go climb into bed with her once I was sure she was asleep, when she couldn’t ask me anymore questions, and I would be too tired to peel off her clothes. As I closed my eyes, I tried to imagine we were somewhere else. Anywhere. As long as Conrad didn’t exist.

  *

  Sleep came for me before I could make the decision to go to my bed, and it was probably for the best. I would have gone after her in my dreams, and I was too vulnerable to go any further than kissing. Even in my despair, I understood that. I went to see her before leaving for work, dressing quietly in the dark before leaning over her in the bed and brushing my nose across her cheek.