by Amber Lynn
The connections in those two states made it clear to her heading west was out of the question. With Connor’s safety on the line, she couldn’t do the expected.
As she thought about if and how to answer the man, Connor worked his way in front of Willow to her other leg. The tiny boy hadn’t served as much of a buffer between her and the man, but his movement left her right side almost chilly.
Trying to disprove his observation, Willow took a deep breath and turned to look the man in his eyes. Her brain instantly cursed the part of it that told her to be brave. There was a reason it stopped her from focusing above his lips. Her lungs froze again as she stared at the dark eyes looking back at her. She fell way too easily into the rich chocolate.
Connor pulled on her jeans to snap her out of the trance that rooted her in place. Looking down at him and the fear filling his blue eyes reminded her they needed to get out of there.
“We have to go,” Willow said as she turned away from the man and grabbed a random box of cereal to throw in the cart. Connor would just have to deal with not having marshmallows for a week.
She pushed the cart and walked awkwardly with Connor holding strong against her leg. It wasn’t quite the same as what she imagined a full-length cast would be, but that was only because his arms were wrapped below her knee.
“Well, maybe I’ll see you guys around. It is a small town, after all.”
The words relayed nice enough, and the man made no move to follow them, but Willow felt there was a threat in them. Not in the sense that she’d find herself locked in his basement for fifteen years. There was something else in his voice beyond her understanding.
Her life of seclusion didn’t prepare her for whoever the man was. She’d watched movies over the years, and even thought she had crushes on some of the actors. She didn’t know if it was seeing a man built like an ancient god in person or he was just so much more than anyone she’d seen before that caused an unease in her stomach.
Whatever it was, she had to get away from him. And she didn’t care if it looked like she was running like a fire nipped at her heels. For all she knew, it did.
Chapter 2
Brayden watched as his pass sailed right by his teammate and into the waiting stick of an opponent turning up the ice. His frustrations over playing a piss-poor game came to a head as he cursed and skated backwards to try to get in a defensive position.
“Damnit.”
As far as curses, it ranked on the minor side and didn't begin to punctuate how much he wanted to hit something. If there was even half a chance he thought someone on either team would throw their gloves and let him vent some of the steam bubbling up inside of him, he wouldn't hesitate. Even if it meant fighting someone on his own team.
With ten seconds left in the game, no one was stupid enough to play into his chirping. As it was, even his taunts had been half-assed all night.
The guy who stole the puck wound his stick back from the blue line and let a last second shot go. Brayden figured Glenn could handle the shot from his position just inside the crease, but he went ahead and slid in front of the shot to block it. It was probably the only play he'd made all night that worked out as he expected.
And damn did it hurt. Kristenson had a wicked slapper, which Brayden remembered a little too late.
As the buzzer ending the game sounded, Brayden let his body relax on the ice for a second before getting up to his feet. All he wanted to do was go home, to his house eighty miles away, not his apartment in the city. Sadly, an early morning practice, which he'd made pretty clear he needed based on his performance, would keep him from making the drive. By the time he got out of the arena and drove over to Martinsburg, he'd have to turn around and come back. Since his house was a little farther west, getting back before the coach tore him a new one was impossible.
“Dude, you feeling okay?” Trevor asked as they skated over to the bench.
Trevor Hilton was the linemate Brayden had attempted passing to. If it was anyone else on the team, Brayden would've thought the look in the man's greenish, bluish eyes was pity. Having shared a living space with Trevor many times over their years together on the team, Brayden knew his friend was concerned.
Brayden stepped through the opening on the bench and made his way down the tunnel to the locker room without responding. As he went, he high-fived some of the staff and his teammates hanging around in the hall. They'd actually won the game, which did little to help his mood.
He couldn't shake the idea that he'd made a mistake the past weekend. It was Tuesday night, three days after seeing a woman and kid in the grocery store who clearly needed some kind of help, yet he'd let them walk away. Walk was sort of a generous description, because the woman practically ran down the aisle to get away from him.
He could understand her being a little intimidated. He was twice the size of her and didn't have the friendliest mug, but women didn't cower and run from him. And it wasn't just her. Kids, especially ones back home, knew who he was and clamored for his attention. The scrawny boy with her acted like Brayden would eat him for lunch.
The whole encounter left him feeling irritated. Not because of their reactions, but because of his. He knew they weren't from around Hedgesville. He knew everyone in his hometown, and he'd never seen either of them. Being newcomers wasn't a big deal, but the way they acted like they were abused in some way was.
Brayden had missed so many signs that his sister's ex-husband liked to use his hands to get his points across. He didn't think he was just reading into the woman's situation because of that. It wasn't like he ran around studying women to see if they were in abusive relationships. But it was clear something terrified that woman. It didn't help matters that her amethyst eyes took Brayden’s breath away when she'd finally graced him with her attention.
She was beautiful, even with the small scar he'd noticed on her face. The scar added another checkmark to the idea someone had hurt or was hurting her. Brayden didn't know what dickhead hurt her, but he'd worked himself up enough that he knew he had to do something about it. He just had to find her.
“Dude, seriously. Should I call a doc over? I know that puck hit you in the gut, but I'm starting to wonder if you banged your head on the ice or something.”
Trevor's voice managed to break through the chaos rambling around in Brayden’s head. On autopilot, he'd managed to get to his stall and had already shed his jersey.
Brayden sat down in front of his space and ran his hands down his face. He needed to get in the shower ASAP to see if the hot water could work any of the knots in his shoulders out. He didn't think it'd help clear his head, but he'd settle for some of the physical tension easing out of him.
“I don't need a doctor. I'm just in a funk that hopefully a good night's sleep will help.”
Brayden wasn't known for lying, but he really didn't want to talk about it. Judging by the way Trevor's eyes narrowed, the subject wasn't dropping anytime soon.
“It's about a woman, okay?”
Brayden hoped that concept would be enough to get Trevor to shut his mouth until they were alone. His friend knew he didn't like talking about personal matters in the locker room.
“You're joking.”
Trevor sat down next to him and didn't hide a new wave of concern in his eyes. His buddy knew how to make him feel like the biggest sad sap in the world. It’d been six months since his fiancé took off because she was tired of playing second fiddle to his sister’s “problems.” Like it was Suzy’s fault her asshole of a husband beat her.
Megan had given him an ultimatum. It was either focus on their wedding or there wouldn’t be one. Brayden had thought he loved her, but that fizzled the second the words left her mouth.
“It’s not like that. You know I’m a monk.” Brayden said the last word under his breath.
Too many of the guys heard his emphatic swearing off of women. The nickname Monk quickly followed, and Brayden instantly wanted to get rid of it. Thankfully, the rest of the room wa
s celebrating and coming down from the excitement of the win.
The season was still early, but they’d won three games in a row. After choking at the end of the previous season, stringing together some wins was exactly what they needed. Brayden wished he could jump right in and enjoy it like everyone else.
“I know you tell yourself that, but we both know that wasn’t ever going to last forever. What’s her name?”
Trevor’s eyebrows raised suggestively. He couldn’t be more off the mark, but Brayden didn’t have the heart to tell his friend his heart was well and truly walled up, then secured with the biggest chain and lock possible. Trevor hated to admit it, but he was a romantic.
“I think you missed the part when I said it’s not like that. And, I have no idea, as far as her name. How about we talk about this during lunch tomorrow?”
Sighing, Trevor stripped his jersey off to reveal his pads. He looked slightly annoyed as he started removing them as well.
“Is this lunch anywhere near my place? Or is it in the middle of bum fuck Egypt West Virginia?”
Brayden smiled. If location was Trevor's only issue where the conversation stood, he was getting by easy. Sometimes his friend understood he needed space. Other times, Brayden cursed the fact they were practically brothers.
“I'm heading west after practice tomorrow. Come on. You know you love Rachel's cooking.”
For an adventurous foodie, or really any foodie, the grub they served at Rachel's Diner wasn't up to par with refined palates. Brayden had been eating there since he was a kid, so in his eyes there wasn't finer food around. Trevor wasn't exactly a foodie, but he always turned up his nose when Brayden got restaurant choice.
“There are five at least four-star restaurants within six blocks of your apartment. I don't get the four-hour round-trip drive for a greasy burger.”
Knowing Trevor grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, Brayden knew his friend didn't understand the small-town love Brayden wore on his sleeve. He could cut it in the city, but it was nothing like being in a place where you knew everyone. Well, at least almost everyone.
That was the real reason he was rushing back so soon. Thursday, they had to head up to Philly for a game, and then Saturday they were flying down to Florida. If he didn't get the trip home out of the way, it would be Sunday before he had any answers. Brayden knew that those extra days could mean the difference between life and death. A shiver rippled through him as the thought registered.
As it was, he hoped it wasn't already too late.
Chapter 3
Willow didn’t remember what it was like to feel at home. Being ripped away from her family at ten and kept in a basement for fifteen years sort of skewed her views on a normal home life. Even before she was kidnapped, she knew “normal” was never part of her life.
At ten, she was the youngest student in her advanced placement classes. She was already taking college science courses but hadn’t totally skipped high school. She could have, easily, but she decided to hang out for a couple of years to get used to being around students much older than her. Actually, that part wasn’t her decision. Her parents decided their brainiac daughter shouldn’t head straight to college.
The choice had been stupid in her mind back then, and Willow’s opinion on the matter didn’t change over the years. If her parents would have only let her skip the eleventh grade, maybe her path wouldn’t have crossed with the man she refused to think of by name. It terrified her to think that just letting it pass through her thoughts could conjure him up.
He wasn’t magic, so it was foolish to think it. He was just a man, driven by fear and wealth.
She hoped to never see either of her captors again. Of course, escaping with their kid in tow wasn’t the best way to make sure they wouldn’t come after her. But Willow couldn’t leave Connor alone with those monsters.
It wasn’t like they wanted him. He was their flesh and blood, and yet, they treated him like he was nothing more than an inconvenience. One drunken night celebrating something Willow accomplished created a child, and they couldn’t be bothered with him.
That left Willow to look after him, making sure he was fed and didn’t sit around in dirty diapers. She’d been lucky that her refusal to do anymore experiments until formula and diapers were bought hadn’t backfired. She worried they would just take Connor away, set him up for adoption or maybe even kill him. As far as she knew, no one else knew about him. She’d named him, and he’d never once been out of the house.
Thankfully, they saw him as more motivation for her to continue her work. Work she would undoubtedly have been stuck doing until the day either they or she died if she hadn’t run away. Work she’d been focused on almost twenty-four-seven since she was ten-years-old.
The first few months or so was spent studying everything thrown at her about biochemistry. There were people far-more qualified than her to kidnap and force into all the research. People who had real degrees and worked making drugs on a daily basis. They weren’t as pliable as a ten-year-old, though.
Willow found the cure she was tasked with in less than a year after she understood what they wanted. A part of her thought they’d let her go once she found something to put the cancer in remission. At the time, she still missed her family. She’d always be an outsider among her parents and sister, but they at least pretended to love her. She was fairly certain they did somewhere deep down, maybe, but over a decade away skewed her opinion on everything.
The only thing she knew was that she’d die to protect Connor. She couldn’t do that locked up. Running back to the family she only vaguely remembered wouldn’t help either.
For now, that meant hiding out somewhere no one would think to look for them. Looking around the small apartment she’d been able to rent above the diner she worked at, it neither felt like home nor safe, but it would do.
At least it came furnished. Connor was fast asleep on the couch after spending most of the day tucked in the back corner of the kitchen downstairs. Their living arrangements back in Austin weren’t top-of-the-line by any stretch of the imagination, but Willow knew the floral couch that felt almost like velvet to the touch was probably fifty years old. It doubled as their bed, which was the only way a bed would fit in the tight quarters.
Aside from the couch/bed, there was a small kitchen, basically just a sink, fridge and microwave, and a bathroom. The place was definitely meant for only one inhabitant, but two, one a child and the other practically the size of a child, fit fine.
A knock on the door brought Willow out of her thoughts. Panic raced through her as worst-case scenarios played out. Was it him? She never worried about his wife as much as she feared him showing up for her.
The wife was just as complacent in all his crimes, but he was the one who kidnapped her and punished her. He would kill her if he found her, and he could very well be standing outside the door.
Fear froze her in place until the knock sounded again. A scream sat on the tip of her tongue, but years of training kept it in. There wasn’t a phone in the apartment, not that she could call anyone for help. No one in town could save her if it was him on the other side of the door.
Her chest tightened as Connor stirred. The apartment didn’t even have a closet to hide him in. The only place for him to hide was under the kitchen sink, or maybe somehow tucked in the hide-a-bed. Willow’s thoughts were leaning towards the crazy side if that was one of the options.
The scary fact was that she seriously wondered if it would work. If it wasn’t her captor at the door, finding realistic places to hide Connor made it to the top of her list of things to do. She should have already planned things like that out but getting settled and trying to blend in had taken most of her brainpower. A sad fact when she was used to spending the majority of her days analyzing compounds and their effect on the human body.
“Laura, are you in there?”
Connor bolted up from the couch and stared at the door, almost like he could see the woman standing on the other side
. Willow hated the fear etched in the boy’s eyes. He was only four. For God’s sake, someone knocking on the door shouldn’t scare years off his life.
“Coming,” Willow said as she rubbed a hand through Connor’s hair and stood.
She was getting better about answering to the name she’d made up for herself. As far as anyone in town knew, she was Laura Newman, and Connor was her son Peter. She didn’t know whether her captors even knew she’d named Connor, but she couldn’t chance anyone finding out either of their names.
Smoothing down her apron, something she hadn’t taken off since her shift ended over an hour ago, Willow took a deep breath. It did nothing to calm her nerves, even knowing the person on the other side of the door was her boss. Rachel didn’t show up often at her doorstep, but she had knocked once before to check on things.
The woman, who was only a few years older than Willow, always seemed to have a smile on her face. That smile was waiting as Willow opened the door and saw her boss with her own apron still on. The restaurant was open for another hour, and Rachel always closed the place down.
“There you are.”
Rachel’s smile faltered slightly as she took in Willow’s full appearance in a quick sweep with her eyes. Willow knew the other woman worried about her, but it shouldn’t have been a shock to see her still dressed for work. She couldn’t know that Willow only had two pairs of jeans and four shirts to go with them.
Clothing wasn’t important to her, and she wore whatever was handy, or whatever she happened to be wearing probably a little longer more than the normal person. Most people would’ve taken the apron off the second they walked out of the restaurant, but Willow found it helped keep her few pieces of clothing clean-ish a little longer.
“Here I am,” Willow replied when Rachel didn’t immediately say anything.
Willow hated having to drive a conversation. Her general speaking and interaction skills were a little stunted. Most of what she knew about being around other people came from what she watched on a small television she was allowed in her room when she made a breakthrough.
