Thirteen

by Scarlett Finn

  “No shouting,” he said, lowering his volume again. “I’m sorry, Sweet… I love you. You’re ok, ok? No one here is going to hurt you… You’re safe.”

  “Not safe,” she said. “Never safe… Never careful…”

  “Oak,” Taylor said, finally realizing that something big was happening, something worse than she’d probably thought. “Oakley, I’m scared. What’s going on?”

  Anxiety welled to new heights. Evie off her game was bad enough, dealing with an afraid Taylor too might be more than he could handle. “You’re ok, Tay,” he said, worrying about how he’d appease both women at once. “Just be quiet and stay there, ok?”

  “But what’s wrong with Evie, she’s like… she’s not even here.”

  He understood what Taylor meant, Evie was here, but it was like she was phased out of the moment. Her concentration on the floor was absolute, yet, something flickered around her; a mixture of pain and concern and terror all at once.

  “Evie, baby,” he said, taking some more careful steps. “You remember our Sundays? How you come to my place first thing and we spend the morning in bed? How I cook you lunch and you reorganize my closets? You remember that first morning you came over? When you called me and said you were outside my door? That was a dream for me, Sweet, having you there, with me, waking up with you.” Her head began to shake slowly like she couldn’t remember, like he was talking about someone else or a forgotten dream. Drips fell from her chin onto the floor; she was still crying. “You know I love you. I told you that weeks ago. I told you when we were in your hotel room, remember? When you showed me how you prepare for… everything. When I told you Pavlov needed Bell, do you remember?”

  “Being afraid,” she whispered. “I remember being afraid.”

  That wasn’t what he wanted to hear; it pained him. But at least she was responding, that was progress. “Not there,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “Not in that room. You asked me to hurt you and I couldn’t, do you remember, Sweet? I promised you that I would never hurt you and I promise you, I won’t—”

  “Never… never be hurt.”

  It didn’t even occur to Oak to think about stopping her hand from sliding into the purse that was hanging across her body on a long strap. He was too busy concentrating on getting closer. He was almost there, just six feet away and he could almost—

  Her hand emerged from her bag and what he saw in it halted him in his tracks. Evie extended her arm, holding a small black pistol tight in her hand, aiming it toward him and Ethan who was probably somewhere behind him.

  Taylor screamed, and Ethan cursed, but the exclamation only made Evie twist to grab Taylor, holding her against her side while she aimed the weapon.

  “He won’t hurt us. I won’t let him hurt us,” Evie said and the venom in her eyes was enough to make him worry that she might just pull that trigger.

  “No!” Taylor screamed out. “No, Evie! Please! Oakley!”

  “It’s ok,” he said and let his hands rise in surrender. “We’re not going to get hurt. No one’s going to get hurt… Evie, honey, look at me, baby. Do you want to hurt me?”

  There was a shake in her hand, but not enough that she wouldn’t hit something, or someone, if she pulled the trigger. But her head shook too, slowly, freeing more tears from her face.

  “Oh,” she whispered.

  Good, he felt like he was getting her back. But that weapon was still there between them. “What do you want? Do you want me to get Ethan out of here?”

  He wasn’t wild about the idea of leaving Taylor alone with Evie. His sister had no clue what was going on, or why Evie was acting this way. Taylor might get angry and lash out, but he was confident that Evie wouldn’t hurt Taylor. This was all about protecting her.

  “I want…” Evie said and shook the gun at him. But in the moment her eyes actually met his, something else shimmered across them. “I want… Oakley…”

  When her voice cracked, her hand loosened, and he was sure that she was going to drop the gun.

  Except Ethan chose that moment to bluster. “I’m calling the cops,” he declared, and Taylor yelped.

  Evie’s arm strengthened again.

  “You move a goddamn muscle and I’ll shoot you myself,” Oak growled over his shoulder at Ethan.

  “Don’t,” Taylor said. “Ethan, don’t move.”

  His sister was scared, there was no way he could deny that. But, she trusted him, Oak had never felt the weight of that trust more than he did now. “Thirteen, let Taylor go,” he murmured. “Let the asshole go… Let’s you and me talk about this.”

  “I want to protect her,” Evie said. “We have to protect her.”

  Smiling at her wasn’t as easy now as it was on other days, but he did his best. “We will, Sweet. We’re an amazing team. You and me have done so much to protect her already… we love her and she loves us. We’re family.”

  “I love her,” Ethan declared.

  Evie’s frown deepened. “You hurt her. You’re an asshole who doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.”

  “But you know I would never hurt her,” Oak said. The last thing they needed was Evie to focus on the guy whose appearance had caused all this. “You know I’d protect both of you with my life… don’t you?”

  “Oh,” she murmured.

  “That’s right,” he said, edging nearer. “Your Oh… Now let her go, Sweet… Please, put the gun down and let her go.”

  The gun bobbed down once, then rose, but it lowered again. Her arm must have loosened from Taylor too because his sister pushed away from Evie, inadvertently thrusting her onto the couch.

  Taylor ran to him, into his arms, but he only soothed her for a second before urging her away. “Go into the bedroom,” he said. “Go in there and wait. I love you.”

  “Oak, I—”

  “Go, Tay!”

  Taylor didn’t say anything else, just turned and fled. When the door closed he could be assured that she was safe, but Evie wasn’t as secure. Sitting on the edge of the couch with the gun in her hands, she was just… staring at it.

  Before he could think about soothing his girl, he had to get rid of the other problem.

  Spinning around, he grabbed Ethan’s shirt in both hands to pull him close. “You are going to fuck off out of here and never come back. If you think about contacting my sister again or coming near her, we’ll do a helluva lot more than ruin your finances and your relationship.”

  Ethan mouthed for a moment, lost in shock of his own. “You… you did—”

  “That’s right, I fucking did,” Oak said, thrusting him away. “This is your last chance to get the hell out of here. I wouldn’t mind taking you apart, so don’t give me the excuse…” Ethan began to back toward the door. “And this never happened, asshole. Think about telling a soul and we’ll have exactly the reason we need to bring you down!”

  Ethan fled, slamming the apartment door, leaving Oak alone with Evie. When he turned back around, she was still staring at the weapon in her hands.

  “Sometimes there’s pain that lives in us,” she whispered, somehow aware of him watching her. “I always thought I could make it go away, that I could make it move on… But sometimes it becomes such a part of us that without it… we’re nothing.”

  “Sweet, look at me.”

  “No,” she snapped and raised her attention to him as her hands trembled. But she curled her fingers around the butt of the gun; one slid over the trigger. “I love you, Oakley Orion.” She swallowed. “And I love Taylor so much…”

  Her voice drifted off in a squeal of pain that joined a sob when she looked at the bedroom door Taylor had used.

  “I know, baby, and she knows it. Don’t worry, we’ll—”

  “I always thought I would hurt you, but never like this,” she said, gritting her teeth.

  She shook the gun and squeezed her hand around the barrel.

  “It’s ok, flashbacks are normal after what you’ve been through.”

  He
figured that was all that could account for her sudden change in behavior. He’d read up about PTSD and spoken to Noel about it too. Sometimes the symptoms were disparate and infrequent, but they could be powerful.

  “Four years after?” she asked and shook her head.

  He hated to see her punish herself like this; he wanted to comfort her. Figuring she was herself again, he took a step toward her, but froze when she chambered a round.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I always thought my mother was selfish,” she murmured, her voice so quiet that he strained to hear it and with her focus on the gun, he couldn’t even see her lips. “I thought that she took her own life and abandoned me… But I see now, it wasn’t that… she did it because she didn’t want to be this. She knew that there are some pains we’re not meant to conquer, and losing Beth… We were never supposed to get over that.”

  Fear made his throat dry. He had no awareness of his heart, of what his body was doing because ice-cold terror numbed all of him. “Sweet, I want you to put the gun down, ok? Please, Thirteen, do it for me… We’ll get through this. We’ll—”

  “I promised you I would never hurt myself,” she said, keeping one hand on the butt as the other stroked the barrel. “But I never thought of what I’d do if I hurt you… Losing Beth was agony. Losing my mother was devastating. But if I lost you… or Taylor—”

  “You’re not going to lose either of us. It was a momentary blip. No one’s hurt. No one’s—”

  “She’ll never forgive me,” she said, her gaze flicking to the bedroom.

  “She will,” he said. “She’ll understand. Please, Sweet, just—”

  “No,” she said and shot to her feet. “I knew I wasn’t ready. I should never have started this. I should never have started anything with you.”

  “You told me you wouldn’t break up with me again,” he said.

  But she was shaking her head. “This is for your own good, Oakley. This isn’t a game. I’m not pushing you away or trying to hurt you to make you hate me. This is me calm and rational telling you, we’re through… over… forever this time.”

  She tried to walk past him, but he got in her way. “You think it’s going to be that easy? That I’ll let you go out there on your own while you’re upset like this? That’s not what family does.”

  “Family doesn’t hurt each other,” she said. “They don’t threaten and scare each other… I’m not your family… I never was… I never should have let myself believe I could be. Normal isn’t for screwed up people like me.”

  “No,” he growled because he couldn’t let her disappear, not like this. “You’re upset. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  The loaded gun was still in her hand, and as much as he wanted to touch her, he feared that any sudden movement might make her tense and fire the gun. “Shit, Evie… I love you. I can’t lose you.” But that didn’t influence her. Her gaze was so cool, it was icy. Much like he’d seen in Washington before she told him about Beth, she switched off all emotion in lieu of nothing but stark anger. “Damnit! Think of Tay! She’s right through that door! What do you want me to tell her?” Evie sidestepped past him and began to stride to the front door. “Evie! Where are you going?”

  Turning as she got to the door, fresh tears were streaming down her face, but her detached expression didn’t match that involuntary show of emotion.

  “To save your life, Oakley Orion… To save you from me.”

  She went out and closed the door, locking it behind her. Oak couldn’t focus, his breath was all he could hear and even to his ears it seemed shallow and disconnected. Evie was… where was she going?

  Fired by determination, he headed for the door, starting slow and picking up speed until he got there and tried the handle. But, the thing didn’t give.

  “Taylor!” he called. “Taylor!”

  Though it wasn’t smart to use such an urgent tone when his sister was probably still afraid, he couldn’t think about anything except the panic coursing through him.

  “Oak?”

  Whipping around, he saw her meek figure by the bedroom. Straightening an arm in a snap, he pointed to the door. “The key… I need to get the fuck out of here and it’s locked.”

  Rushing to the couch, Taylor searched her clutch that was strewn there. But, the moment he noticed it was open, his heart sank. Evie must have slipped her hand inside and taken the key, which would explain how she’d managed to lock it again.

  With wet eyes, Taylor blinked up at him, her hand still in the purse. “It’s not here. Oak, what’s going on?”

  “Spares,” he said, dropping to his haunches to grab her shoulders. “I need a spare. We need to get to Evie.”

  When Taylor shook her head, some tears skittered down her face. “I… I don’t have any spares. Oak, please tell me, what’s wrong with Evie?”

  His sister fell forward into his arms and began to sob.

  He’d have busted down the door if he could, but the confused Taylor was already scared enough, so he tried to maintain calm while soothing her and making plans to call a locksmith. Except he already knew that by the time the tradesman got there to do his thing, Evie would be long gone.

  From the moment they’d gotten Taylor’s apartment door open, Oak had been trying to track Evie down. But, he couldn’t find her. Oak didn’t see Evie the next day, or the next. A form of hope came when her final personnel report was emailed to him. He tried to respond to it, but got a returned message stating that the email address no longer existed.

  He called Noel, but the therapist shut him down by saying he couldn’t discuss patients. All he offered was an assurance that he’d spoken to Evie and that he was sure she was not a danger to herself, which wasn’t exactly a comfort. That’s all Noel would say. Apparently, Oak had been shut out.

  Evie’s apartment was vacated. Her website shut down. She was just… gone.

  twenty-eight

  FOUR MONTHS LATER

  Walking in to the Washington hotel suite made Oak feel sick.

  Taylor, Ian, and Kody weren’t far behind him and they were all talking about the weekend ahead. This convention was different from the other they’d been to, smaller and only for commercial dating providers. He’d almost made his excuses and decided not to stay in this particular hotel, in this particular suite.

  But Taylor, as always, stepped up and slapped him, telling him that they’d always been loyal to this hotel and they were treated well, so they had to stay. She’d also reminded him that they had an account with the chain. They wouldn’t want to upset the relationship, or it would have a domino effect on other areas of the business.

  So, there he was, in the room he’d first kissed Evie. The room where she’d told him the truth about Beth. The room where he’d first spent the night with her. The couch that was there in the middle of the room had probably been cleaned, but somehow, he was sure he could still smell her in the air.

  “Let’s make coffee and get started,” Taylor said.

  The guys settled themselves in the armchairs, leaving him with nowhere to go except onto the couch he usually sat on… the one he’d shared with Evie.

  Taylor had been a rock and shown real resilience since the night they’d lost Evie. It didn’t matter that he knew she was alive, he still felt like he’d lost a part of himself. A part of himself had died that night.

  He should have been able to help her. If he loved her, he should have been able to pull her out. To hold her up. To be the man she needed him to be.

  At first, he’d felt guilty about telling Taylor the truth. He didn’t go into details about things Evie had shared in therapy sessions, but he did tell his sister the facts. She’d cried. Broken her heart right there in front of him and begged him to find a way to help Evie.

  Evie had thought that Taylor would never forgive her, when in fact Taylor understood the trauma completely. Perhaps because of their relationship, Taylor understood what it would be to not only lose him, but to see him brutal
ized and subjected to torture.

  But, despite all their best efforts, he hadn’t been able to find Evie. She’d moved out of state, that much was clear, and he’d even tried putting private investigators on Noel, but from what he could tell, Evie had cut all ties with the therapist too. She didn’t want to be found and with no close relatives, he had no one he could appeal to for information.

  “Ok, that leads us on to…” Taylor said.

  The men groaned, which pulled Oak out of his funk. “What?” he asked, wondering why everyone was so grumpy all of a sudden.

  Taylor leaned over to show him the next item on the agenda. The last item. The item that had been on every agenda for a month and he’d ducked it every time.

  “A new HR manager,” Taylor said.

  “Why do you even bring this up?” he asked. “You know I’m not ready to—”

  “I bring it up because the guys and I have put it to a vote and we’ve decided to hire someone.”

  “What the hell?” he asked. Was it something about this damn hotel that made everyone think he was suddenly senile? “I said no new manager, didn’t I? Heather left a month ago. We have time to—”

  “We need someone,” she said. “We’re still floundering since the report…”

  The report was what everyone had taken to calling Evie’s report because they didn’t want to say her name in front of him.

  “We’re working through it,” he mumbled and felt himself begin to withdraw.

  “Yes, the report is great,” Taylor said. “You know that we were all impressed, but we need a strong hand to keep an eye on things in that department or we’ll end up in the same position all over again. You read the conclusions and the way that Evie summed up complacency.”

  Just the sound of her name made him look up to see both Ian and Kody were braced as if he might flip out, and hey, he just might. It seemed to be what they were all expecting, and, in this case, he didn’t mind giving the people what they wanted.