Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost

by Dawson, Trish Marie

  On the night of Connor’s fifteenth birthday, his dad had been sober for six months. Connor snuck into the house hours after curfew, his head fuzzy from drink, and stumbled into his room. On his pillow was that tiny missing tooth resting on top of the money Connor had asked for to buy a guitar. He knew who had put it there. The sort of conflicted emotions he felt that night in his wasted state, still conscious enough to remember that beating, but also sober enough to understand how humbling the gift was, debilitated him. Should he thank his father, or hit him back for lying to him all those years? In the end, he decided to say nothing, as if the tooth had never been returned, because he had no idea how to respond without creating a shit storm he would for sure drown in.

  Years later, when Connor finally had the balls to talk about that day, his dad admitted he’d punched the tooth free, and found it that night after Connor had gone to bed. He held onto it as a reminder of what he’d done. A token of shame, he’d said. A tangible promise that he’d never hurt his son like that again. And he hadn’t.

  As Connor stood inside the doorway of the lodge, with Riley in front of him, and Ashlyn ten feet away, cuddling the baby to her chest, Connor felt that same ugly conflicted feeling in his heart as he had that night when he was fifteen. Like no matter what he did or said, a shit storm was coming to fuck him up. He would never disrespect Riley by appeasing Ashlyn’s demands, not to her face, but Connor knew from the glint in the feisty woman’s eyes, that he was skating on a dangerously thin line. How far Ashlyn would go, he didn’t want to find out. But in his gut, as he moved aside to let the rest of the group through the doorway, he realized with a sickening ache that he was prepared to hurt one of the women, for the greater good. The question he struggled with next was if he could live with himself after, or if she could.

  He watched Riley turn around and look at him, and the muscles in his face went slack. His eyes turned cold, he squared his shoulders, and set his mouth into an unreadable tight line. Slowly, he unzipped his coat and hung it on the rack by the door. Holding his breath as he did so, he turned around to face Ashlyn.

  “Hey, glad to see you guys survived the night without us,” he quipped. Though he smiled at Ashlyn, Connor was sure she could tell he spoke with his jaw locked, but she still smiled warmly back.

  “Well, we’re glad you made it back home,” she answered sweetly.

  He ignored the flinch Riley made next to him and sidestepped around her so he could cross the kitchen. “I’ll heat up some water for coffee or tea…or whatever,” he called over his shoulder as the group slowly began removing their wet and cold winter gear, dropping coats and boots in heaps by the door.

  Never did he look at Riley’s face. It would have killed him.

  RILEY

  Crushed. That’s what it felt like to watch the warm exchange between Connor and Ashlyn, and to see how well she had fit herself into his life, and Jacks’. Once she handed the baby over, she bustled about gathering towels, blankets, and sweatshirts from the small lodge store, and divvied out the supplies to each of us, me included, never losing her forged smile. The first time I saw her in the Ark’s detox tank, she was kissing him, and it was obvious while watching the way she walked around us, touching his arm here, brushing against his lower back there, that not much had changed. Connor had been claimed. While I wasn’t looking, while I was lost, while I was being raped and tortured in the mountains, while I was wandering in the cold and the snow, while I was recovering from death, she had taken him from me. And he had let her.

  To make matters more uncomfortable and confusing, Drake avoided me. He kept to one side of the room, moving as I moved, being careful to smile politely, but not so much that I’d approach him. So, I didn’t. Kris dragged me around the lower level of the building, explaining how they’d found it, and how they had fixed the place up. She showed me the storage room, their dwindling food supply, and listed off the things she’d done there over the last month, which honestly wasn’t much. Everywhere I walked, I tripped over the dog, who was afraid to leave my side. Tired, sore and coming to hate the hot bloom of jealousy that was burning a hole into my heart, I cut the tour short and begged Kris to let me rest.

  “You can bunk with me!” she said on the stairway. “The bed’s a full, or a queen, I think. Anyway, there’s totally room.”

  “Sounds good,” I said with a weak sigh, though anything that was indoors sounded good to me.

  By the time we made it to the top landing, I was out of breath and exhausted, but Kris was full of energy, chatting faster than my brain could understand. “And Jin, we’ll find him a spot, too. Not all the rooms up here are available. The fire in the front of the building burned the rooms on the end there,” she said, pointing down toward the end of the hall. “And this one didn’t have a mattress.” She gestured at the first room on our right. “Ceiling lady was in there.”

  “You still have to tell me that story,” I said, using the wall to hold me up.

  “Not much to tell,” she said with a shrug. “The room wasn’t empty.”

  I nodded, giving her a knowing look, and let her guide me to the first room on the left. In the doorway, she paused and pointed across the hall. “That room’s Drakes, then next to him is Ashlyn. Jacks and Lily are next to us, and Connor is two rooms down.”

  “Why is he so far away?”

  “Because he said to Drake, and I quote, ‘I’m sleeping as far away from you as possible.’”

  With an exaggerated eye roll, I rubbed at my temple. “Men suck.”

  “Not all the time,” countered Drake, from the stairwell. I glared at him, and he stopped with one foot on the top stair. “I come with gifts.”

  He held two mugs in his hands, and a shy smile on his face. “What is it?” I asked flatly.

  “Is it hot? That’s all I care about,” Kris said, moving around me to meet him at the stairs. He handed her a mug and she sniffed it. “Okay…maybe I do care. What is this?”

  If I wasn’t ticked at Drake’s odd behavior downstairs, and suddenly feeling like a bowling ball was taped to my chest, I would have smiled at the disgusted look on Kris’ face. “I bet it’s one of Jin’s miracle teas,” I mumbled.

  “Well, then you’d be right,” Drake laughed softly.

  “Maybe later.” After waving a dismissive hand at him, I stepped into Kris’ room. A baby blanket was draped across the arm of a sitting chair, next to a stack of cloth diapers. I backed out and glanced down the hall. “You said this one is yours, right?”

  “Yeah,” she answered. And when she noticed me taking in the miscellaneous baby things strewn about, she smiled. “Oh, I help Jacks out with the baby every once in a while.”

  “Ah.”

  “More than that, really,” Drake said from behind me, still holding my mug. “She’s great with Lily.”

  Kris blushed, then licked her lips. “Thanks,” she mumbled.

  “Here,” he said, nudging my shoulder with the cup. “Take it while it’s hot.”

  I took it so he would leave, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned against the doorframe and hooked his hands behind his back, watching me. Kris bustled about the room for a minute, picking up her things, Lily’s things, and shooing Zoey out of the way while she did so. Once she was satisfied that the room was ready, she plopped onto the edge of the bed and smiled at me.

  “Want to take a warm bath or something? We’ve been melting snow downstairs and bringing it up here in buckets. Kind of a pain in the ass, but the tubs aren’t big anyway.” Outside while on the mountain, she’d looked so old, so mature and beyond the innocence of youth. But on the bed, with her feet dangling over the edge and just barely grazing the carpet, she was a kid again, seventeen going on seven.

  “Sure,” I said with a smile, dropping my pack by the only dresser in the room. “Where are the buckets?”

  “I’ll get them ready,” she said, bouncing off the bed. “You rest.”

  Drake pushed off the doorframe and blocked her from leaving. “No, bot
h of you girls need rest. I’ll bring them up.” He gave me a wink and vanished into the hall, leaving the doorway open and ominous. Afraid that something was going to come in while I wasn’t looking, I shut the door and leaned against it.

  “A bath does sound nice,” I said.

  But the bed looked better. As Kris pulled out a change of clothes for me and set them in the bathroom on the sink, I stripped out of my wet ones and wrapped a spare blanket around my body, curling up onto the mattress, fully intending on passing out. But sleep didn’t come. Drake knocked softly on the door every time he brought up a pair of metal buckets, which was three trips over a twenty-minute period. After the second delivery, Kris ushered me into the bathroom where the tepid water was quickly turning room temperature. When she left the room, I dropped the blanket and stepped into the tub, feeling the grit of bath salts that had yet to dissolve along the bottom.

  The entire room smelled of spearmint and rosemary, according to the pretty glass jar that Kris had left on the edge of the sink. The water line reached my ankles when I stood, and went almost to my hips when I sat, but it wasn’t enough to keep me warm. Realizing I forgot to grab one of the washcloths Kris had left out for me, I stood and leaned toward the sink, which is the position I was in when she came back into the room, another bucket in hand.

  “Sorry,” she laughed, glancing away. But then her gaze returned to my midsection and hovered. I dropped my arm, covering my breasts, but she had already seen them. She bent, setting the bucket down with a loud clatter on the floor. “Riley…what happened to you?” she squeaked.

  I sat quickly in the water, bringing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them, hoping she hadn’t looked down at my thighs where a handful of faint scars still lingered from Jay’s teeth. I tried to smile at her, but it didn’t work.

  With my voice thick and on the verge of cracking, I attempted to reassure her. “I’m okay, really. I’m fine, Kris.” I said it again, but her head began to shake from side to side, and she let out a loud sniffle, bolting from the bathroom. I heard her shaky voice in the next room, and realized she was talking to Drake. I willed him to leave, to take the last bucket with him to the kitchen and stay away. But he didn’t.

  His voice rose over Kris’. “What? What’s wrong? What is it, Kris?” The brief conversation was too quiet to understand many words, but I heard enough.

  I tried to call out from the tub that everything was fine, but the muscles responsible for my vocal chords were shaking. Drake rushed into the small bathroom and braced an arm in the doorway. His eyes landed on mine, then roved across my bare legs, searching, I realized, for something wrong. Something broken.

  “Everything’s fine,” I managed to whisper. With my chin tucked between my knees, I tried to smile, but couldn’t handle the desperate expression on his face. I turned my head and mumbled, “Go away.”

  He took a step into the room and set the bucket down. “Riley,” he whispered.

  “Don’t.”

  The room fell silent, then the door clicked shut and I let out a ragged breath, grateful that he had left, but when I turned to look, he was standing in the room. I shook my head at him, unable to speak, unable to control the rise of emotion that was eager to come out of me.

  “Please don’t,” I begged him again, after he stepped forward.

  He ignored me, and squatted beside the tub. “Show me,” he whispered.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s okay,” he said, sitting back on his feet. “It’s me. I won’t hurt you.” With a shaky hand, he reached out and touched my cheek.

  “Please, go away,” I cried.

  His hand left my cheek and touched my shoulder, and as he murmured things, lovely and sweet things, his hand slid down my arm and stopped at my elbow. Unable to fight, I allowed him to lift my arm away from my leg, exposing my right side and half of my right breast. He said nothing, but I watched his jaw clench as he looked down at me.

  “Get up,” he softly ordered.

  The tears finally came. “I can’t do that,” I sputtered.

  His eyes, misty and full of rage, bore into my face. “I have to see.”

  Using the tub for leverage, he stood, pulling me to my feet with him in one swift movement. His hand fell away from my elbow and limply hung at his side as his eyes left my face and studied every inch of my exposed body. They hovered over the faint bite impressions on my breasts that had yet to heal completely, and they hovered over the fading bruises across my hips and midsection that had turned my skin a jaundice yellow, over each cut from Jay’s knife, over every crescent-shaped gouge from his nails that decorated my inner thighs. Drake took it all in while I stood there crying for it to be over.

  When his damp eyes fell to my feet, they darted back up to my face and he swayed, as if thrown off balance. “Riley,” he gulped, covering his mouth with a trembling hand. “Riley…”

  My legs crumpled beneath me and I went down hard, sliding onto my side in the tub with my back facing the room, hiding what was left of me from him. When his hand, cold and clammy, touched my shoulder, I flinched and covered my face. It wasn’t the room that dipped in temperature, but something in my core, and it made me shiver from the inside out. Despite the several inches of water in the tub, Drake climbed inside it fully clothed, and pulled me up against him until I relented, and allowed him to hold me on his lap. He said nothing at first, just rocked me against his chest, which heaved more than mine from tears. When he did talk, it wasn’t words as much as it was noises, soft sounds to reassure me, gasps when he couldn’t breathe, and then more coos and whispers. His jeans were soaked, and quickly became cold, so he reached for the two remaining buckets and dumped them in the tub with us, but they did little to warm the lower parts of our bodies.

  “Kris,” he called out. “Kris, are you out there?”

  Her voice, tiny and scared, answered from the other side of the closed door a few seconds later. “Yes.”

  “Please get us more hot water…a lot more.” Then, as an after-thought, he covered my ears and raised his voice. “And please don’t let anyone up here.”

  From across the room, just as tiny, she answered, “Okay.”

  He reached for the towel she had left me and shook it open, then draped it over my back, tugging it around my shoulders. He lifted me from his chest and peeled his partially wet shirt off, dropping it outside the tub. Then he stood and I looked away as he rolled his wet jeans down his legs, and dropped them to the floor with the shirt. When he sat down again, he extended his legs as far as they would go in the small tub, and pulled me back into him.

  His skin was warmer than the water and I settled against his chest and stomach with a deep sigh, thankful for the heat, thankful for him. When Kris returned with a hot bucket of water, she opened the door, but didn’t look in. With her foot, she pushed the bucket into the room and quietly left, taking the empty containers with her. Drake’s arm was long enough to reach the bucket without standing, and he dumped the hot water into the tub, being careful not to pour it directly on me. He did this two more times, then told Kris we didn’t need any more. The water was at his chest, and if I shifted, I could submerge myself up to my neck, but I wanted more heat than the cooling water provided. I didn’t want to feel cold and empty anymore.

  Not once did he ask me to talk about what happened. The healing marks on my body told enough of the story, but he did want me to speak. About anything. Was the bath warm enough? Was I comfortable? Could he touch me? Could he wash my hair, wash my arms? Had Jin been kind to me? Had I been sleeping? Eating? All yes or no questions.

  When the water had turned creamy from soap, and my body was clean, my hair washed and conditioned, he began to tell me about his last month. About how he found the camper with Keel. About what happened the day they kicked me out. About how they had subdued him, locked him up until I was gone. He told me about how Win died, and how it snapped something in half inside of Jacks, but Drake didn’t know why, not exactly. Whe
n he told me about Ashlyn, about how she’d come into his room more than once, I was done listening.

  I pushed myself upright and wrapped an arm around his waist, making our bodies as close as they could be and kissed him softly on the mouth before tucking my head under his chin. Carefully, he lifted his knees, bringing my curled body onto his lap so he could wrap his arms around more of me.

  “I didn’t sleep with her,” he whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah, it does,” he said, using a hand to tilt my face up. “It fucking does matter. I didn’t do anything with her. I need you to know that.”

  “Okay,” I said, resting my head down on his chest again, too tired to fight.

  “Riley…” He shifted in the tub, displacing me from his lap and into the space between his legs, and held my face with both hands. “Everything good that’s left in me is from you. I have this hole, in here,” he said, pointing at his chest. “Only you can fill it. Not her, not anyone. Just you. Please say you believe me…please believe me. I can’t love anyone like I love you.”

  “I believe you,” I whispered.

  He kissed me gently, and hesitantly, like we were young and inexperienced, afraid to do something wrong. But when my lips parted, recognizing the taste and feel of him, the kiss deepened with need and hunger. His arms left my face and hooked around my shoulders, pulling me back into his lap, and his mouth took turns along my jaw and neck and lips, ravenous for more. He folded his legs under me, propping me up, and nuzzled my breasts, kissing my skin in feathery touches. I let my hands wander, exploring the familiar grooves and bumps of his abdomen, the short hairs splattered across the center of his chest, and softly felt the long stubble of his face when he brought my mouth back to his. But then one of his hands brushed against the inside of my thigh, and I bristled. Drake, having not yet noticed, was kissing my neck, one hand on my leg, the other on the small of my back.