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

by Dawson, Trish Marie

  “Even after what you saw? Even after…what I said to you?” My chin trembled, and I took a deep breath to keep from blubbering into his shirt.

  He rolled again and draped his arm over my side, and leaned toward me till our thighs pressed together. The light from his bedside table danced in his eyes every time he blinked, and I found it mesmerizing. “I heard someone say once, that you can tell what a person’s been through by the scars on their body,” he whispered. “How every scar or bruise is like a chapter of their life, a story of survival. I don’t know, but it stuck with me.”

  “Wow, that’s kind of beautiful…” I whispered back. “I’m definitely an epic novel…what are you?” I began to run my hands down his chest and stomach, to where his scars were from Los Angeles, then across his side, and over his hip, and he closed his eyes. I snuck my hand under his shirt and felt each bump, each healed hole or slash, and followed one around to his back. Tilting my face toward his, I licked the healing cut on his lip. “I think you’re an epic novel, too.”

  “Riley,” he groaned, with his eyes still closed tight. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  With my hand under his shirt, I scooted forward until there was no room left between us, but Drake leaned away, onto his back. I went with him, ending up on his stomach, with my arm pinned under his body, and shifted against his groin until one of my legs was comfortably nestled between his.

  “I don’t want that week to be playing through my mind every time someone touches me. It’s all I see when I close my eyes,” I whispered. “Their dirt-streaked faces. The rank smell of their breath. Like rotten teeth and bad whiskey.” Drake stiffened underneath me, but said nothing. “I don’t want that bastard’s mouth to be the one I remember on my body every night when I fall asleep. It was nonstop, the pain. They had me chained to the bed, did you know that? Chained like an animal.” Drake’s chest began to heave as his breathing hitched with anger, and he ran a hand along my wrist, feeling the fading grooves that had been deep cuts in my skin. “And like an animal, I lost it…I went wild. I don’t even remember everything I did to them,” I murmured.

  “You did what you had to,” he said back.

  I shook my head. “No. I chose to stay. After Lee…I could have run away…but I chose to stay and finish it. The things I did, Drake.” I let my head fall onto his chest and cried.

  “I’d have done the same thing,” he whispered, encircling my body with his arms.

  Tired of the pain and the guilt, I pushed off his chest and stood by the side of the bed. Startled, as if he’d done something wrong, Drake began to apologize, then snapped his mouth shut after I pulled my shirt off, and let it drop to the floor.

  “I don’t want to fall asleep again with those images in my mind,” I sniffled. “I want you to touch me, and kiss me like you used to. Can you do that?” I slid the pants off, and kicked them next to the shirt. “Will you make love to me?”

  He nodded, but when I climbed back into the bed, he wrapped me in the sheet. “When you’re ready,” he whispered.

  I kissed him long and passionately, reaching up and holding onto his hair, sealing his mouth to mine. “I am.”

  “Riley, I can’t stand to have you look at me like you did earlier. Like I had hurt you…I can’t.”

  Shoving the sheet free, I pulled him out of his shirt and nudged his pants down over one hip, but he stopped me again. “Please,” I almost begged. “Let me, I need to.”

  His eyes warmed, like they were lit from the inside, and he carefully rolled me to my back, and stripped out of his pants. Pulling the blankets over us, he climbed across my body, being mindful to keep most of his weight supported by his arms.

  “What can I do?” he murmured, splattering the space below my ear with quick kisses.

  “Everything.”

  We made love that night like it was the first time, as if we were nervous teens, stopping only once before dawn to breathe, then climbing back beneath the covers. Drake let me guide his hands where I wanted them, and moved to the rhythm I set. He made sure I was satisfied more times than he, and with each delicate kiss and brush of his fingers along my sweaty skin, he whispered promises into my ear, and the camper began to fade away, taking the faces and memories it possessed with it, leaving just me and Drake in his room.

  In those few incredible hours, he fixed some of the broken parts of me with his love. When we fell asleep in a happy tangle of limbs and bedding, my heartbeat matched his, and I dreamed of an island far away from the snow where life was calmer, and quieter. A place where we could make love under the star-pricked summer sky, listening to the ocean as it sang us a lullaby. In this dream, there was no death, no foreboding of calamity to come, just the simplicity of an easy life.

  When my eyes woke to the pale sunlight of early morning creeping through the window, the dread was quick to come, because there was no such thing as an easy life. We all knew that, me and Drake especially. I held onto him, and waited for his body to wake, so he could murmur into my ear more promises about the future that he probably couldn’t keep, and maybe make love to me again, because once we rose and faced the others, reality would come screeching back, bringing along a new cluster-fuck from life. And I wasn’t ready for another dose of bullshit. I’d had my fill.

  DRAKE

  After a home game, Drake lost his virginity to a girl named Nikki Stonehearst in the backseat of his dad’s old Mustang. Nervous as hell, and certain he would screw up, he let Nikki lead the way, telling him what to do and how to do it, since she was a year older and the only one who’d done it before. It wasn’t an awful experience. In fact, Drake remembered it fondly, but the uncertainty and fear of doing something wrong was almost more powerful a memory than the actual act of having sex. When he woke up with Riley in his arms, snuggling into him and brushing her fingers against the most sensitive parts of his body, Drake was reminded of how he felt the night before, and how similar it was to that night of the game, of the fear, despite the thrill. He was terrified when Riley took her clothes off and asked him to make love to her. He was furious when she began to talk about what those fucks had done to her, and he knew she’d left the worst parts out, to spare him. But he saw in her a need to feel loved again, to be safe, and the fear melted away. He did everything he could to make her comfortable, to please her and hopefully erase some of the bad memories she had. But it wasn’t just for her, it was for him also. He’d been dying a slow death while she was missing. And the delicate, and yet somehow intense love she gave him during the night had brought him back.

  He didn’t ask if he could make love to her again, because she was already warming up the sleepy parts of his body by the time he fully opened both eyes. When he was ready, which didn’t take long at all, he pulled her on top of him and watched the sunlight bounce off her curves, marveling at her beauty, and the grace with which she moved. He came quick, and changed position, placing her carefully on the pillow, and kept his eyes on her while he moved. When she was close to her own peak, he touched her mouth as it opened with his free hand, and nibbled at her lips while she moaned. When her eyes fluttered closed, and her hips bucked upwards to deepen his reach, he studied the blonde tips of her lashes and tried to count the freckles on her nose. But she distracted him by pulling his mouth to hers as she finished with a long groan, so he could taste the pleasure on her tongue, not just feel it between her legs where his other hand was.

  “I want this forever,” he murmured against her neck. He attempted to roll off her and onto his side, so she was free to move, but she held him in place, wrapping her quivering legs around his, keeping him inside her.

  “Me too,” she whispered against his mouth. They would have stayed that way for hours, he was sure of it, but a flustered knock on one of the doors down the hall startled them both.

  “Shit,” he mumbled into the pillow. “Don’t move,” he said, pushing upright. She grabbed at him, and pulled his mouth down for a kiss. “I’ll be…right back…” he said around her lips. He
dashed across the room, locking the door, and then jumped back on the bed, trapping Riley under the covers.

  “Drake?” A small voice came from the other side of the door. Both Drake and Riley froze, listening.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Morning, Kris.”

  “Um. Morning. Hey, is Riley in there? She’s not in our room.”

  A silence hung in the air long enough to be awkward, and then Riley coughed once and cleared her throat. “Yes, everything okay?”

  “Oh, yeah…yeah, of course. I just…Zoey freaked out when you weren’t in the room. You okay?” She paused, then laughed softly. “Of course you are…sorry.”

  “I’m good,” Riley said with a soft laugh that Drake found adorable.

  “Alright…I just…I’ll go downstairs, I guess.” Kris squeaked out a goodbye, and Drake watched the small shadow at the bottom of the door vanish.

  “Poor kid. I think she’ll have nightmares imagining what was going on in here last night,” Drake laughed.

  Riley rolled her eyes at him. “I’d rather her not think about it at all.” She glanced at the door, then back at him. “I thought you were leaving,” she said with a smile.

  “And go out there? Hell, no,” he chuckled. “Seems I locked the door just in time, though.”

  “Are you coming back in, then?” she teased, lowering the covers.

  He felt his smile drop, and reached out to touch her face. “You’re pale.”

  “Am I? Maybe that’s because we only slept for a few minutes. Which is just as much your fault as it is mine.” She touched the side of his face. Her hand was warm, but so was the rest of her.

  “Okay then, come here,” he said, pulling her to his front and turning her onto her side, making her the little spoon. “Let’s sleep. We can ignore everything happening out there and stay in this bed till we reach the point of starvation. And then we can eat the cereal bars I have stashed in the bedside table to hold us over.”

  “Deal.”

  Flames licked at his feet, torching his ankles and bubbling the skin on his legs till they charred a deep black. Pinned in place, he couldn’t move as the heat burned his stomach and his chest, and the fire singed his hair, then incinerated what was left of his flesh. When Drake tried to scream, smoke poured into his mouth and throat and filled his lungs, suffocating him.

  His death wasn’t slow. He struggled against fate, even though he had no muscles left to move, and no tongue left to scream for help. He was ash, long before his boiling brain stopped his heart. Just a pile of smoldering ash.

  “Shit,” he stuttered, waking with a jolt. His chin struck the top of Riley’s head and she sighed, but didn’t stir.

  He threw the blanket off his shoulder and pushed up onto his elbow, patting down his body, but finding nothing wrong. Sweaty, and with a thudding heart that was close to putting him into cardiac arrest, he fell onto his pillow. Riley was still asleep on his forearm, and he wiggled his fingers to bring some life back into them. The late morning light blared into his room like a siren, filling his eyes with noise. It didn’t matter if the day kept passing, he thought, he had every intention of staying right where he was, with her in his arms. He rolled over to hug her, but immediately recoiled from her body.

  “Riley,” he gasped, reaching out and shaking her shoulder. “Hey, wake up.” She moaned and leaned away from him, as if to roll onto her stomach. “You need to wake up, babe,” he urged.

  When she didn’t respond, he jumped out of the bed and yanked on his jeans, tugging a shirt over his head on the way out the door. The hall was empty, and he hopped down the stairs while pulling up his zipper. His hands were still on his fly when he ran into Jacks, who was coming up the stairs with Lily balanced in the crook of one arm, and a stack of towels in the other.

  “Fuck, man,” Jacks hissed, dropping the towels to save the baby. “Look where you’re going!”

  “Where’s the Tylenol?” Drake snapped, sidestepping around Jacks on the stairs, still moving down to the lower level.

  “What?”

  “Tylenol, Advil, whatever the fuck we have to lower a fever.” When Jacks raised his eyebrows at him, Drake grumbled impatiently and then raked a hand over his face. “The medicine, Jacks…where’s the fucking medicine?”

  “Ashlyn had the first aid kit…I don’t know what else we have. What’s wrong?”

  But Drake didn’t answer, he jumped the last few stairs and spun around the corner, skidding into the common room and scanning the handful of large sofas and sitting chairs, looking for Ashlyn. He didn’t see her, but Kris was situating herself in front of the fire with a book.

  “Hey,” he said, trying to keep calm.

  She glanced up at him, startled. “I didn’t hear anything, I promise,” she whispered, glancing over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “I won’t tell.”

  He blinked at her, confused at first, and waved a hand in the air. “Never mind, where’s Ashlyn?”

  “Why? She’s in a righteously pissy mood today.” Kris shifted on her feet, then glanced at the kitchen again.

  “She in there?” Drake asked, using the sofa for support as he ran around it. “Ashlyn!” he bellowed.

  He reached the doorway at the same time as Connor did, a teapot in his hand and a towel thrown over his shoulder.

  “Fuck,” Drake sputtered, trying to casually lean into the doorway rather than plow into the man. Connor was not the person he wanted to see, nor the person he wanted help from. “What’s up,” he blurted, searching the room and finding no sign of Ashlyn.

  Connor gave him a vague once over, then returned to the counter and set the pot on the stove. “Cleaning,” he grumbled. “That’s what’s up.”

  “Uh, yeah, okay. Know where I can find Ashlyn?” He regretted asking the moment the words were out.

  “What the fuck do you need with her?” Connor leaned against the counter and slapped his thigh with the kitchen towel.

  When the back door opened, and Jin and Cole came into the kitchen with their arms full of damp firewood, kicking their boots free of snow, Drake grabbed one of the empty buckets sitting near the sink and pushed by the men. Though he was barefoot, he rushed across the deck and down its stairs, and scooped up a full bucket of snow.

  “What’s he doing?” Cole wondered, eyeing Drake.

  “Losing his fucking mind,” Connor answered.

  Drake ignored them all when he came back inside, but turned around and grabbed the towel from Connor’s hand. “Thanks,” he quipped, leaving the others in the kitchen.

  He bolted up the stairs and down the hall, entering his room quietly. Riley was in the same position he’d left her. After setting the bucket on the ground next to her side of the bed, he slipped out of the room again, and spotted the open door across the hall.

  “Ashlyn,” he said, popping his head into the room.

  “She’s not in here,” Jacks said with a scowl. “I thought she was downstairs.”

  He pushed off the wall with a curse and tried to regulate his breathing before knocking on Ashlyn’s door. She didn’t answer, so he tried the knob. Jacks stepped into the hall, and cleared his throat.

  “I need the first aid kit,” Drake explained, looking over his shoulder at Jacks before stepping into Ashlyn’s room.

  It was quiet, the bed was made and the bathroom door was open. She wasn’t there. He still called out to make certain, and then went straight to the bathroom. There was no first aid kit to be found, so he searched her room. He looked under the bed, in the closet, and was rifling through the dresser drawers when Jacks came to the doorway, his arms crossed and a suspicious expression plastered to his face like a mask.

  “Are you going to tell me why you’re freaking out and doing it in Ash’s room?”

  Drake paused long enough to glance at Jacks. “She’s ‘Ash’ to you now? Please tell me you haven’t drunk her Kool-Aid, too.” When the color warmed in his cheeks, Drake shook his head. “That’s fucked up, man.”

  “What is? What
’s so wrong with her?” Jacks wondered, a hint of anger evident in his voice. “Who’d you sleep with last night?”

  Drake’s hands froze inside the third dresser drawer and he straightened, a slow smirk pulling his mouth open. He stepped away from the bureau and kicked the drawer closed, and turned around slowly to face Jacks.

  “Wow, for a smart man, you’re fucking retarded,” he stated.

  “Is that so?” Jacks stepped into the room, but kept his arms folded at his chest.

  “Yeah, man. Clueless.” A draft passed between them, and Drake willed the shiver away.

  “Enlighten me,” Jacks said flatly.

  “Maybe some other time, when Riley’s not as hot as a furnace and burning a hole through the fucking sheets with a fever,” Drake spat.

  Jacks balked at him, and let his arms fall. “What? Riley’s sick?”

  They left the room together, and Drake led him to Riley, who was asleep on her stomach, naked under the covers. He didn’t want Jacks, or anyone, to see more of her than necessary, so he pulled the sheet up to her neck. When Jacks leaned over her and touched her face, Riley didn’t wake. When Jacks pulled the sheets down to feel her back, Drake swatted his hand away.

  “Don’t touch her,” he warned.

  Jacks glared at him. “I’ve seen her shoulders before, Drake.”

  He’d forgotten till then, that long before he’d met Riley, she’d had a relationship with Jacks. Way before any of them knew each other and had the slightest clue what was about to happen to the world, Jacks and been with his girl. Drake’s entire being shrank into itself, making him suddenly feel small and insignificant. He wanted to puke.

  “She’s really hot,” Jacks said under his breath.

  “No shit.”

  “Like…really hot.”

  “Did I fucking stutter?”

  Jacks pulled the sheet up and straightened, running his hand through his hair. “Okay…first…stop with the dick-swinging. We’re not in a competition here, okay?”