Cruel Abandon

by S. Massery

  McAdams couldn’t tell me why the ex-detective abducted Whitney and me, not with certainty… but she did let slip that he had a massive debt. He had taken out a second mortgage on his home before he lost his job. His home was filled with empty liquor bottles and illegal weapons.

  Under someone’s thumb, McAdams guessed aloud.

  Mom and Dad both came to see me. I was, once again, stuck in the hospital after serious trauma. This time, though, I was refusing to let go of the memories.

  The nurses were friendly, the doctors brisk. They treated frostbite on my feet and stitched my nose. I didn’t have any lasting impact from the fall, just a cut on my palm that they taped and a sprained ankle. I was hooked up to an IV to flush out any remaining traces of the sedative Masters injected, and I only had to wait on the discharge papers in order to leave.

  They kept me overnight, and I wake to my parents both in my room.

  Mom hovers by my bed.

  Dad stands guard at the door.

  I haven’t seen Liam since I was brought in. One nurse, my secret favorite, let slip that he was okay and had been discharged the day before.

  But still no visit.

  Tell your dad I say hello. Then—bang.

  Dead.

  Maybe that’s the most shocking part: that someone would go through all the trouble, kill multiple girls, only to give up in the end. But what sort of life did he have to go back to?

  They found Whitney alive in the building at the top of the hill. It was the shut down water treatment addition to the water tower that he kept us in.

  My former roommate is alive. She helped me survive, too. I suspect she’ll be in therapy for a while. Trauma messes with your brain.

  She’s been closely monitored by doctors across the hall. I was right about one thing: she did catch pneumonia.

  “Here we are,” a nurse says, bringing in a stack of forms for me to sign.

  Dad takes a cursory glance through all of them before nodding to me.

  I sign, and then we’re free to leave. The nurse helps me into a wheelchair, and I cast a long glance into Whitney’s room before we completely pass it. She seems to be sleeping, her mother asleep on the cot beside her.

  Mom’s phone beeps. She and Dad follow the nurse and me, but now she hurries to catch up. “Detective McAdams texted. She says the Rose Hill police just arrested Alan Morrison.”

  I shut my eyes.

  I know what it means: there will be a trial. I’ll undoubtedly have to testify.

  “Mom…”

  “She says they found the secret room in a storage shed,” she breathes. “And some of the cash…”

  “Do we get that back?” Dad quips.

  Mom rolls her eyes and then frowns at me. “Honey, focus. This might be enough evidence to keep you off the stand. Although…”

  What would me testifying do to Liam? Or his mother? Or Jake?

  Oh, god.

  A lump forms in my throat. He’s going to abandon me. I can feel it. Who would stay after that? After I remembered?

  “Are we going home?” I ask them. I don’t necessarily want to leave the semester incomplete, but the school has given me medical leave. I’ll return in January… if at all.

  “Yes,” Mom says. “We’ll just go collect your things from the apartment and be on our way.”

  The nurse hits the button in the elevator for the ground floor, and my stomach jumps into my throat on the way down. I grip the armrests of the wheelchair.

  The doors slide open, and Liam is there. He seems a little more bruised than I’d usually like him—a reddish-purple mark on his cheekbone, a scrape near his jaw. He’s got a thick bandage on his arm, peeking out from his rolled-up sleeves. I’ve never seen him in a collared shirt before, and it’s devastatingly handsome on him. My abdomen clenches.

  I’m going home, and I don’t know when the next time I’ll see him will be. A week? A month? He might want to forget about me after this, and I wouldn’t blame him.

  I’d blame me.

  When he sees me, he frowns.

  “You came back,” I blurt out.

  He tilts his head. “Of course I did. Did you think…”

  “I thought you wouldn’t want to.”

  The nurse pushes my chair out of the elevator, leaving it just in front of Liam. My parents stay back, hovering by the door. They’re just off to the side, watching us like hawks—and pretending they’re not.

  Liam’s eyes drop, then meet mine again. “Why would you think that?”

  Liam kneels in front of me, taking my hands.

  I lean forward in the chair. “I would think that because your dad is the one who kidnapped me. They arrested him.”

  “You know what?” He narrows his eyes. “Dad can burn in hell for what he did. I’ve been on your side since I found you in the woods. Since I first saw what he did to you. And then every time you had a nightmare and I was the one you needed?”

  My cheeks heat. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but then I just… do. I’ve got to start trusting that he’s not going to run away. Warily, I admit, “I still need you.”

  “You are seriously fucking beautiful, Skylar Buckley.” His gaze flicks over my head, to my parents. “Are you going home with them?”

  I nod slowly. “That’s the plan.”

  He smirks. “I’m here to propose a counter offer.”

  “Liam,” my mother interrupts. “Sky has been through a lot. She should—”

  “Decide for herself,” he says. He smiles at me. “I know you technically already live with me, but I want to make it more official.”

  My eyebrows shoot up. “Liam…”

  He grips my hands tighter. “I know it’s a bit crazy, but I have no plans to leave Boston after I graduate. You drive me nuts sometimes, but that’s part of your charm. We bicker and fight for each other and we don’t abandon each other.”

  I find myself nodding along. He’s right: we do bicker. But I’ve never met anyone as intensely focused on me. I’ve never felt such a strong magnetic pull as I do toward him. I could close my eyes and follow that urge right to him every time.

  How am I supposed to handle going home? Leaving him here?

  When I don’t respond immediately, he pulls away. I don’t think it’s his lack of faith in me. More like… hopelessness.

  I force myself out of the wheelchair, hobbling after him. We go all the way outside, until it’s just the two of us on the sidewalk. The day is bitter cold, but the sun is out.

  “Hey,” I say. “We clearly have some issues to work out.”

  He scoffs. “Clearly.”

  “You’re on my side,” I say to his back. I creep forward and slide my hands around him, pressing my cheek to his shoulder blade. “It was torture not seeing you. I want to be with you all the time. It’s probably unhealthy how much I want you.”

  He exhales shakily and rotates in my arms. “You’re freezing.”

  I shrug. “Worth it.”

  He leans down, putting his forehead gently against mine. “Did you sleep okay?”

  No. But at least I didn’t wake up screaming. My nightmares ran more on the quiet side.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to see him again,” he says. “I’d kill him.”

  I grip his biceps. “You won’t kill him. He’s…” I don’t know how to frame Liam’s dad in my mind. Everything I used to know about him has fractured, falling away to reveal the ugly truth. “You won’t kill him.”

  “Move in with me,” he whispers. “Marry me.”

  I blink. “Marriage?”

  “Eventually. I’ll ask again with a ring, but…” He cups my jaw. “I want forever with you.”

  I can’t think of a better way to spend the rest of my life.

  Epilogue

  LIAM

  Eight Months Later

  I’ve never visited anyone in prison before. Margo and Caleb both have, so they gave me last-minute advice. But I don’t think anything they said could’ve p
repared me for the shock of it.

  I’m buzzed into a long, narrow room. To my left are stalls with glass panels. Some of the inmates already sit waiting for their visitors, while other spots remain empty. I go all the way to the end until I find my father.

  Eight months since Sky gave her statement to the police in Boston, then repeated to the Stone Ridge detectives. The town is so small, it’s usually Rose Hill police that handle anything going on in Stone Ridge. However, apparently there’s been an uptick in crime in the area.

  Dad was arrested less than a month later, held without bail, and found guilty by a jury only six months after that.

  He’s been in prison for less than a month.

  I take the seat opposite him, schooling my expression. I’m sick just looking at him. My stomach twists, and I swallow to suppress my sudden nausea.

  Sitting at the trial, hearing Sky bravely get on the stand and tell the world what she remembered… I ached for her.

  The evidence, though.

  It seems all they needed was where Sky was kept, and the rest was easy.

  Dad never suspected he’d get caught. He didn’t even destroy the fucking place he kept her. They didn’t find her DNA—or anyone else’s, for that matter—but the room was exactly as she described it.

  “Hello, son,” my father says.

  He appears tired and not altogether healthy. There’s tape over his purple nose, and he has two black eyes.

  Even inmates have moral compasses, and it seems they draw the line at hurting innocent children.

  “I’ll make this quick.” Loathing fills my voice.

  He nods for me to proceed. He doesn’t have a long sentence, but judging from his face, he might not make it even that long.

  “You took Sky.”

  He nods slowly. “I did.”

  “Why her?”

  He sighs. “She was the easy target.”

  My lip curls. “Easy.”

  “What do you want me to say, Liam?”

  I slam my hand on the table. “I want you to fucking tell me what was so damn important you had to keep a child behind the false wall of a storage unit for a month and a half? When you beat her bloody.” I pinch the bridge of my nose.

  “I can’t,” Dad says. “I don’t have a good excuse for it. It’s made me sick to my stomach—”

  “I hope they beat you up every day of your goddamn miserable life,” I say quietly. “I hope you try to fight back and get a knife in your stomach. And really, Dad? I pray that every day you’ll remember this: if you make it out of here, you’ll have me to contend with.”

  He rocks backward, shock filling his face. “Now, Liam—”

  I stand abruptly, needing to escape. I leave him there and am buzzed out, and moments later I burst out into the parking lot.

  I inhale a deep breath of clean air.

  And I smile, because… well, I’m free. I have Sky, and my mom, and our trauma can finally be put to rest.

  SKY

  Ten Months Later

  He moves slowly, restraining first one of my wrists, then the other. There’s no malice in his expression. Nothing that would trigger my panic.

  And anyway, this is my idea.

  “Just say the word,” he reminds me. “They’re quick release, so… you’ll be out in an instant.”

  I exhale and pull at one of my wrists. The bindings—ties, actually—hold firm, but it doesn’t hurt. We’ve been working up to this.

  He yanks my pants off.

  I lift my hips to help him, and he places a small kiss on the inside of my knee.

  I shiver.

  “You trust me?” he asks.

  I nod once, then clear my throat. “Yes.”

  He winks and reaches over the side of the bed, shuffling things around in the drawer. When he straightens, he has…

  “Oh god,” I groan, turning my head into my arm. “How long have you had that?”

  He smirks, running his finger up and down my vibrator. The memory of him lifting it from my box of plants flashes in my mind. I was mortified then, but now I can’t lie—I’m intrigued. I haven’t resorted to using it in a long, long time. I sort of forgot about it, actually.

  We’ve lived in the same apartment that my mom moved me into, although it’s ours now. A home for both of us. I’m about to graduate Ashburn College with my double major, and Liam works near the harbor at a trauma counseling center—just like he wanted.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask.

  A pointless question, really.

  He kneels between my legs and clicks the thing on. It jerks in his hand, vibrating noisily. “Just wanted to try something new,” he murmurs. “And I’ve got to admit, the idea of you doing this to yourself in an empty room is seriously hot.”

  “Liam—”

  He touches it to my clit, and I arch off the bed. There’s too much sensation, but I can’t push him off. I can’t even seem to twist away from him.

  I struggle against the ties for a moment, then let out a sharp exhale.

  This isn’t about any sort of fear I’ve been harboring—not because of Liam’s dad, or Jim Masters, or the time Liam strung me up and threatened me. This is about rewriting my pain into pleasure.

  He slides his finger inside me, and I writhe.

  “This is too much?” he asks me.

  I gulp in air, trying to get control of my spiraling emotions. I’m a live wire.

  “No,” I finally manage. “But I need you.”

  He picks up the vibrator, dragging it up my abdomen, over my stomach. He makes a looping trail across my body, pausing on my nipple before going back down. He positions himself at my entrance and slowly pushes into me.

  “Did you take it this morning?” he asks me.

  Now’s your chance to change your mind, is what he doesn’t say.

  “I threw away the packet,” I reply.

  My birth control.

  The idea of getting pregnant terrifies me, but the rest of our lives are looming. Our wedding is imminent, planned for a few weeks after I graduate. We’ll be honeymooning on an island off the coast of Portugal, and there will be plenty of time for baby-making then.

  But we’ve got to start somewhere.

  Besides, it could take a month for the pill to completely leave my system. Maybe longer, as I’ve been taking it since I was fifteen.

  “You can renew the prescription,” he says evenly.

  His cock pulses inside me, and I shift my hips. Impatient as he always says I am.

  “I won’t,” I say. “You’re going to be a great dad, whether it’s nine months from now or a year, or two years…”

  He pulls out slowly, then slams into me. My whole body jolts with the force of it, and my eyes roll back.

  “You say the hottest things, angel.”

  I grin. “You do the hottest things, babe.”

  He leans over me, angling his thrusts. I raise my hips to meet him, reveling, as always, in the feel of him. But this is more exciting. We’ve thrown a bit of the unknown back into our relationship.

  He suddenly brings the vibrator back down to my clit, and I gasp. I rotate my wrists and grab the ties, needing to hold on to something. He fucks me with everything he has, and I climax without warning. I yell, ducking my face into my arm.

  He unties me, still thrusting, and I bring my hands up to his face, pulling him to me. The kiss is rough, teeth and tongue and fire, and then he comes with a groan, freezing.

  I wrap my arms around him, and he collapses down.

  “It’s kind of more monumental, isn’t it?” I whisper.

  I can feel his grin.

  He says, “Yes. But we can’t talk about it or I’ll just get hard again.”

  We stay like that for a minute, holding each other, then he hops up and offers his hands. I let him pull me up and into the shower, letting him wash away the day. It’s a routine of sorts. He returns from work and I get back from school, and we greet each other with our bodies.

  But
tonight, we have dinner plans.

  It’s been eighteen months since Masters took me, and our world has done a one-eighty. We’re practically normal at this rate.

  Margo and Caleb transferred to Boston a year ago, on the heels of their graduation from college. Caleb joined Suffolk Law School, and Margo’s been working at the Museum of Fine Arts. She took a brief maternity leave, and their little girl is just shy of a year old.

  Anyway, they’re coming for dinner.

  I hate to say I judged Margo at first, but I totally did. It irritated me that she took Riley from me… when in reality, some might say it was the other way around. Besides, I had to learn that I was still stuck in Amelie Page’s mindset.

  She’s had an attitude adjustment, though, I heard.

  The more time I spend with Margo—which seems to be growing increasingly frequent after their move to Boston—the more I like her. I can see why Riley was instantly pulled to her.

  The buzzer downstairs goes off as I’m blow-drying my hair. Liam rings them up, and only a few minutes later, their voices float toward me.

  I set down my brush and give myself a once-over. My hair is short now, back to blonde. I’ve been trying to figure myself out, deconstructing my trauma. Dr. Penn referred me to a specialist in Boston, and I’ve been working with her a bit more aggressively than any approach Dr. Penn took.

  And… it might be working.

  “Hi!” I come into the main room.

  We set our dining table with our nicest plates, and Liam must’ve taken it upon himself to light the candles. There’s a lasagna in the oven that will hopefully feed us all, but I had a dream that the pasta sheets didn’t cook, and we crunched our way through an otherwise-silent meal.

  “Where’s your little one?” I ask, glancing around.

  Margo grins. “She’s going through a phase. I really didn’t want her screaming all night, so we got a babysitter. And we brought wine.” She raises a bottle.

  “Perfect.” I take it from her.

  She follows me around the kitchen island. “Anything I can do to help you?”

  “Nope, things are pretty much done. Lasagna has about ten minutes to go.”

  “Come sit,” Liam says.