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by Jordan, Drew

  “No one thinks you’re crazy. You just do crazy things sometimes.”

  That made me laugh. “Um, I think those are the same thing.”

  She shook her head. “No, they’re not. I know you want a guy, Lane. You always have, and it makes you do things that are impulsive. Like Trent.”

  Telling her had clearly been a mistake, but I had wine to thank for that. About six months earlier I’d gotten drunk and admitted that I had slept with Trent again, despite his girlfriend. I did not tell her that I actually drugged him in order to do that. “You bringing up stupid shit I’ve done in the past does not help me, just an FYI.”

  “God, I’m botching this so bad.” Sammy tucked her hair behind her ear. “I just have this gut feeling something is seriously off here and I’m just worried about you. Just really worried.”

  Her gut most definitely was not wrong. But I moved around my suitcase, leaning over to give her a hug. “Thank you for worrying. That means a lot. But I need to sort out what I want from life and I can’t do that spinning my wheels here in Seattle.” There was truth to that even if it wasn’t the sole reason I was rushing back. I felt guilty for leaving Victoria, but I knew that if I didn’t go back to Alaska the cops would find that suspicious. The timing was very, very bad.

  “I’m going to figure out who he is,” she said, but she did hug me back, hard.

  Nothing in me believed that she had ever seen the stranger’s face before. I knew I hadn’t before the crash. You didn’t forget his eyes. “If you find out he’s a secret millionaire let me know.” I stepped back and zipped my suitcase. “That’s everything.”

  Her fingers ran over the statement necklace, with the gold florets. “I’ll take this one if you really don’t want it.” It didn’t surprise me. Most of us couldn’t resist a shiny object.

  “It’s all yours.” I was returning to all I really wanted-him.

  And me. The real me.

  He was waiting for me on the edge of the landing strip. I saw him as I stared out the window, still unnerved by flying, and needing to spot the ground. At first, he was just a speck, but as we got closer, I recognized the figure as him. His arms were crossed over his chest, his knit hat black, his beard full. His feet were apart and he was still, just standing there, waiting.

  Waiting for me.

  I couldn’t help but smile, a thrill coursing through me. My breathing increased and I leaned my head on the glass, like if I pressed against it, somehow he’d see me, would sense me. He did actually look up right then, and he waved, and I knew that he was as aware of me as I was aware of him.

  “Now that’s a grin,” the man next to me on the plane said. We were the only passengers. He was older, and was going home after two months in Fairbanks for a knee surgery. He was a chatty guy and despite my nerves being on edge, I had enjoyed talking to him.

  There was something that was such a relief about meeting a person who knew absolutely nothing about you. He didn’t seem to recognize me as the plane crash survivor gone missing, only to pop up alive and well a month later. “Yeah,” I said. “That’s my boyfriend waiting for me. I missed him.”

  We hit the ground with a hard bump. “Lucky guy,” he said, before stretching out his leg and wincing. “Goddamn knee.”

  “I’m sure you’re glad to be home.” He had mentioned a wife and a couple of grown sons who lived close by. “I bet your family missed you.”

  “I’m sure my wife just missed the cuddles, if you catch my drift,” he said, giving me a grin and a wink.

  I laughed. “I’m sure that is on the list, though maybe not number one.” For me, I couldn’t wait to be back in the stranger’s bed. I’d had hot sexy dreams every night for the last five days, waking up aching with need, bereft to be alone. I couldn’t wait to feel his arms around me.

  I would have stayed until Dean’s release for Victoria’s sake, but it would have been agony. Pure agony.

  Yet I felt oddly nervous when I stepped down onto the tarmac and approached him, a smile teasing across my lips. I waited for his cue.

  He pulled a hair off of my lip and trained those pale eyes on me. “Don’t ever leave me again,” he said gruffly.

  All my nerves disappeared and I felt a flutter deep inside my womb. “I won’t. I have no intention of ever leaving you.”

  “Let’s go home then.” He put his hand on the back of my head and hauled me up against him.

  There were things I wanted to say, but not there, where someone might hear. My many questions would have to wait.

  His embrace wasn’t gentle or soft. It was possessive, demanding. I actually slipped a little on the snowy ground because he knocked me off balance. But I didn’t care. I just grabbed his waist, breathed him in, and closed my eyes to appreciate the moment of being back in his arms.

  “Don’t forget your bag, young lady,” the man who’d been on the plane with me called as he picked his way carefully across the landing strip.

  I looked over my shoulder and gave him a smile. “Thank you. Enjoy your reunion with your family.”

  He nodded. “Will do.” He looked at the stranger. “Got yourself a nice girl here, son.”

  I beamed, appreciating the compliment. I thought Cody would make some innocuous comment, a thank you. But he didn’t.

  He said, “I’m not so sure about that.”

  My head snapped back. It was such an odd thing to say. Was he trying to draw attention to us? I frowned up at him. He set me away from him without acknowledging my unspoken question.

  But for whatever reason the other man just laughed and waved. He must have taken it as a joke.

  I went for my suitcase, lifting it by hand instead of using the wheels. There was too much snow on the ground. The wind was making my nose run and my eyes sting. It already felt colder than when I had left only a week earlier. He reached out and took the suitcase from me without a word and I could tell he was stressed out, thinking hard. He had been worried about me. It wasn’t exactly the way I wanted to return to him. We were both worried. I wanted to just jump into his arms and hug him, but not under these circumstances.

  He started to walk, but then suddenly he stopped and looked at me. “I missed you. I fucking really missed you. How bizarre is that?”

  That made me glow from the inside out. “Not bizarre at all.”

  “We need to spend the night here. It’s too late to go back today.” He pulled me in close to him and murmured in my ear, “We need people to think that I’m controlling. It’s the only way I can protect you.”

  “You are controlling,” I said, without thinking it through.

  He tugged my hair back, so I was forced to look up at him. “I am and don’t forget it.”

  I studied his face. “What’s going on? How can you protect me?” I murmured.

  If Michael’s body had been found, we were both going to prison, end of story. It wouldn’t take long for Forensics to figure out he hadn’t crushed his skull falling off a snow machine. What, maybe a few months? They would arrest us both, assuming probably the stranger had swung the ax, and I was an accomplice. There was no real way he could protect me from that.

  But even as I puzzled it out I started to see his intention.

  “People have suspected you didn’t stay entirely willingly with me. So nothing I do can fall on you if you’re a prisoner.”

  We were standing alone on the runway, the older man long gone. If anyone looked at us, they would see an intense reunion between lovers. He was holding me tight, speaking close to my ear so I could hear him. I understood his plan. He was going to take the blame. Let me defend myself as a victim, held against my will, abused. That when my friend had come to rescue me, the stranger had killed him. I shook my head. I couldn’t let him do that. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. He couldn’t sacrifice everything because in one selfish and mad moment I had decided death was better than living without him.

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “You can’t stop me from doing anythi
ng.”

  It was troubling, horrifying. I couldn’t imagine losing him because of my own insanity. “You’ll go away for life.”

  “Worst case scenario. The plan is to disappear before that happens. But we need to establish our relationship here in town just in case we don’t get out before that happens.”

  There were tears in my eyes, both from his tight grip on my hair, and my emotions. That he could love me that much, to sacrifice his entire life for me, was absolutely overwhelming. I couldn’t ask for more than that, or a greater love. He didn’t even look scared, just determined. He would protect me at the expense of his own life. “I’ll do whatever you say,” I said. I would. How could I argue with a man who would give up everything for me?

  He loosened his grip on my hair. He closed in on me, brushed his lips over mine with so much tenderness, my tears spilled over, rolling down each cheek hot in the cold air. “I didn’t think that I could love someone like this,” he said. “I wanted to, but I never could. I mimicked what other people felt, but I never actually felt it. Until you.”

  I cupped his cheeks with my cold hands, brushing my thumbs over the scratchy texture of his beard. “We were meant to be, you and me.”

  “Pretend you’re afraid of me.”

  On some level, I still was. There was a primal quality to him that kept me from ever feeling that I could predict what he could do or say, or how hard he would spank me. But that was part of the appeal, the thrill. We were like nature, locked in a beautiful battle.

  “Don’t hurt me,” I said, my voice small and scared, before I raised my eyebrows up and down and gave him a smile.

  He laughed. “I do love you, Crazy Laney.”

  In the store I kept waiting for the cops to storm in and just arrest us, but the day seemed ordinary. No one was talking about a body being found. There were two clerks working and several men milling around the store. I picked up a candy bar by the register. He had told me to look scared but I think I was coming across more nervous, which was what I genuinely was. I was afraid everyone knew I was the one who had killed Michael. I fingered the candy bar, crinkling the wrapper.

  “Put that down,” the stranger said behind me. “I didn’t say you could have that.”

  I dropped it, not scared of him at all, but uncomfortable with the clerk’s eyes on me. I didn’t like this role-victim. I wasn’t a victim. I kept my eyes trained toward the floor. It felt oddly insulting to every woman who really had been abused. I understood his plan, but I didn’t like it. There was a clear delineation between submission and abuse and I felt disrespectful playing that role. My nose twitched and my skin felt tight.

  The clerk was having none of it. She was a native woman in her fifties and she just clucked. “You’re so skinny. You need a candy bar, hon.” She gave the stranger a stern maternal look. “Sometimes a girl just needs chocolate.”

  He smiled at her, reverting to Cody, the friendly neighbor. “Sometimes a girl needs a firm hand, too.”

  “Oh, really?” She frowned at him in disapproval. “What decade are you living in? She’s not your child.”

  I drifted away, shifting my body so that I was angled just slightly behind him, making it clear I was aligning myself with him over the cashier. That part didn’t feel strange. I was on his side, always.

  “To each his own,” Cody said, his voice still cheerful. “What works for us wouldn’t work for everyone.”

  I couldn’t see the clerk but she didn’t bother to say anything else. She just gave a snort.

  He took my hand and led me through the store, collecting items like duct tape, zip ties, and condoms. I swallowed hard, wanting to question him. This was too obvious. It was essentially a rape kit. He was going to draw attention to us to the point we wouldn’t be able to leave before they had some serious questions. The goal was to disappear, not get him arrested tomorrow.

  I pressed my lips together and watched him, trying to convey my concern. He just gave me a brief, secret smile before we headed to the register. The cashier’s eyebrows shot up but she didn’t say a word as she checked us out. But I felt her stare at our backs as he finished paying and we went up the stairs at the back of the store to the same room we had rented a week earlier.

  Given the three times we’d been in town, I had used three different names, begged for a phone charger, eaten soup while he left French fries untouched, and bought a pregnancy test, I was pretty sure we’d already established ourselves as not quite right. Even in a place like the bush, it had read as odd. Look at the men who had seen me running on the river. They’d thought I was with him against my will. The duct tape frankly seemed like overkill.

  But I sighed and unzipped my coat as he set my suitcase down by the door. “It got colder,” I said, longing for the heat of the wood stove at the cabin. I really wanted to be back there, now, without this delay in town. My nerves were strung out. I felt too many sets of eyes on us.

  “It’s almost winter.”

  “How did they find the body?” I asked. “Why isn’t anyone asking me questions? I would have thought they’d be waiting for me, wanting to know what I know about Michael.”

  He toed off his boots. “They didn’t find the body.”

  I froze. “What do you mean?” I was torn between relief and confusion.

  “I just told you that so you’d come home. You said you were thinking about staying for your sister and I didn’t want you to.”

  Heat rushed through my face. “What? Are you fucking kidding me right now? I was terrified!” Shock and anger rushed through me. “I left everything, my family, my friends, because I didn’t want you to have to deal with my mistake, and you just made it up? That’s really messed up.”

  “It’s not a big deal. You were coming back anyway and I didn’t feel like waiting.” He took his coat off. “I guess I shouldn’t have scared you like that, but honestly I didn’t think about it. I just wanted you home.”

  God, poor little Victoria… I did it wrong every time with her. “I abandoned my daughter!”

  “Oh, you did that a long time ago,” he said. “Don’t put that on me.”

  That cut me deep. All the way inside, where all my secrets were parsed together and hidden behind my heart. “You’re an asshole,” I said, my voice trembling, all control and obedience evaporated with his words. “That was cruel.”

  He reached for me and I shoved at his arm, not wanting him to touch me. I felt bile crawling up my throat. Then suddenly I was sailing backwards onto the bed, hair in my eyes.

  “Don’t you dare knock me away like that,” he said. His voice was calm, controlled. “I make the rules, remember, not you.”

  I remembered the day he had told me that I couldn’t leave. That I was his prisoner. How scared I had been, how I felt a cold damp sweat crawling across my skin, the panic so palpable it felt alive, like spiders creeping over the landscape of my body. That’s how I felt now, staring up at him. Yet when he bent over me, his lips pressing against mine, his touch so familiar and gentle, my traitorous body responded instinctively.

  “Please,” I said.

  “Please what?” His blue eyes pierced my soul.

  Who the hell was he? I felt an uncertainty I hadn’t experienced in weeks. I shook my head. I had no words. I wasn’t even sure what I was asking.

  He breathed deeply, his nose buried in my hair. “I love you. I missed you so much. Will you forgive me? I just got impatient.”

  I wanted to cry, but nothing seemed to happen. I just lay there, chest heaving, confused.

  “I trust you,” he said. “I do. I just got… scared. Do you know how hard it is for me to admit that? I got scared you wouldn’t come back. And I’m not afraid of anything.”

  That settled my fears. I felt my heart swell as I studied his expression, so filled with love, with remorse. Hadn’t I wanted this kind of love? Hadn’t I longed forever for a man who couldn’t exist without me? Who wanted to be a part of everything in my life? Look at what my desire to stay with him
had done-it had resulted in Michael’s blood spreading across our front porch. I couldn’t exactly fault him for his lie when the goal was to keep me near him.

  “You don’t need to be afraid with me,” I murmured. “I’d never leave you.”

  His hand drifted down over my breast, teasing at my nipple. “This is all new for me. I’m going to make mistakes but I’m man enough to own them. I was wrong to lie to you.”

  He was all man. “I have made mistakes too and I’ve risked your life because of it.” I touched his lip, so in love with him that it hurt. It hurt everywhere.

  “I can handle it.”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, startling me. I’d forgotten about it. I wondered if it was something bad. If it was Harry Robertson or Grandma Jean saying Victoria had run away or something.

  He read the concern on my face. “Go ahead and look at it.”

  So I dragged it out of my jeans and focused on the screen. Texts from Sammy. Four of them.

  I looked up Cody Doyle. I don’t know who your guy is but he isn’t this guy.

  What the hell? I enlarged the photo she had attached. It was a driver’s license photo of Cody Doyle, age twenty eight. He looked vaguely like the stranger in that he had the same coloring and a beard, but it wasn’t him. The eyes were wrong.

  The next text was a photo and Sammy had written beneath, “his wife.” It was Stephanie Doyle, a brunette. Plain and thin.

  “Who is this?” I asked the stranger, turning my phone so he could see the screen. His weight was heavy on my body.

  His eyes narrowed then he shrugged. “Oh, that’s Stephanie.”

  I scrolled backwards and showed him the picture of Cody Doyle. “Then who the fuck is this?” My heart was racing, my thoughts swirling.

  “That’s Cody.” He said it like this was obvious. Like I was being ridiculously slow.

  “But… aren’t you Cody? You said you were Cody.” I’d been calling him Cody.

  “I never actually said that I was Cody. I told you these were our identities for when we went to town.”