by Leah Wilde
There, in the center of the room, was a teenage girl with beautiful black curls that hung down in front of her face, her hands and feet bound and attached to the wall behind her. Her arms and legs were covered with tiny cuts, just like Tori’s had been. Fiona exhaled shakily and moved forward, slowly approaching the girl, making her footfall as heavy as possible so the girl knew she was coming. “Hello? Hello, honey? We’re here to set you free. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be alright.”
The girl was awake, jerking her head up at the sound of Fiona’s voice as she approached, but quickly fell back down, limp again. “You’re just a stupid hallucination,” the girl whispered. “I haven’t eaten in two days. He’s been gone a long time, since the other girl left.”
“I know it seems that way, but we’re real. I promise we’re real,” Fiona said, stepping a little closer but stopping short of touching the girl for a moment. “What’s your name?”
“You should know my name,” the girl spat out, clearly frustrated. “You’re in my head, so you already know everything about me.”
“I don’t,” Fiona said softly. “What is it? What’s your name?”
“Juanita,” the girl whispered, lifting her head again, looking at Fiona with wide, tearful eyes. “My name is Juanita,” she said again, and this time her voice cracked.
“That’s a beautiful name,” Fiona murmured. “Here, Juanita, let me get you down from here, okay?” She stepped forward and undid the complicated knots around the girl’s wrists before turning her attention to her feet, letting Juanita sink her body weight onto her as she fell down from the wall. “That’s it. That’s it. Good girl. You’re going to be alright. You’re going to be just fine.”
“How do you know?” Juanita asked, her voice wavering as she whispered into Fiona’s ear, as if she was afraid of Gage hearing her question.
“Because I was where you were once, and I’m fine. I’m fine,” she said, and for the first time in fifteen years, she actually believed it. “We’re going to be okay.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“I have to go somewhere really quick,” Fiona said after she and Gage gave their statements to the police, making sure that Juanita was safe and secure in the hospital.
Gage’s face immediately fell, his brows furrowing together as he stared at Fiona in silent disagreement. “It’ll only be thirty minutes, an hour tops,” Fiona said. “I just have to do one last thing before today is over.”
“I really think you need to rest,” Gage said softly, keeping his tone calm rather than pushy. Fiona appreciated that. After everything she’d been through, she didn’t need anyone bossing her around anymore, which was why she had to do this one last thing.
“I know,” she said. “You’re right. And I will rest. I’ll rest for like three days. But I have to take care of something first.”
Gage was quiet a moment, chewing on his bottom lip for several seconds before looking back up at Fiona and speaking again. “Are you leaving me again?”
“What?” Fiona asked, completely dumbfounded.
“Are you leaving me again?” Gage repeated himself. “I need to know. I just…I need to have warning. That’s all.”
Fiona didn’t have the words to answer that question, so instead, she just leaned in and took Gage’s head into her hands, pressing their foreheads together for a moment before sliding her mouth against his. “Does that answer your question?” she whispered onto his face, allowing herself to finally smile again as Gage nodded within her grasp. “Good. I’ll be back.”
After walking over to the Bandits’ compound to grab the car, it was a quick drive back over to Carl’s hotel, dropping the car off in the back lot before she headed back up to his room. She knocked on the door before opening it, finding him almost exactly where she left him, sitting on the bed.
“Jesus, you look like hell,” Carl muttered as he saw her.
“Yeah, well, been there, done that,” Fiona said with a shrug, dropping the car keys on the dresser.
“Are you coming back to me?” Carl asked slowly, looking up at her with heartbreaking hope in his eyes.
It hurt her to do it, but Fiona still shook her head, smiling sadly at him. “I belong here. In the city.”
Carl stared down at his lap, tapping his fingers on his legs. “With him?”
“Yes, yes, with him,” Fiona said honestly. “You knew that already. I…I want to apologize to you, Carl. I used you as a way to escape myself. It wasn’t fair to you at all. I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t mind it so much,” he said sheepishly, smiling up at her, the sadness in his eyes dimming a little bit.
“I did,” Fiona admitted. “It wasn’t you. It had nothing to do with you. I just…I need to be the person that I was, the person that I’ve always been. I need to stop hiding from myself. You understand that, right?”
“No,” Carl said, shaking his head. “But I guess that’s the whole problem right there, huh?”
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” Fiona said, slowly backing away from the bed. “It was nice knowing you, Carl. Be happy. Please. Be as happy as you can.”
“You, too,” Carl said as Fiona finally retreated for the room, going back down the stairs and out into the dark night. The darkness welcomed her like an old friend, and this time, she wasn’t scared of it. In fact, she wasn’t sure that she was scared of anything anymore.
# # #
Gage felt like he was on pins and needles, waiting for his body to be impaled at any moment. His leg was shaking furiously, his fingers continually moving over his phone screen to check if Fiona called to tell him that she was running away with Carl again. But instead, about an hour after he last saw her, he heard the front door of his apartment open. Fiona walked inside, looking like she hadn’t slept in about a million years.
“Hey, there, stranger,” she said as she walked over to sit beside him on the couch, groaning in pain before stuffing a pillow behind her back.
“Hello to you, too,” Gage said softly, reaching forward to put his hands on Fiona’s shoulders, finding them as tense and stiff as he expected.
“I need to sleep for like ten days straight,” Fiona sighed, leaning back into Gage’s touch. She whimpered a little as he dug his fingers into her skin, reaching under her shirt to get to her shoulder-blades.
“You deserve it,” Gage said softly, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to the top of Fiona’s head. He could practically feel her smile, even though he couldn’t see her face. He’d never felt this connected to her before, but there was still one thing nagging at the back of his mind, preventing him from relaxing fully.
“What were you going to say, in the woods, before I restrained Cash?” Gage asked.
“You already know the answer to that question,” Fiona said shyly, leaning forward to grab a mug full of water off the coffee table in front of the couch.
Gage bit down on his lip, rubbing at Fiona’s shoulders a little harder than before. “Still…” he whispered. “I mean, I know it’s asking a lot of you. You’ve been through enough today, but I’m…selfish, I guess. It’s who I am. You know that about me.”
“I do,” Fiona said, not disputing his own diagnosis of his personality. That made him smile a little, knowing that Fiona would always call him out on his flaws. “But I guess I can give you a pass this one time.”
“Yeah?” Gage prompted her, feeling his heart pick up in his chest as he sat completely still.
“Yeah,” Fiona said, her tone as light and casual as can be. “Because I love you. Always have.”
Gage couldn’t help himself, he had to crush Fiona into his body and wrap his arms around her waist to keep her as close to him as possible. “Jesus Christ, I fucking love you.”
Fiona turned her neck to kiss him, pressing their mouths together firmly before letting Gage’s tongue inside, massaging it with hers until he was moaning into her mouth. But she pulled back a minute later, probably wanting to avoid getting overly excited. She obviously wasn’t
in any position for their usual rough sex tonight, but that was okay. Gage could wait.
“I wasn’t even sure you were coming back, you know,” Gage said, thinking out loud as he traced his fingers over Fiona’s, dragging his nails gently over her skin.
Fiona shook her head and lightly smacked Gage on the thigh. “Nah. I couldn’t leave you. You should know that by now.”
“But…I mean, a year ago, you said you couldn’t take it anymore. I figured you meant me. How we met, working on that case years ago…I figured it’d be impossible for you to ever move past that, and that was why we couldn’t be together.”
“I’m not going to lie to you. We’ve got some tough roads ahead,” Fiona said. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know we’ll face it together. I can’t…I can’t be without you. It’s just not how I work. I hope that’s okay with you.”
“Of course it’s okay,” Gage said, hugging Fiona closer. “More than okay. But…if you need to leave the city, if you need to go somewhere else to feel better, to feel safer, we can do that. My job is wherever you want it to be.”
“What about the Bandits?” Fiona whispered, grasping back at Gage’s hands.
“They’re my club, my brothers,” Gage admitted. “But you’re my family.”
They were silent for a long moment, hugging each other tightly, before Fiona spoke again.
“I’m not ready to leave the city yet,” Fiona said. “There’s some stuff I got to work through, and I’m not going to be able to do it by running away. At least not yet.” She tapped her fingers on Gage’s hand, making his skin cells prickle with pleasure. “Will you help me? Work through all my shit, you know?”
“Of course,” Gage answered immediately. “Whatever it takes. I’m here for you, you know that.”
“And the opposite is true for you. I’m here for you. I know the past isn’t in the past, for either one of us. And we’ll face it together.”
“What do you mean?” Gage asked, even though he had a suspicion he knew what Fiona was going to say next.
“Abby’s diary,” Fiona whispered, turning around in Gage’s lap to face him, staring up at him with wide sincere eyes. “We’ll have to face it one day, sooner or later. I want to be there for you when you’re ready.”
Gage swallowed thickly, willing the words he knew he had to say to come out of his mouth without a fight. “I think I’m ready. Tonight,” he whispered.
“Okay, then,” Fiona said, smiling encouragingly at Gage. “Let’s read it. Together.”
“Okay,” Gage said, his voice trembling a little as he reached one hand out to grab Fiona’s again, bringing it to his mouth for a sweet kiss.
He walked into the other room to get Abby’s diary, his hands shaking as he wiped the covers clean of dust. Gage returned to the living room to sit next to Fiona on the couch, placing the diary down on both of their laps, staring at it for a long moment before tracing Abby’s name on the cover. “I have to let her go, right?” he whispered.
“No,” Fiona said, leaning in to kiss Gage’s neck. “You have to realize that she’s never left you. Not really.”
Gage exhaled forcefully and nodded, his blood rushing to his head as he lifted the cover, opening up to the first page, immediately recognizing his younger sister’s handwriting in purple ink across the pink page. “That’s my girl,” he whispered as he ran his finger along the first line of text.
“She always will be,” Fiona said, nestling in closer to Gage’s body. “And I will be, too.”
They didn’t know if they were going to be okay the next day or the day after that or the next week or the next year or the next decade. They had no idea what the future held, really. But sitting there together, clutching each other’s hands like it was the end of the world, they knew that they had each other, no matter how broken they were. And ultimately, that was all that mattered.
THE END
Free Bonus Book: BLAZE by Leah Wilde
Blaze
I'm going to use her, again and again, until I have what I want.
The look on her face when I kicked in the door was priceless.
Another day, another time, I might've laughed.
But not today. Not now.
There was business to take care of.
I cut right to the chase.
Ivan, my former business partner and mob boss extraordinaire, had tried to have me killed.
I'd survived the assassination attempt, but now, there was a Russian hitman locked up in the basement of the Kings of Hell clubhouse.
I needed someone to translate.
That's where she came in.
Her.
Julia Danvers, professor of Russian history and linguistics.
At first glance, I thought she was prim, proper, a princess in an ivory tower.
But every layer I peel away reveals something more.
Skin I want to stroke.
A body I want to squeeze.
A mouth I want to force wide open while she moans beneath me.
She doesn't belong in my world. She's far too fragile.
But I'm going to drag her, kicking and screaming…
…right into the heart of the blaze.
Chapter 1
Julia
“That’s it,” I said to myself as I put the last stack of folders on my new desk. I looked around my new office and felt a sense of pride. At just twenty-eight years old, I didn’t know anyone else who’d made it to my position.
In just a few short years, I had gone from being just a graduate student seeking my master’s degree in history to having worked my way up as a professor, and now a doctor of history at the University of Chicago. I had been granted the department chair position when I graduated with my PhD, and due to my continued research, I was now moving into my new office as a senior research fellow, meaning more pay, fewer courses, and a lot more field work.
“You’ve finally made it,” I said as I surveyed my new office.
Bookshelves lined the walls with cabinets underneath, running along the bottoms of the walls. Tall, floor-to-ceiling windows sat in the wall behind my new, dark wooden desk. They overlooked one of the campus courtyards. I had already filled most of the bookshelves up just from moving into the new office, and I still had a couple of boxes of books left. All of my paper files were stacked on my desk, waiting for a home.
The adrenaline of moving all of my stuff into the new office wore off, and I crashed into the thick, soft leather chair behind my desk. I sat and stared at the towers of folders on my desk and understood why some of the other young professors had pushed me so hard to get everything filed electronically. I was not looking forward to putting those files up.
I needed a break, a vacation. I needed to get out of the university and get back in the field. My focus was Russian history. From politics to religion, from the geographic and ideological isolation to the rich culture and language of the Russian people, I had immersed myself in anything and everything Russian.
And it had finally paid off!
I wanted to get out of the office and celebrate, but all of my research had left me short on friends to celebrate with. I felt like I should have been at a point where I could take some time for myself finally, but there didn’t seem to be much self to take time with. Everything I used to identify myself was sitting in the office with me.
I wanted to call my mom and to share the news, but she wouldn’t know I was even on the phone.
I stood up and walked to the window, looking down at the students and professors walking through the courtyard. Some were holding hands. Some had their arms around each other. I hoped one day that would be me, but I knew it was a long way out. I still had a lot of work ahead of me, and a lot of bills to pay between student loans and my mom’s medical expenses.
The reason I couldn’t call my mom was because she suffered from an early onset of Alzheimer’s, and it was advancing pretty rapidly. I’d moved her into a home while I was still working on my PhD. She requi
red almost constant care, and as a student and research professor, I hadn’t been able to provide the kind of care she needed.
At times I found it easy to feel guilty, like I’d chosen my career over my family. But I reminded myself that she’d done the same, waiting until her late-twenties to settle down and start a family of her own, waiting until she had established herself as a doctor of linguistics.
I kept a picture of her on my wall from the day she graduated with her PhD, one of the proudest moments of her life. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. On a trip to Russia when I was a child, while she was studying some of the lesser known Eastern European languages that had re-emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, I’d heard someone trying to talk to her in Russian, and I fell in love with the language. That was the beginning of my lifelong love affair with the people and their country, a country shrouded in mystery for most of my peers who had never visited it, thanks to the Cold War.
