by M. O’Keefe
The dog in front of me whined in its throat as if the thing could tell I was freaking out.
“Why do you have a dog?” I asked.
“Come here, Pest,” the driver said, and just like that the tiny little rat dog tried to climb up over the middle console.
“Can you give her a boost?” the guy asked and I gave the dog a little shove up and over the middle console and she tumbled into the passenger seat. What is going on? “That better?” the man asked, and I met his gaze in the rearview mirror. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t seem to have a choice. Those eyes were magnetic. And familiar?
“Sorry if she was bothering you.”
“What kind of driver brings their dog?”
“She’s a working dog.”
“Are you blind?” Sarcasm was my lifeboat in a storm.
“Social anxiety.” The curl of his lip said that he got the joke.
“Whatever,” I muttered, looking out the window, refusing to acknowledge the humor. “Where are we?”
“Arizona.”
“Why?”
He was silent for a long time and then shrugged. “You called me, Jada.”
“I gave you the address?”
He nodded.
I didn’t know anything about anything in Arizona. Except there were fancy spas in Arizona. And I’d been spending time with the kinds of people who went to fancy spas in Arizona. Had I decided at some point last night that what I needed was to get away from everyone and everything and eat some organic salmon and sit in some mud? Maybe get myself off some of the shit Dr. John was giving me?
That sounded like an excellent idea. I hoped last-night me did exactly that. It would be a relief to actually go ahead and believe that. But I couldn’t.
My mom was in the picture again, and I couldn’t trust anything.
“Can I use your phone?”
“For what?”
“To call someone.” Beth would be freaking out; we didn’t go a day without talking. Barely went three hours without talking. “I don’t have my phone.” Or my purse. Or my shoes.
Why would I leave without my stuff? My laptop? I didn’t go anywhere without my laptop.
“I can’t…I can’t do that,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“We’re on a time frame,” he said. “I can’t have you throwing off the time frame.”
That reeked of bullshit.
“I’m paying you, aren’t I? It’s my time frame. Give me your goddamn phone.”
“Nope.”
Was I being…kidnapped? I mean, I had no experience with that. Katy Perry told me a story once that scared the bejesus out of me, but so far none of my fans had gotten too weird.
This felt weird. Really weird.
I sprang up from the seat, and it must have been too fast, because my head went all swimmy and my stomach tried to crawl up my throat.
The nighty-night shot was a real problem in the morning.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes pinning me to the seat through the rearview mirror. That was some potent eye contact.
“I think… I’m going to be sick.”
And just like that Sam, my potential kidnapper, pulled over to the side of the road, gravel crunching under the wheels of the car. The car was barely in park before I had the door popped open. The fresh air cleared my head enough that I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to puke.
We were surrounded by the high desert, nothing but dirt and cactus and scrub for miles. The breeze that blew in smelled hot and sandy.
It certainly looked like Arizona.
Sam opened the front door of the car and came to stand in my open door. I looked up, closing one eye as the sun gave him a halo effect around his head and blinded me. I tried—I really did try not to notice how solid he was. How lean and thick at the same time. I imagined under that coffee-stained shirt, he was all muscle.
He didn’t look like a driver. At all.
“Are you kidnapping me, Sam?” I asked. He opened his mouth to answer, to no doubt say something about being a driver or just following my orders, but this whole thing felt wrong. “And cut the bullshit.”
“Kidnapping,” he finally said, like he was really sorry about it, “is a really strong word.”
I sucked in air, my head reeling.
Shit. Shitshitshitshit.
“If it makes you feel any better, you said you wanted to leave that house.”
“No, Sam, it doesn’t make me feel better. Did you happen to notice I was out of my mind at the time?”
He nodded, his ears were red and I realized maybe coming at my kidnapper with my claws extended was not the best call.
“Are you… are you a fan?” I tried to smile, to make this normal. I mean, I watched Nashville; I knew the script.
“No,” he said with a dry laugh. “I’m sorry to say, I am not.”
Shit. That wasn’t in the script.
“Are you doing this for money?” I asked. “Because whatever you’re being paid… I can double it. Triple it.” That was unlikely. For being one of the biggest names in music at the moment, I had no money. Not real money. I had money my manager gave me like an allowance. Or he paid for things—like Dr. John and food. Parties. Drugs.
Beth was sure I was getting ripped off.
“I’m doing this because I don’t have a choice,” he said.
“Everyone has a choice.” I tried to smile, but it didn’t feel convincing. Not having a choice was something I understood.
Some people just had choices taken from them.
Some gave them away.
Some didn’t even know what choice looked like.
And I’d been all three of those people at different parts of my life.
“Do you remember me?” he asked like if I remembered him, this would all make sense.
“Yes, you’re Sam the Driver.” Slash kidnapper.
But he wasn’t. It was obvious. There was something so much bigger going on.
Oh God, what was I supposed to say? About a million times in the last seven months I’d wished there was some kind of handbook for this life I’d been thrust into. And this, dealing with crazy, kidnapping non-fans—it would be nice to know what to do.
“You don’t remember me,” he said, his voice not sad or mad or anything.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He smiled, just a little, with like one-quarter of his mouth. The dimple flickered but didn’t commit. “It’s better that way.”
“I can tell.”
The air cleared my head, and I took giant breaths of it, stalling while trying to figure out what to do.
The car was still running.
Before I’d fully thought it out, I was over the console and into the front seat. I had one foot on the gas and my hand on the gear shift when my lap was suddenly full of dog. Or rat or whatever. She had her paws on my shoulders, her snaggletooth practically in my face.
I was stunned.
And that stunned moment was all my kidnapper needed to reach in the open door of the front seat and take the key out of the ignition.
“Pest,” he said. “Scoot.”
The dog licked me before jumping over to the passenger seat. Kidnapper crouched down in the open door, and I couldn’t look at him—I was about to cry and I wouldn’t be giving him that kind of satisfaction.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked, hating that my voice shook.
“It’s… it’s a long story. Beth—”
He stopped. I stilled. Chills ran down my arms. Across my whole body.
No one called me Beth. No one had in a long time. I wasn’t Beth anymore. Hadn’t been for years. Legally and everything.
“How do you know my name?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I…it was an accident.”
“Bullshit!” I cried, looking at him, feeling wild and at the edge of something. Something I didn’t want to be at the edge of.
I could only take him in in half glances. Tiny glances. The
dimple. The sky-blue color of his eyes. His broad shoulders under that white shirt. He filled up the space of the open car door, and I didn’t stand a chance against his size. I couldn’t push him or shove him or hurt him.
He could swat me down like a fly.
I couldn’t even win against his dog.
And he knew my name. My real name.
“I promise you,” he said. “You will not be hurt.”
He reached for my face as if to wipe away a tear, and I flinched so hard I hit my head against the headrest, knocked my elbow into the dog, who barked.
“Don’t—” I had my hand up like there was a chance I could stop him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t... I’m…sorry.”
Kidnapper was easing back, and I took the moment and shoved him as hard as I could, throwing him off-balance enough that he fell to the ground on his ass. I put one bare foot against the door frame and launched myself out of the car.
It was dawn, so the asphalt wasn’t hot as I ran across the road for the desert and scrub grass beyond it. There was barbed wire and probably snakes and tons of other shit that could take me down and ruin my escape. But it was this or stay a prisoner, and I’d been a prisoner before.
I’d been a prisoner most of my goddamned life.
No way was I doing that again.
I ran as balls-out as I could, the gravel biting into the bottoms of my feet. I’d hit the gulley beside the road when he yelled;
“Stop. Jesus. Beth!”
I felt him there, just behind me. His heat and his size and then his hand on my shoulder and he was yanking me around, grabbing me. He had my arms pinned against my sides so I couldn’t hit him, but I screamed and kicked and tried to head butt him. When that didn’t work, I leaned forward and, swallowing my revulsion, sank my teeth into his shoulder. I bit as hard as I could and he swore a blue streak but he didn’t let me go. He crossed the road back to the car and practically threw me in the backseat.
“Pest,” he said, and the dog was suddenly there like my prison warden.
Kidnapper stood up and looked at the bite I’d given him, his body in the way of any escape I might make.
“Jesus,” he yelled. “You fucking bit me.”
“I’ll do it again, asshole.”
“I don’t fucking doubt it. What are you thinking, running off like that? You don’t have any shoes!”
I blinked, disoriented by his concern about my shoes. But only for a minute.
“Whose fault is that?” I yelled.
“Mine,” he said. “It’s mine.”
The futility of all of this washed over me. I was strung out and suddenly starving, and I didn’t have any goddamned shoes.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this.” I was furious and near tears and at the end of whatever rope I used to have.
“Neither do I. I’m sorry. I really am.”
“You’re working for someone?”
“Sort of.”
My heart rate spiked, and adrenaline cleared my head. I’d bite him, I’d beat him, whatever I needed to do to stay away from the only person I knew who would go to this kind of trouble to get me back in their life. “You are working for my mother!”
“I’m not,” he said. “I swear on Pest’s life that I’m not.”
“What’s your name? Your real name.”
“Does it matter?”
“Well, in my head I’m calling you the Kidnapper, so if you’re okay with that?"
“Tom,” he said and took a deep breath. “My friends call me Tommy.”
Tommy.
That name. The dimples…
It was like my heart stopped. It was like the earth stopped.
I pushed my hair out of my eyes and looked at him. Really looked at him. And he looked back at me like he knew what was happening in my head. My body.
I knew a Tommy once. A long time ago.
He’d changed me. Changed everything.
But this guy…he didn’t look like the boy I’d known.
He looked like the boy I’d known, all grown-up and fed and cared for.
He was Tommy magnified.
“No,” I said. Shaking my head, denying the truth even as it stared me in the face with it’s blue Viking eyes. “That’s… you’re impossible.”
“I’m sorry. I really…I’m sorry.”
Tommy had been skinny and tall. All bones over taut white skin. This man was a giant.
“Oh my God…” I breathed, all the memories I’d shoved behind doors and under beds spilling out from their hiding places. “Tommy?”
10
Beth
My mom took me to a hypnotherapist after St. Joke’s. She said she wanted me to shed light on all the memories, to bring them out into the open so they couldn’t fester. We needed to talk, she told me. We needed to process.
I wasn’t entirely sure what she needed to process as she hadn’t been there, but I didn’t put up a fight when she took me to this doctor’s office with this big leather couch and a fire in the fireplace and when he said to relax all my muscles one at at time starting at my feet – I did the opposite.
I tightened. I clenched. I became hard and solid and impenetrable.
I made myself my own armor. And it hurt. And it ached.
But it kept me safe.
Because I knew after Tommy, I couldn’t expect another Tommy. There was only one. Which meant I had to protect myself.
The hypnotherapist told my mom after one week that I wasn’t a good candidate for hypnosis. And mom took that as a challenge. Shit got real after that, but the armor only got thicker. Stronger.
It had kept me safe from a lot of shit.
But now… right now…it was gone. And I was all weakness and soft under belly. I was memory and grief and a longing that hurt.
I tried to be strong, clinging to my Jada persona, but she vanished with the shock.
I was fucking Beth.
And in front of me was the only person I’d ever loved.
“Look at you,” I breathed, feeling myself smile.
A smile crossed his face, and it was so familiar, so beloved, tears filled my eyes.
“Someone fed you.” He nodded, and my gaze ran laps around his body, over and over again, looking for pieces I’d missed. “You’re a man.”
“You’re a…” he almost said woman, I knew it, in that way I’d always been able to know what he was thinking, but he swallowed the word down and instead said; “singer. An artist. I knew…I knew you’d be something amazing.”
I nearly laughed. I was far from amazing.
How could I forget those eyes? I’d taken one look at them and fallen so hard and so fast it was like I’d become a different person. Someone I didn’t recognize. Someone I’d never been before. Confident and funny. Alive, all the way down to the ends of my hair.
The foster home had been a horror show, but somehow…I’d found myself there. I’d found happiness. A kind of innocent desire, a healthy lust.
When I found Tommy.
Was it possible to forget the person you first really revealed yourself to? Or did he just get woven into my skin. My hair. Part of the person I became and every costume I wore after that.
Tommy.
He crouched in the open doorway, blocking the new light of the sun.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. “Your feet?”
My feet could be bleeding. They could be missing and I wouldn’t feel it.
I had a thousand questions. Important ones about why I was in this car and what he’d been doing the last seven years and did he think about me. Did he miss me?
Like I’d missed him?
But instead I said—stupidly—“I thought you hated dogs?”
It’s what he’d said years ago, during one of those long conversations at school. When we couldn’t learn enough about each other.
“Dogs or cats?” I’d asked.
“Neither,” he’d said. “I don’t want another thing to worry about.”
His smile, crooked and patchwork with the dimple and the chapped lips—it made me suck in a breath.
“Pest is barely a dog.”
I remembered, in a sudden full-body memory, the second he and Simon and Carissa came through that office door seven years ago. I’d been fighting the Pastor with all my strength, and in that second, when they burst in, I stopped fighting. Every muscle went soft. Every fist relaxed.
I gave up and nearly blacked out from the relief.
The exact opposite of the hypnotherapist.
Tommy would take care of me, I’d thought.
It was the first time I ever thought that about anyone.
And the last.
And I wanted to hug him. I wanted to pull him as close as I could to my body. I wanted to hold him in the cradle of my legs and rub my hands over his hair and let him kiss my freckles. I wanted to be that girl. And I wanted him to be that boy. And for a moment, just a moment, this wasn’t a kidnapping.
It was a fairy tale.
“Tommy,” I breathed. “You’re here. I never… I never thought I’d see you again.” And I reached for him. For his face. Beautiful and familiar.
But his smile vanished and he jerked back, away from my touch.
“Don’t—” he said and turned away, his ears bright red.
“Don’t what?”
He swallowed.
“Touch you?” I asked, my voice strained and tight.
“Remember,” he said.
“Don’t remember you? Are you joking?”
“Don’t think about the past,” he said. “I’m not. This is just…this is a job. That’s all.”
Once upon a time we’d jeopardized everything to touch each other, and now… I didn’t even understand what he was saying. Don’t remember? Was he crazy?
How was this happening? After all these years?
Oh, that’s right, because fairy tales weren’t real. They were tricks played on girls like Beth. To keep us quiet and calm, to preoccupy us with dreams of boys and rescue so we wouldn’t get on our feet and rescue ourselves.
And the boy I’d known had grown up to be a man who could take unconscious women out of their homes without shoes, or ID or phones.
I smacked him. I smacked Tommy so hard it sounded like a gunshot. I smacked him so hard we both jerked back.
I swallowed my apology, cupping my stinging palm in my hand. His face was turning red.
