My lungs closed in panic when Frank picked up a small net. “Let’s see how many little fuckers it takes to take you out.”
“Frank!” I begged, flattening myself to the wall as if it would make me invisible when he dipped the net into the barrel and caught one of the very things my body couldn’t endure. It didn’t matter how many bees Frank set on me, ten or a hundred, it would only take the sting of one to turn my blood to concrete and my throat to swell so much that my windpipe would be crushed under it.
“You took him from me, Miss Carlson. You don’t deserve to live. He was the happiest, most amazing little boy. He loved me. The only thing in my life that fucking loved me!”
“I’m sorry,” I pleaded, my eyes fixed on the movement of the net as he swung it around, making it angry and looking for revenge.
I was going to die. It was that simple. Yet, for some reason, that only saddened me more when I thought of Anderson. He’d lost his wife so horrifically. Sam had never even been held by the arms of a mother. And now I couldn’t give either of them those things. I couldn’t tell Anderson that I loved him. Because I did. I’d fallen feet first into the depths of his soul, and I’d seen the most beautiful spirit that he kept contained in the barricades around his heart.
Tears rolled over my cheeks when the bee escaped the confines of the net, its angry buzzing like an air-raid siren to my nerve endings.
I couldn’t move. Panic numbed my limbs and my lungs as my eyes followed it around the room.
It settled on a window and for a brief moment I managed to draw breath into my lungs.
However, that was short-lived when Frank finally lost any conscience he may have had left. “Oh, fuck it!” he growled – as he kicked over the barrel.
Fifteen
Anderson
Why the hell weren’t they moving in?
From the few witnesses in the park, the police had managed to locate Frank Kingston’s car and find the rundown empty house he’d holed himself up in with Jeanie.
Zainab had refused to tell me anything, but she couldn’t stop me following her when her and a team of coppers tore out of the police department car park. Did she really think I wouldn’t be waiting? She didn’t make a very good cop if that was the case.
Each cop hid out of sight, much like me really. I wanted to tear in there and kill the motherfucker with my bare hands, and going by the hesitancy of the police, it wouldn’t be long before I was doing exactly that.
I’d only ever felt this helpless once before and I swore this time it would end differently.
They didn’t even see me when I edged around the side of the small brick building, the gun in my hands feeling heavier than it actually was.
I couldn’t lose Jeanie now. Not now I had let her creep inside me and soothe my raging soul. Just her presence was like a balm to the furious grief that tightened a band around my chest. The last few weeks with Jeanie had been the oxygen my blood needed to flow with, the pulse my heart needed to keep beating.
I’d never expected to fall in love again, and I never expected for it to feel so right, so easy. But I had, and the fear inside me now was the only thing keeping me from falling to my knees and weeping.
I was surprised to find the back door ajar. The rotting wood fell apart when I quietly placed my hand on it and pushed it open. My stomach vaulted at the rancid smell, and I jumped back when a rat, disturbed by my entrance, ran under a decrepit cupboard in the corner of the room. If Frank didn’t kill Jeanie, the germs in the place would.
The kitchen door led to a dark hallway, and it only took a couple of steps in before I heard a commotion behind the last door.
Jeanie’s scream registered and instinct kicked in.
“Jesus. Fuck!” I shouted, flapping at the space around me, when I kicked the door down and I was bombarded with a swarm of bees.
It took a split second to figure out what was going on, just as Zainab and her team, closely followed by two paramedics, tore from the same direction I had come from.
Shouts, screams, and a blur of figures filled every inch of the room. But I could only focus on Jeanie, who was slumped in the corner of the room with a mass of bees crawling all over her.
Sixteen
Jeanie
I swore I’d actually been runover by a bus, I groaned and tried to move the mask from my face. My arms wouldn’t work, flopping helplessly to the side.
“Hey.” The sound of his voice instantly soothed me as he removed the mask for me, and I forced my swollen eyes to open.
It didn’t make sense. I was still alive. Well, that or Anderson had joined me in hell.
He smiled and ran his thumb very gently over my cheek. “You were lucky.”
Lucky.
“Zainab found out that Frank had bought a hive of bees from some shady fuck. It didn’t make sense to her at first, until she found out you’re allergic to bees. The paramedics had been on standby as soon as they raided the building.”
A memory slipped into my head of the door bursting open and Anderson stood flapping at the bees, just as I’d taken the last easy breath. He’d come for me. He’d got to me right before the police.
Tears sprung in my eyes and Anderson cupped my cheek. “Sweetheart, don’t cry, your body is too sore for me to hold you.”
But he didn’t need to hold me to show me his compassion. Every bit of his gentleness was conveyed in the way he looked at me, the way his thumb softly stroked over my cheekbone, and how he gnawed on his bottom lip as if in pain.
“How long…?”
He shook his head. “Don’t talk, your throat is still too sore. The doctors had to induce a coma while your body healed.”
“Fr…”
“Frank is gone. He’s been refused bail, and he isn’t going anywhere near you again.”
Although relief flooded my body, I was still sad. Grief had made Frank into a monster, and I couldn’t help but still feel guilty for that. But it would be something that I would have to learn to live with. And I knew, with Anderson by my side, that I would.
The door opened and Robbie walked in with Sam, who grinned wildly at me.
“Jeanie!”
My heart swelled at the sound of my name from this adorable little boy. When more tears pricked my eyes, Anderson winked at me. “We’ve been practising.”
“Jeanie,” Sam repeated. “Jeanie! Poo!”
“Dear God,” Anderson grumbled, “Is that all you ever do, cookie monster?”
If I could have laughed, then I would have. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it would only get worse.
“I’ll take him,” Robbie laughed, about-turning and walking back out.
Anderson took my hand, the only place that wasn’t sore from stings, and brought it softly to his lips. “I need to say something. I know you’ll probably think I’m crazy, but I’ve learned the hard way to say how I feel.”
The seriousness on his face made my gut churn anxiously. I should have known the feelings were one-sided.
“I love you, Jeanie Carlson,” he declared so matter-of-factly that my eyes widened in surprise. “We’re all so fragile. So easily life can change at the blink of an eye, and you have to grab everything hard if you want it. I want you.” He shrugged. “I want you. I promised myself that I would never keep something inside that shouldn’t be locked up…” He smirked. “Well, apart from bees, that is.”
I squeezed his hand and scowled at him, surprised at the strength I had in me.
His eyes twinkled with mischief and he gently pressed his lips to mine. “I love you, and I don’t care if you don’t say it back. I have to say it.”
Through the swell in my throat, and through the agony that scorched my voice box, they were the easiest four words I had ever spoken. “I love you too.”
Anderson had been broken in so many different ways. And it was time he was loved in many more ways. He was right, life and love should be grabbed by the horns. Love should be the easiest emotion we ever felt, the easiest lesson w
e ever learned.
And over the coming years, we felt and learned so much together. But we always loved, more so than others.
We always loved.
The End
Bound: A Caged Novella Page 7
