You Own Me (Owned Book 1)

by Mary Catherine Gebhard

  Yeah, there are people who do that—arrive three whole hours early. Why on earth they do that, I don't know. Let me tell you right now, there is no secret party before the party. All that's going on is a million different small fires that everyone is putting out.

  When you show up early, you officially make yourself one of those fires. Luckily I anticipated that, so I set aside a small room with hors d'oeuvres and ambient music. The room was already full. What the fuck is wrong with people? The card said 7:30 p.m., not 4:30 p.m.

  As we rolled closer to 7:30 p.m., the crowds started piling up. I moved the people from the early-bird room back outside. They were not happy about that. They assumed arriving early meant that they got to be a VIP. No, sorry. Being a very important person makes you VIP, not arriving early.

  We were ready by 7:15, so the party doors opened early. The band was scheduled to start at 8:00 p.m., so until then, it would be up to the crowd to choose how they wanted to be entertained—there were a lot of choices.

  For example, in one room, I had fortune tellers replete with crystal balls, and beeswax candles.

  Another room was pitch black; it was a sensory deprivation room—I thought the Regal guests would like it. I had it stocked with a large selection of gourmet food strategically placed throughout, and piped in experimental music that used only organic sounds. I was hoping that everyone was mature enough to use the room in the way it was supposed to be used, rather than having sex in it.

  As the people rolled in, there faces a mix of excitement and apathy, I held my breath. This was it.

  I could come right here; the party was going so well. It wasn't just that it was doing well, but that I had had only three weeks to pull it off and it was doing better than any party I'd ever thrown. I love challenges, and this challenge I had taken, claimed, and made my own. That feeling of accomplishment was really orgasmic.

  The black room was a hit. People were leaving the room looking like they'd had a spiritual experience.

  The live band was also very popular. It was an indie band that played a mix of old school rock and Romani music. Their sound had a sexual, ghostly quality, which was why I'd picked them. They were going places far beyond my venue.

  The Regal crowd loved the music and attractions. It was all very indie and hipster, but with just the right amount of opulence.

  I hadn't had a minute to actually enjoy myself. When I glanced at the clock and saw it was nearly 10:30 p.m., I almost passed out. The party had lasted three hours without any problems. At exactly 10:45 p.m., I took a break (considering I hadn't eaten since I started planning the damn party). Everything was going smoothly, so I knew no one was going to miss me. I wanted to see the party for myself. Starting with the black room.

  It wasn't as crowded as earlier in the evening. Most of the party-goers had gravitated away from the sideshows toward the bar or dance floor. So when I went in I wasn't bumping into other people (which I'd heard was a problem before). You couldn't actually see how crowded it was in the black room since it was, you know, black, but you could feel everyone. By the time I got there, however, it was pretty empty. Eerily, so.

  I gravitated toward the chocolate-covered fruit. The food was placed on lighted pedestals giving the appearance that the food was floating amidst the dark room. I took a big bite of a strawberry, letting the juices hit the back of my throat. I understood how people compared this to a spiritual experience. There was something transcendental about standing in complete darkness with only your thoughts to guide you.

  Two hands placed themselves on the sides of my waist. I tried to jump away, ready to give the pervert a piece of my mind.

  “Who the hell—” I was shocked into silence as the hands seized my sides and pulled me toward a body. My sense of smell was heightened, and through smell alone I recognized the culprit immediately. Dark, earthy, and sexual.

  “Vic?” I asked the darkness. I was breaking one of the rules in the black room: no talking.

  I recognized those hands. I recognized the smell. I recognized that energy. It was like when I stuck my hand on a Van de Graaff generator at the science museum and my whole body tingled. My breathing labored and my heart palpitated.

  Dehydrated. Starving. My body missed him like he was an essential life-force. Fuck the party, fuck the rules, fuck whatever I was doing before I felt his hands. I needed him like an alcoholic needed a drink. No. I needed him like a dying woman needed water. I had said no to Vic. I was a dying woman who had said no to water.

  Vic didn't respond to my question. I felt his hands slide inside the back opening of my dress and circle around to my exposed breasts. I heard his breath hitch when he realized I wasn't wearing a bra. The dress didn't allow for one—it had an entirely open back. All my thoughts flew out the window when he thumbed my right nipple. I leaned back into his chest and his arms wrapped entirely around me, as if I might run away. I wouldn't run away, I never wanted to leave. I wanted time to stop and for us to always be like this, together in this black room where all realities seemed possible.

  Time stopped for us. He held me and I let him. I forgot about the rules I had put in place to protect myself, and I forgot about the thick fog he’d put around his heart. All we did was breathe in each other during those perfect minutes we were together in the black room. Nothing was tugging and pulling, it was simple.

  Then he pulled away, slowly, as if he were savoring every second. I let him pull away. I let him take pieces of my heart with him. The black room won’t change anything, just like dreams at night don’t change the day’s realities. Just because I didn't stop him, though, doesn't mean I didn't feel utterly and bone-crushingly hollow when he was gone. A figment of the black.

  I left the black room feeling a strange dichotomy of invigoration and sluggishness. It was like walking through mud after having your heart shocked with an AED. Everything in my body screamed to turn around and run after Vic. He was a drug; I couldn't quit him. My body told me I needed him, and my mind told me it wasn't a good idea. Just when I thought I was getting over my Vic addiction, he showed up to remind me how much in my system he was. It was never going to be a quick fix with Vic. Vic was the kind of drug that you tried once and sent you spiraling for years.

  I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Dean.

  Thoughts and words scrambled in my brain like reporters running around after a breaking story. No one knew what to do but everyone knew they had something to do.

  Dean?

  I could see his face in the crowd, staring at me. He was here. I grabbed hold of the nearest support—a tall man—and blinked, shaking my head trying to see more clearly.

  Dean!

  “Excuse me?” The man I was using as a support looked at me warily.

  I let go of the man and walked toward the direction where I had seen Dean.

  But he wasn't there anymore. Had I really seen him? It had been a long night, Dean had been on my mind—was always on my mind, and I'd just left a sensory deprivation room. I stared at the spot I'd seen him, or thought I'd seen him; I was willing his face to appear only so I would know if I’d been hallucinating or if it had really been him. Nothing. Only random masked faces walked back and forth, and none of them with Dean’s musculature.

  I fell into my apartment and onto my bed. I didn't bother changing. It felt too good to face plant on the bed.

  Not wishing to suffocate in my sleep, I turned my head to the side. The slow, blinking light of my laptop on the nightstand reminded me that I had forgotten to turn off the computer. “What a waste of battery,” I muttered to myself, reaching for my laptop.

  I opened the laptop to shut it down when an email alert bubbled up. Stupid Bethany, never letting me sleep. I did everything I was supposed to do and yet she still emails me in the middle of the night—

  The words died in my head. Why do I even bother thinking anyone nice emails me?

  There was a picture attached to the email. I was smiling, alone, and watching something in th
e distance. It was definitely me and it was definitely from tonight.

  My stomach fell out of my butt.

  I couldn't process the fact that Dean had figured out a way to bypass the block Zoe had put on his email. I was too busy freaking out.

  It was hard to breathe. My lungs were shrinking. It was like I was in outer space and my spacesuit had been punctured. Air was leaking out and cold, nothingness was seeping in. I clutched my bed sheets like they were a life preserver. I knew what this was. It was a panic attack. Anxiety and fear overwhelmed me. As my body took in less oxygen, my fear grew.

  I let out a rasping breath, gulping for air like a drowning man. I tried to tell myself it wasn't real.

  I was okay.

  It wasn't real.

  I was okay. Nothing was wrong with me. I wasn't dying. I was just freaking out. The more I focused on it, the more panicked I became. I fell back on my bed and stared at the ceiling. It was getting even harder to breath and I knew I was going to pass out soon.

  Rationally, I knew that if I passed out I wouldn't die. I would wake up and everything would be okay. I wasn't thinking rationally, though.

  Right now I couldn't breathe.

  I felt like I was dying.

  I sat up and coughed loudly and forcefully.

  When I was living with Dean, before his brain broke, I'd had a panic attack and stopped breathing. He'd given me the Heimlich maneuver in an attempt to restart my breathing. It worked.

  I miss Dean. I mean, I miss the pre-insanity Dean. Lately, I've been wondering if he has schizophrenia. I read that it can develop later in life. It would explain a lot about his weird behavior. If he does have schizophrenia, then the way I handled things had been all wrong. I should have gotten him help or had him committed, not run away and filed a restraining order. Dean doesn't have any family. Dean doesn't have any friends. I was all he had and I had abandoned him, maybe when he needed me most. I was so angry that he cheated on me and beat me that I hadn’t stopped to consider that something might be horribly wrong with Dean.

  Ugh, this feeling—of what, guilt?-was not helping the situation.

  Anyway, back to the coughing. I couldn't give myself the Heimlich because I'm pretty sure if I fell onto a chair back, all I would succeed in doing is giving myself internal bleeding. Coughing though . . . if I coughed long enough and hard enough, I might trick my body into breathing properly. So I here I was, coughing so hard I thought I’d induce vomiting.

  I almost passed out, but I didn’t. I made it through. I fell backward on my bed and let red and white polka dots dance across my vision. And then, because I'm a sadist, I began to think again about the email, over and over. It couldn't be true.

  But it was.

  Dean was there tonight. I had seen him. Mentally ill or not, he had been fucking there. The whole time. Watching me. I wasn't safe.

  When I woke up, I considered filing a police report; however, the morning sun was bright, and I felt safer. Still, I knew the feeling of safety would be short lived. Dean was out there lurking and waiting for me. He was waiting for the perfect moment to strike and do God knows what to me. It wasn’t a pretty notion.

  Let’s be real, a police report wouldn’t help me. That flimsy piece of paper was about as useful to me as an umbrella against a crashing meteor. I needed Dean behind bars or institutionalized. I need him away from me. I didn’t need an entire room full of files on Dean, which, at this rate, was what was going to happen. I’d already gone to the police once; and they told me to come back when I was dead—well, not in so many words, but close.

  I felt stupidly helpless. All I could do was sit in my apartment and think. Think about my fate, think about my zero options, and think about how I had gotten here. Naturally, my mind wandered to Vic.

  Vic had been at the party last night. True, I hadn’t seen him with my eyes, but I had felt him, smelled him, been held by him. How did a landlord received an invitation to the most prestigious party in Santa Barbara? I don’t know. The more I learn about Vic, the more I realize he’s not just a landlord. Hell, he’s not just a man. He’s so much more. He’s Vic Wall. Infuriating, enigmatic, and captivating.

  I hate him.

  I love him.

  I really fucking love him.

  I don’t want him in my life right now, but I need him. I’ve never known a person who enthralls me so much. That’s the word: thrall. I’m in his thrall. I can’t stop thinking about him. Despite the fact that I was the one to put the moratorium on our friendship, or fuckship, whatever it was, I still can’t stop thinking about him.

  Vic is in my dreams. He’s in my reality. He’s in my head when I brush my teeth, and he’s in my mind when I put a potato in the microwave. I can’t stop thinking about him. I Google him at least twice a day, hoping there’s something concrete I can read about him. There’s nothing, of course. He’s a mystery.

  That’s not why I love him, though. I’m not in love with the mystery. I’m in love with the security he wraps around me. I’m in love with the fact that every time we’re together I smile. I’m in love with the fact that he doesn’t bullshit, even if it hurts my feelings. He’s the only man I’ve met, nay, person who could tell me I’m stupid and I wouldn’t argue. Every brazen word he says is thought-out and articulate. He isn’t a dick for the sake of being a dick; he’s a dick because he says the truth.

  Still, he would never call me stupid. In fact, sometimes he’s the only one who says I’m smart. Brilliant. Intelligent. All adjectives Vic has used to describe me. He doesn’t compliment me to boost my ego; he just says what he believes is true. And he makes me believe it’s true.

  I love him.

  None of that matters. My love, my reasons for love, and my dreams of us; because he doesn’t love me. Vic has made that perfectly clear. Which is what I should want, right? If we were to consider the pros and cons of a romantic relationship between me and Vic, the cons would win out.

  The cons: I’m only in Santa Barbara until the Dean situation dies out. Oh yeah, Dean; he’s a pretty big negative. Not to mention that Vic and I don’t know much about each other; we had built our foundation with blindfolds on.

  Hmmm, I can only think of one pro, and it’s a big pro: Vic is my other half. It’s like I was wandering around missing a big chunk of my soul, and then I stumbled upon the other part of the puzzle. How am I supposed to walk away from that? Knowing my other half exists, how am I supposed to keep living as half of a whole? Especially when the answer to my completeness is literally living in my building?

  I don’t know. I’ve been saying “I don’t know” a lot since Vic. I’ve never felt so empty and so uncertain before.

  Someone knocked at my door. I ignored it; it was early evening so it was too late for the delivery man, and I wasn’t interested in any neighborly visitors. Dean was closing in, so I’d decided the smartest thing to do was to not answer random knocks.

  I’d also decided it was smart to not leave my apartment. Did I mention I had the day off? Well, I did call in sick this morning, but that’s close enough. Every now and then, my rational side takes over and so I decided my life is more important than a stupid job that I had worked irrationally hard to achieve. So, yeah, I’m stuck in my apartment until Dean gets tired of chasing me or I become nothing save dust and bones.

  My money is on dust and bones.

  The knocking at my door increased in pace and volume. My heart rate started to speed up as well. I reached for my smartphone, ready to dial 911. This could be it.

  The pounding at my door stopped, but in its place I could hear muffled voices. I went to the door, trying to hear the voices. Maybe it was Zoe. Maybe it was delivery food gone to the wrong place (score!).

  “Do it!” I heard a male voice say.

  Dean.

  My intestines turned to ice. I couldn’t move. Was this the flight or fight instinct everyone talked about? If so, it was poorly named; they should call it stand-in-one-spot-and-look-like-an-idiot.

  “No
!” I recognized that voice instantly: Zoe! I opened my door without hesitation.

  Dean had Zoe and it was all my fault.

  Zoe’s eyes bulged when she saw me. She was squirming in Dean’s grasp. Instinctually, I reached for her.

  “Nox, no! This is what he wants! Close the door and call the police!”

  Dean threw Zoe against the wall. I screamed, watching her body fall on the ground—she was out cold. I reached for her, but Dean shoved me backward into my apartment and I landed on the floor. Dean stepped through the doorway and gave the door a quick kick to close it; my door made an eerily final thunk as it latched closed.

  “Miss me?” Dean asked, leering down at me. He grinned so wide he resembled a crazed baboon. “God, do you know what a stupid bitch you are?”

  I stared up at Dean. His words made no sense. He made no sense. I couldn’t grasp that he was in my apartment.

  “You ran away from me and went to my family.”

  I stared at him nonplussed. What in the fuck was he talking about?

  “Huh? What?” My words felt like thick molasses on my tongue.

  I stared past his legs at my closed door. Zoe was outside unconscious. I needed to get to her.

  “Poor little Lennox runs from the big bad Dean all the way to California, only to seek refuge with Dean’s sister,” Dean said. He punctuated his words by kicking me in the thigh. I winced at the impact but tried to focus on his words. Dean has a sister?

  “Who?” I asked. “Who is your sister?” I mentally ran through every female I knew in Santa Barbara like I was sifting through a Rolodex. It couldn’t be Zoe, so it could only be Claire, Lissie, or Bethany.

  “It’s Bethany,” I said, realization dawning on me.

  Dean nodded viciously. “Not as stupid as you seem, Lennox.”

  Fuck.

  I wish I could say it made sense. That I knew it all along. But I didn’t. Sure, Bethany was a weird and, at times, brutal boss, but I never would have guessed she was in cahoots with Dean. Had she told Dean where I was? Had she knowingly given me up for slaughter?