by Noah Steele
“No.”
Diana paused as she lifted her glass to her lips, wine sloshing gently back and forth until she tipped it and took a sip, setting it down gently on a small wooden table next to her seat.
“Five hundred thousand, and I’ll buy out your quaint little bookshop. I’m sure it’ll be more than you’d see in your lifetime otherwise. Fair?” she said.
“No,” I said again, and she pressed two red-tipped fingers to her temple.
“This is n—”
“Shut up,” I snapped. “Take your money and shove it up your own ass, Diana. You won’t win this. I’m not going anywhere and you can’t get rid of me. I don’t give a fuck about your money or Derrek’s. I…I love him. I’m in love with him. I’m in love with him, and I know he loves me, too, and I’m going to find my way back to him, you crazy bitch.”
The tension left my chest as I spoke in one long breath, deflating by the end of my speech. It was hasty, and I could hear the fear peppering my words, but it felt good to say out loud.
I wasn’t going to let her win.
Her face twisted into a feral snarl as she kicked off her heels and launched from her seat, circling the table in seconds as she picked up her wine glass and threw it to the side.
It shattered against a framed photo of Derrek triumphantly raising a grand silver trophy up over his head in one hand, his other flashing a peace sign, the happiness in his face familiar. Dark red pools dripped down the wall where her glass shattered, and I flinched even before she cupped my chin with one hand, digging her nails into my cheeks.
“You think you’re the first man he’s ever felt something for?” she whispered venomously, her eyes flashing as mine narrowed.
I knew she had to be right. Derrek had showed me his memory box himself, and I’d read too many books about chosen ones and destined loves to think I was extraordinary.
But I knew there was something powerful between Derrek and me, extraordinary or not.
Maybe sometimes love was just love, and that’s all it had to be.
“Of course not,” I said.
“Then you should know,” she said, tightening her grip on my face, pushing my lips into an ugly pucker, “you aren’t the first one I’ve had to pay off to keep him focused on what matters.”
I screamed as she dug her nails into my face and scratched. Blood and tears mixed on my cheeks, and Diana pulled away, her lips a crooked line pulled tight across her red-stained teeth. My face burned where her nails left shallow cuts.
The man behind me circled my chair, kicking at the back legs to drop me quickly onto the rug, and I felt a heavy blow against my shoulder even through the thick rug breaking my fall.
He joined Diana in the kitchen, crossing an arm in front of him to pull something small from beneath his jacket, placing it on the counter in front of them. They kept their backs to me, the silence broken by the occasional clink of something small and heavy against the marble counter.
“You have other clients,” I struggled to shout, their backs still turned to me. “You don’t need Derrek. You don’t—you don’t need to do this.”
A sharp, mechanical click echoed through the room, and my eyes went wide, the blood trickling from the cuts on my face hot against the growing chill that spread across my skin. Diana turned, a sleek, silver pistol raised in front of her, silencer and all, pointed directly at me.
She raised it toward the wall and fired twice before turning it back toward me.
“DO YOU SEE THEIR PHOTOS IN THIS ROOM?” she shrieked. “They don’t hold a candle to the potential in Derrek Luna, and I’m going to milk that man for all he’s worth,” she continued, inching forward, her arms steady. The man beside her turned too, and I recognized Brent, the surly bodyguard I’d met my first time at the track.
Diana didn’t take her eyes off me as she watched my eyes dart from her to Brent and back again. He and Diana had shared whispers after she and Derrek had their blowout in the welcome center, and from the way he brushed his heavy hand down the length of her arm, leaning in close behind her to steady her hand, I was sure they’d shared a lot more.
He was her muscle. My kidnapping probably wasn’t his first one, either.
“So, you love him, do you?” Diana hissed at me, still making her slow approach. “Good, good. Men in pain are easy to manipulate. But you knew that, Aiden. You’ve been stealing him away from me for days now, emptying my pockets, and now he’s not coming. Nobody is coming. Nobody knows you’re here,” she said, failing to suppress her manic laughter.
Just as quickly, her voice became low, her words cold and sharp.
“They’ll find you in the back seat of a car in some other city. No phone, no ID, just another victim of some terrible crime.”
I could feel the bile fighting its way up into my mouth, my chest a tangled maze of knots that made my breath come in short, gasping bursts. Another panic attack was coming, and I couldn’t stop it.
I’d never been able to stop them.
Even as I clenched my eyes shut, conjuring images of my mother’s face in my mind, images of Derrek’s eyes bright with the look he only shared with me, I could feel my heart beat in my skull, stronger and faster and louder than anything in the room.
A crash and a gunshot burst through the room, and I clamped my eyes shut tighter, the rush of blood pumping through my head drowned out by shouts and heavy footfalls before a familiar voice pierced through the chaos.
My eyes snapped open to find Derrek kneeling over me, furiously working to undo my restraints.
“Aiden? Aiden! I’m here. I found you. It’s going to be okay.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I nursed a glass of water in shaky hands, a thick blanket draped over my equally shaky shoulders, and thanked the paramedics who’d rushed to me as soon as the police had swarmed into the room.
Diana had been about to shoot.
She had shot, and if it hadn’t been for the unexpected arrival of Derrek and the police, she might not have missed.
Across the room, the insane fire in Diana’s eyes burned dangerously even as she knelt handcuffed before a trio of police officers. Brent, her bodyguard and accomplice, was pinned to the ground near the door, where the officer whose knee was pushed into his back pulled the man’s wrists into another set of handcuffs.
The door frame splintered where it had been forced open, and a nervous glance beyond revealed flashing red and blue lights that pierced a sea of darkness.
We were far out of the city.
Derrek sat cross-legged on the floor beside me where I slouched forward, elbows resting on my knees. I pressed the glass against my lips, watching the haze of my breath appear and vanish as I breathed heavily into it.
He watched me in stony silence, his dark eyes darting every few seconds to rest on Diana, who was being read her rights as the officers behind her jostled her up from her kneel and began to march her out of the house, Brent following soon after.
I hadn’t said a word since the door had burst open. Uniformed officers had flooded the scene so quickly, Diana had practically dropped her gun in surprise, and then Derrek was at my side.
He found me.
My lips trembled as my eyes met Derrek’s.
He leaned closer, the severity of his face softening as I set my glass down and slumped onto my side, resting my head in his lap. His fingers brushed my hair back, the gentle back and forth of his touch helping steady my breath. I moved to grasp at his other arm, pulling it forward and close to my chest, where I clasped his hand with both of mine before closing my eyes again.
“I don’t know what to say,” Derrek whispered above me.
I squeezed his arm gently, stroking the back of his hand with my thumb as steadily as I could. His muscles tensed in my hands, the heat rising from Derrek’s body in thick, vicious waves. I turned to lay on my back, Derrek’s hand flat against my chest as I kept a loose grip on his arm, my legs fanned out like dead weight.
“How?” I said hoarsely,
and he untangled his fingers from my hair to reach into a pocket of his jacket, producing a phone.
My phone.
My jaw went slack, and Derrek held the small screen in front of me.
I moved to quickly punch in my passcode with a clumsy finger before Derrek turned the screen back toward him, made some swift clicks with his thumb, and turned it back to me to show our text messages—including messages sent earlier in the day, before Brent had ambushed me after I’d closed the store.
Messages I couldn’t have sent.
If Diana and Brent must have been able to figure out my passcode.
“What…where did you find it?” I asked.
“I didn’t. Steven, the social media guy, gave it to me.”
I remembered Steven. He was the only person on Derrek’s team who showed me any kindness the first time I’d visited Motorsport Park. He found me after I’d bolted from the viewing box to return my phone the first time I’d lost it. If he had my phone after it went missing, that meant…
“She stole my phone?” I said.
“Brent did. I told you the store was robbed,” he said before his body tensed again. “Shit, sorry, that came out wrong,” he babbled, and a weak smile spread across my face.
Derrek was hot, but even hotter when his tense bravado dropped. I scratched the back of his hand gently and he returned the gesture, his fingers tickling my chest through my damp t-shirt.
“Steven was there when Diana and I had our blowout in the welcome center,” he continued, glancing hastily at the door before turning his eyes down toward me again.
The angry heat behind them had dimmed, but his jaw clenched between words. It was easy to see his brain working furiously to stay calm. I plucked the phone from his hand and rested it beside me.
“He heard the whole thing from the stairwell and came to me when he couldn’t find Diana or Brent anywhere while I was still doing laps,” Derrek continued. “He knew, Aiden. He told me everything. He found your phone with Brent’s stuff in a locker at the track. Said there was something different about you. That he couldn’t let Diana get away with it anymore. Turned himself in to the police before they tracked your phone here.”
My heart sank.
There wasn’t a single person on Derrek’s team he could trust. He put up a good front, but Derrek was one of the purest people I’d ever met. He was hot, he was rich, he was famous, and I didn’t care about any of that.
He was soft. He was kind.
His heart was full—and he was alone.
I wouldn’t let him be alone anymore.
He had to know the truth.
“I’m not the first one,” I said, and Derrek’s stance lost its rigid form as he slouched and let out a long breath. “She…she told me this wasn’t the first time.”
He pulled his hand from my chest and leaned back with a slow nod, planting his hands firmly as he took in the room. His eyes scanned the walls slowly, took in the accolades and awards and relationships he had built that Diana used to justify herself.
I watched his head turn slowly from the walls to the kitchen island, to the officer who knelt to pick up Diana’s gun and place it carefully into a clear little bag.
I raised my arm to poke at Derrek’s chin, bringing his attention back to me. His eyes, big and dark and beautiful, were the heaviest I’d ever seen them. He met my hand with his own and wrapped his fingers around mine, and as I pushed myself up out of his lap, he met me half way with a kiss.
His lips felt different, nervous in a way his touch had never felt on my body, and I broke our kiss to sit upright in front of him.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” Derrek said, moving to kneel, his hands planted on my shoulders to pin me where I sat.
His chest was heaving, his muscular arms shaking almost imperceptibly as he tried his best not to unravel in front of me. His words were broken by the barest tremble, and I shifted in his grip until I was kneeling too, throwing my arms around his shoulders until our faces were buried in each other’s necks.
“I told her I’d find my way back to you,” I mumbled into his neck, my body vibrating under his touch. “I had to find my way back to you. You have to know something, Derrek,” I said, picking my head up and pushing Derrek from my shoulder to lock eyes with him.
His eyes were soft and misty as they burned into me, my cheeks suddenly slick with tears again.
“I tried to tell you at the track before I left, but it felt like a weird place to say it,” I continued. “I ditched work that morning just to find you because you just…you need to know—”
“I love you, Aiden.”
My breath turned to fire in my lungs as I lunged forward again, forgetting where we were, what had just happened, whatever else was going on around us, and I kissed him.
Derrek and I crashed onto the massive rug beside us, our lips meeting and parting and meeting again, his breath hot in my mouth, his full, gentle lips the only feeling I cared about as we gripped and grabbed at each other, the familiar storm that seemed to circle around us defeated by our embrace.
I broke our kiss, my cheeks streaked with tears that burned where Diana had scratched me, the pain of it vanishing the longer Derrek held my eyes with his.
“I love you, too,” I said before my arms folded under me and I fell onto his chest. We collapsed into a flurry of breathy laughter, both mine and his. “I’ve loved you since you kissed me on the roof. I didn’t know how to say it. It still feels so…new,” I panted.
“I know what you mean,” he replied, a low growl in his voice. “I think I’ve loved you from the moment you took a chance on me.”
He laughed harder then, and I cocked an eyebrow.
“Good thing you gave up on my bookstore ban, huh? Oliver told me,” he said, a comfortable, devilish grin taking over his face as I matched it with one of my own.
“Good thing,” I said.
A curt knock on the table beside us brought us back into the house. One of the officers who’d led Diana out crouched beside the table, his knuckles still resting where he’d knocked to get our attention. Derrek and I sat up when he pulled a small black notepad and pen from his pocket.
“Sorry to interrupt your reunion,” he said earnestly. “But we need some information from you before we can wrap up here.”
“Does it have to be now?” Derrek interjected.
“It’s okay,” I cut in. “I’d rather do this now and just put it all behind me.”
The officer, a young man with dark hair who looked like he was in his late twenties, gestured toward the love seat by the wall, but I shook my head and linked my arm around Derrek’s beside me, shifting on the floor until I could rest my head comfortably on his shoulder.
I took a deep breath in, and the cold air that clung to Derrek’s black leather jacket burned gently in my nose. The officer remained crouched beside the table, pen hovering above a small, blank page.
“Your boyfriend told us everything he could about the people who did this, but we need a statement from you about what happened. I understand it was stressful. Whatever you can manage is fine.” He tapped his pen to the page twice and gave me a nod to signal he was ready.
“Brent, the man you arrested, broke into my bookstore. I own Bay Window Books, in the city. He knocked me out in the back alley after I’d locked up for the night.” I pointed toward the glass of water I’d abandoned, and Derrek stood to pick it up and refill it.
I leaned in closer to the officer, swallowing the bubble in my throat as I thought about how quickly I could tell him everything before Derrek was back in earshot, but he was back at my side before I could finish chewing on my lower lip. I took his hand in mine as he sat back down and felt him squeeze gently.
“I came to in the back seat of a car,” I said, fighting my throat trying to close at the thought. “He covered my head and started driving and…and that triggered a panic attack so bad I passed out again. I think that’s what they wanted. Diana planned it. She must have been wa
tching me that first day at the track. I think she knows about my panic attacks, or she must have made the connection to cars pretty fast, I don’t know.”
Derrek’s soft squeeze of my hand grew stronger until his grip grew shaky in mine, and I squeezed as hard as I could to keep him calm as I swallowed some water and took a sniffly breath.
“She was on the phone with Brent, he told me she hoped I would enjoy the ride,” I rushed, and the further into my recollection I got, the more volcanic Derrek grew beside me. His eyes were dark as coals, steam practically rising in great hazy waves off his body.
I took big gulps of water, draining the rest of the large glass in one go before slamming it back onto the cold wood floor. The officer’s face lost its stoic edge as his features twisted into a dark scowl, though I doubted it was the worst thing he’d ever heard.
“I was here when I woke up again,” I said after a pause filled with the rhythmic inhale and exhale of Derrek’s sharp, angry breaths. “She…lost it. She told me I’m not the first guy she’s tried to pay off to keep Derrek alone and focused on his career to make her more money. The police got here soon after that.”
I shuffled uncomfortably, pulling the blanket off my shoulders and into a messy ball of fabric on my lap that I twisted with my hands when Derrek let go of me. Derrek’s hands were balled into white-knuckled fists beside me, and I jumped when he raised his arms and slammed both fists into the ground with incredible force.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said, cupping Derrek’s clenched fist with my hand, the hard angles of his face jagged and threatening to me for the first time since I’d known him.
I was instantly glad the police had already escorted Diana out—I didn’t know what Derrek would do if she was still in the room with us. I turned back to the officer, who flipped his pad shut and pushed off the table to stand up.
“Can you tell me where we are?” I asked.
“Two hours east of the city. Looks like Ms. Alvarez has been maintaining this off-the-grid property for years,” he replied, gesturing for Derrek and me to stand and follow him outside.
