Hard Truths (Kiss Her Goodbye Book 1)

by Rebecca Royce

  “Ever been tied up, Everly?”

  I sat up straight. “No.”

  It wasn’t lost on me that the night before I’d wanted to bar my door and now I was talking about kink with J like this was the most normal thing in the world. What was the matter with me? I was going to see a counselor when this was over. Still, heat moved through me at the thought, and I suddenly wondered why I had never been tied up during sex. Why hadn’t I done this?

  “Well, maybe someday you will.”

  I wished there was innuendo in what he said, an indication that he meant that perhaps he’d be the one doing it, except his eyes were distant, and I wasn’t sure he was thinking that at all in that moment.

  He turned on his heel and left fast, shutting the door behind him without slamming it. I didn’t know why I fixated on that detail, except my father always slammed doors whether he meant to or not. I settled back down on the bed. I wasn’t going to sleep. Not for a while anyway. Not when there was suddenly an image of J and a rope to occupy my active imagination.

  I must have eventually dozed off still dressed, because when I woke up, my head didn’t pound anymore. The medicine had worked. I sat up in bed. Something was, however, banging away, and it took me half a second to realize it had to be D outside again, shooting his gun off into the lake.

  I groaned. No, this wasn’t going to continue. I didn’t know the man at all. I’d spoken to him the least out of anyone, and certainly when the others brought him up, it was always with a certain amount of trepidation associated with him specifically. But if I was going to be here for months, it couldn’t be every night the deer-dragging, man-bunned Alliance member’s shooting ice with his shotgun woke me up. No, this was going to stop now.

  I grabbed my coat and my shoes, the only things I’d managed to take off, and ran down the stairs before making my way out the back door. The night was lit up from what had to be every light in the house illuminating at the same time. Maybe The Alliance wasn’t concerned with energy conservation. If I hadn’t been knocked out because of my headache, I’d have turned off my light.

  I wasn’t quiet in my approach, but he either didn’t hear me or didn’t care.

  “Hey,” I shouted at him. I faced his back as he aimed at the ocean. He fired into the ice. A crack sounded, ice flying into the air with a splatter in the distance. Someone could get seriously injured if he kept up this shit.

  D didn’t turn around.

  “I said hey.” I stormed to him, and when he didn’t turn, I grabbed his arm to turn him toward me. His head swung around first and a second later he had that gun pointed right at my chest. The big barrel of the sawed off shotgun lodged itself right above my left breast.

  Well, at least he knew where he was going to shoot it.

  I should be terrified. Any sane person would cower in terror, but for some reason I felt nothing but calm. Maybe that was why I grabbed the shotgun and yanked it out of his hands. It was a stupid move. But that was how I ended up with his gun in my hand.

  We had a moment where we stared at each other before I pulled the gun back even farther, pointing it at him. I hadn’t come out here for this. I just wanted to tell him to stop shooting the thing in the middle of the night.

  Yet, somehow this had happened. I’d handled guns before. I liked new experiences, and I’d had boyfriends who hunted and target shot. I’d gone along. Still, this struggle for the gun that I’d won, temporarily, was not one I wanted to see the end of. D was stronger than me. I’d surprised him. If he wanted it back he was going to take it easily.

  “Let’s calm down.” My voice sounded strained to my own ears.

  “You’re the one holding the gun.” D sounded quieter than the few times I’d heard him speak before. He spoke barely over a whisper. “You know what they say about guns? Don’t hold them unless you’re prepared to fire them.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to shoot you. This is the last thing I ever intended to do tonight. I’m not even sure how this happened.”

  “Are you prepared to shoot me?”

  I didn’t want to answer that because I didn’t know. I’d never considered shooting anyone. “Were you going to shoot me when you jammed it in my breast?”

  I could still feel the hot muzzle where it had pressed against me. Right now the feeling was real but it might quickly become a phantom feeling I’d have for a long time. Assuming I got out of this alive.

  He nodded once. “Yes. Not a great idea to startle a crazy person with a gun.”

  “Not a great idea for a so-called crazy person to have a gun.” Why was I doing this? Why had neither of us moved? My feet needed to work. I had to walk away. Take the gun and walk away from D. Surely, one of the others would… do something about this.

  D grabbed the end of the gun or maybe it was more accurate to say that he pressed the end of the gun against his head. I sucked in a breath. What. In. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck.

  “Would you shoot me, Everly? Would you put that bullet between my eyes?”

  His blue eyes. Blonde man bun and blue eyes. He might be beautiful if he wasn’t so fucking cracked.

  “What are you doing?” I tried to pull back but he held on tight. His head right against the end of the gun. There might be another name for the hole where the bullet came out. I didn’t really care to remember it. Sweat dripped down my back. If I could go back in time and tell myself to stay in my bed, I would.

  “I think you would. I actually see it in your eyes.” He smirked at me. “You would pull the trigger and blow my brains to kingdom come. Get yourself covered in the mess of it and then go have a cigarette.”

  I tried to breathe through this. “I don’t smoke.”

  “Only when you drink.”

  How did he know that? I swallowed. This was not the time or circumstance for that question. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I could shoot you. How’s that for an answer? Let’s not find out.”

  “You would.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do it.”

  “What?” I choked out my answer. “That’s not fucking funny.”

  He didn’t answer right away. “I’m not laughing. Or joking. Fucking do it. Put the bullet right in my head.”

  I shook my head. “Enough of this.” I yanked the gun back, hard. “This isn’t suicide by Everly. You want to blow your head off, you feel free to go right ahead, but I’m not doing it for you.” I finally took the step back that I should have immediately taken. Then another. For good measure, one more. “Why do you want me to blow off your head, D?”

  A muscle ticced in his jaw. “It’s Derrick. If K wants to go around thinking that not knowing names puts some distance between us, he can go ahead and do so. My name is Derrick. You can know it.”

  I stored that info. Derrick was the man bun and death wish. I’d put that in the back of my head with Trace. Of course, I could actually say Derrick and not Trace, since Derrick told me his name, and Trace didn’t know I knew his.

  “Answer the question.” He wasn’t going to redirect this by telling me something as trivial as his first name. Not after that stunt.

  “This life? It’s fucked up. Every once in a while I think it might be okay to get the hell out of it.”

  He’d hardly be the first person to think so. I wasn’t licensed to be a therapist. I didn’t even have a degree. I hoped someday to change that. The plan had been social work then a master’s in psychology. That didn’t mean I had a clue what to do right now.

  “You should talk to someone about that. There is help and services. People who care.” There really were. “I’ll even help you make the call.”

  He shook his head. “I’m actually not suicidal. Not until after I get my revenge. You weren’t going to shoot me. You thought about it. You might have done so if you’d ever really believed I was going to hurt you, and you have the capability to do it.” He pointed at my eyes like he could see something there.

  “I think you might be seeing me wrong.”

  “No, you see you
wrong. Of course I could have been off, and then I’d be dead. Can’t have that happen until I’ve done what I set out to do.”

  I was so tired of trying to piece together puzzles, and I’d only been at this for a little over twenty-four hours. Maybe I’d finally reach a place where I didn’t care. I wasn’t there yet. “Which would be what?”

  “Killing the five assholes running The Alliance. Painfully. Slowly. And making sure they remember her name when I do. Each one of them is going to say it before they die.”

  I could see my breath when I exhaled. I hadn’t noticed it earlier. Maybe that had to do with the events of this evening, but I noticed it now. We stood there breathing. The night so cold we could see our breath in front of us. I wondered if he noticed, but I wasn’t going to ask.

  “You loved someone and they killed her? The Alliance?”

  He looked out at the lake for a second. “My wife. J’s sister. This was her favorite spot.”

  Well, I’d gotten more information than I’d expected to. Derrick had been married to J’s sister. She was dead. That at least explained what the two of them were doing here. Sort of. Most people didn’t meet at a dead relative’s favorite spot then map out a revenge plot. “Were you in The Alliance before? Or did you learn about it when she died?”

  “Before. Her father would never have allowed her to marry anyone who wasn’t Alliance. It worked out nicely. She shouldn’t have known about it, but the whole twin thing. J didn’t keep anything from Alyssa. Anyway, after they remember her, they can all die. Badly.”

  I shivered, and I didn’t think it was from the cold. “Why did they kill her?”

  “Because I said no.” He stepped back. “Enough of this. You’re freezing.”

  I held up the gun. “I’m keeping this. I’m not listening to you crack the ice with bullets every night. Find some other way to miss her or honor her or whatever this means to you. My room is right there and this is miserable enough.”

  Derrick put his hands on his hips. “You aren’t how I thought you were going to be. I watched you for a week before I decided how to bring you here. I’d never kidnapped a woman before so it was a challenge.”

  “Oh, I see. So we can add stalking to your list of crimes. Kidnapped. Drugged. Stalked. You’re really adding them up.” I shouldn’t ask. I should tell him to fuck off. Only, I’d opened up this box, and I was fully invested in the madness now. “What did you think I would be like?”

  He shook his head. “You’re lost. Most of the time. You walk through life, but you have no idea where you’re going. Now? You’re lit up.”

  “This from the guy who just held a gun to his own head after he jammed it on me.” I should never have asked. “If I’m lit up it’s from adrenaline. As I said, I’m keeping the gun, Derrick.”

  He shrugged. “I have several.”

  “So the orchestra of gunfire isn’t going to stop?”

  His smirk came slowly. “I guess you’ll have to see. Put the gun under your bed. You’ll shoot it someday if you have to. Of course, you might murder us all in our beds. But then how would you get off the island? I don’t think you can take on the helicopter pilots. They’re all military. Or swim for it. Not for months and months. You’d starve.”

  Wonderful. Fuck him. I wasn’t lost. I’d always known just where I was going.

  Hadn’t I?

  And what did it really say about my level of ridiculousness that it never occurred to me to shoot any of them, even as I held the gun in my hand? I had to work this shit out and quickly.

  This whole thing had gotten dark. Or darker. Fast.

  Surprisingly, after my altercation with Derrick I’d slept fine. Thinking about J and his ropes could keep me up a bit, but dwelling on dead wives, gun violence, murder, revenge, and wondering whether or not I could end a life, didn’t cause me to skip a beat. Maybe I really was as lost as Derrick said I was.

  I woke when the sun came up, feeling refreshed. If I was going to stay here indefinitely then I was going to have to make this work for me. That started with taking care of myself. I ran every day. I wasn’t going to stop now.

  My feet were still pretty angry at me from my run shoeless run two days earlier. But they were healing. I put on my running clothes, making note that someone had washed them. That had to be Constance. I’d thank her for the effort. Of course that also meant that she’d gone through my stuff. If I did manage to ever hide something in here, I’d have to remember that. I had a gun under my bed. It wasn’t like I’d stolen that.

  I sighed. I’d have to work this stuff out, and I should have noticed that the bed had been made the day before. I needed to pay attention to details. Like I’d done for Trace with his ridiculous job.

  I walked down the stairs and made my way outside without seeing anyone. Even knowing it wasn’t the best thing in the world to do, I always ran on an empty stomach. The second I had food in me, I didn’t want to do it anymore.

  Despite the cold, I ran as hard as I could. The air was different than at home, and it burned my lungs, made it harder to do. Still, I persevered, and when I finally returned to the house, I was proud of myself for making the effort.

  The empty house was full when I entered. All of the guys were up, sitting around the table, and Constance hustled about, pouring coffee.

  Derrick jumped up when I entered. “Was just getting worried about you out there. It’s going to snow.”

  Was it? “Isn’t it March?”

  J nodded, but his gaze was on Derrick, his brow sloped like he had an unasked question. “It snows here in March. Sometimes April.”

  I wasn’t cold at the moment. “I’d have turned around at the first sign of snow. I’m not a cold weather person.”

  Constance poured coffee and placed it down on the table. As no one claimed the mug, I assumed it was for me. I took it as Derrick touched the chair next to where he’d been sitting. “This one’s yours.”

  “Thanks.” I sat down in it just as Marco came through the door, putting a plate full of eggs in front of me. I thanked him, too.

  Derrick took his seat as T looked up from a book he was reading. “Do you want another job today, Everly?”

  I was just about to answer him when Derrick answered instead. “She’s with me today.”

  I was? “What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re with me.” He was apparently not going to elaborate on that. “I’ve told her my name. Given her a shotgun. And I’m going to take her into the basement.”

  My mouth fell open. He was?

  K leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as he spoke. “You did what?”

  “Which part is confusing? I didn’t tell her your name. You can keep with the letters if you want. But she’s going to call me Derrick from now.”

  K pointed at him. “We agreed.”

  “I changed my mind. I never played well with others. You know that. We have the same objective. That doesn’t make us a team. Eat your eggs, Everly. They’ll get cold and you just ran miles. You need the protein. Also, probably some carbs. Here,” he rose and headed toward the kitchen, “I’m going to make you some toast.”

  J sighed loudly, rubbing his eyes. “What did you do to him, Everly?”

  “What did I do to him?” Was he serious with that? “What could I have possibly done?”

  I wasn’t going to tell them what had happened the night before. It felt… private. And maybe that was ridiculous. I shouldn’t have been having private moments with one fifth of my captors, particularly the douchebag who had been responsible for getting me here to begin with. But really, what did I care?

  “I’m Warden.” W spoke for the first time that morning. “I don’t like hearing my name as W. Feel free to use it, too. I’d like to hear my name spoken on your lips. Maybe called out in my bed.”

  I spit out my coffee. Where had that come from? T and J had both made moves on me, but not W.

  Derrick came back in just then, placing the toast in front of me. “You’ll need your su
stenance. I’m going to show you how to ruin the world.”

  Chapter 7

  I hustled to keep up with Derrick as he practically ran to the basement. The change in him from the night before was huge. Had he slept very well? Had he not slept at all? His eyes were clear and the anger that had seemed to radiate from him by the water was gone.

  “Am I walking too fast, Everly? You’re tall. You can keep up.”

  “Hey, Man Bun,” I called at him. “You’re even taller than me, and I ran three miles this morning after days off and being drugged. You could try a little bit of manners and slow down.”

  His grin shocked me even as his hand came up to touch the back of his hair. “Like that, do you?”

  “I didn’t say that.” I hadn’t disagreed either. I was just not going to comment either way.

  K charged by us, blocking the door as Derrick would have opened it. “Don’t.”

  “I know this wasn’t your plan, K,” Derrick rolled his eyes. “But I think she needs to see life for what it is. I think it would be beneficial for the rest of her life for her to go down there.”

  Particularly if there was an escape route, like someone had dug a tunnel under all the islands that led back to mainland Vermont. That would be very helpful. Not that I was counting on it. But it was possible. The Alliance was real therefore all reasonable expectations of what could and couldn’t be were out the window for me.

  There could be tunnels just waiting for me to traverse. And fairies. And little green men ready to take me on space adventures.

  “My thinking in keeping the letters, in keeping her out of the basement, in bringing her in only the bare minimum when it came to what is happening here, was that so she could have a life. So she could go back to being an ant again and live a good, little ant life. You take her down there and there is no going back. She’ll have no control, no ability to do anything about any of what she sees. It’ll eat at her the way it does people, and that will be that.”

  Derrick shook his head. “Are you thinking Everly is going to be able to return home after this and get back to her degree, to her parties, to sleeping with random men who don’t get her off, and that all will just be well for her?”