I push those thoughts aside and let my mind go forward, through the chain of events that still terrify me when I let them out of the lockbox where I’ve been keeping them.
“My mind was on the breakup. At first, it was a pretty big smack to the ego. All Na—Cash told me was that he was interested in someone else and that it wasn’t fair to keep seeing me. He was very vague and secretive about it, and he refused to answer any of my questions. So, I was preoccupied and wasn’t really paying attention to much of anything else when I unlocked the door.
“I set my purse on the table and went back to my bedroom to change clothes and then have a glass of wine. After I put on my pajamas, I realized I’d left my phone in the car, so I went back out to get it. It was when I came back in that I sort of snapped out of it and realized that the television was on and turned up really loud. I thought that was odd because Olivia had obviously worked a shift. I mean, she was at Dual closing up when I was there. And she never leaves the television on. She’s much too responsible to do something like that.
“Anyway, I was standing there in front of the door, wondering over that, when I saw him move toward the living room. It was like he stepped out of the shadows and was just . . . there. A silhouette. A black presence against the white, flickering light of the television. I knew instinctively that it belonged to no one who was familiar to me.
“All this happened in probably twenty or thirty seconds. It’s like he appeared right as my brain was starting to work, but that delay . . . that short delay was enough. It cost me what little advantage I might’ve had. Could’ve cost me my life, I guess.
“Just as it was all coming together in my mind, that there was a strange man in my living room in the middle of the night, I opened my mouth to scream. That’s when he lunged at me. I tried to dodge him. And I almost did. It was just his arm that caught me. Knocked me back into the table where I’d put my purse. I remember hearing the crashing of the lamp when it hit the floor. He knocked me off balance and I hit the wall and then stumbled into the living room, still trying to stay out of his reach. I couldn’t think of anything more than the need to get away from him, to make sure he didn’t catch me. He grabbed my leg and I fell. I kicked at him so he couldn’t get my ankle, but he yanked me back toward him and straddled my legs. I was on my belly, so it was hard to do much of anything. I did manage to dig my keys into the back of his hand when he pulled my head back by my hair. I was still holding them from going outside to get my phone. But then he put something over my mouth and I could barely breathe. I remember smelling something harsh, like a chemical, and then there was nothing. Until I woke up wherever they kept me, blindfolded, bound, and gagged.
“I’ve never been more scared in all my life. They must’ve had me in a basement somewhere,” I tell Nash, my mind going back to the horrifying sensations—smells, sounds, the feel of cool, smooth stone beneath my cheek and hip. I feel small and alone and still afraid when I remember it. “The floor felt like the coldest concrete in the world. And it smelled like must and something metallic, something coppery. Like blood. And when it was quiet, I could hear water dripping. And someone breathing.” I stop and look up at Nash, who’s watching me intently. “I still don’t know who was down there with me. Or what happened to them. Eventually the breathing just . . . stopped.”
Another shiver runs through my body like aftershocks of an earthquake. During the hours I was curled up on that floor, I imagined that the person lying near me was another woman, scared and alone. Unable to move or see or speak, like me. Only she was wounded. Badly wounded. Maybe beaten unconscious. She never made any sounds; her breathing never changed when I moaned and struggled to talk to her behind my gag. Until her breathing stopped, until it ceased to sweep through the quiet of the room. After that, the silence was deafening.
I lay on my side, my arm, shoulder, hip, and thigh having long since gone numb, and I cried. I cried for whoever had lain on the floor of the same room and passed away without a sound, without a loved one. Without a prayer of being discovered. Surely somewhere someone is mourning her loss, maybe even looking for her. Unless they know what she was mixed up in. And who she was mixed up with.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t even a woman. Maybe it’s best that I never know.
I’m not even aware of the tears coursing down my cheeks until the feel of Nash’s fingers brings me back to the present, back to the land of the living.
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
I smile a watery smile. “I guess we’re even, then.”
He gazes down into my eyes, neither of us saying a word, his fingers still pressed to my damp cheek. The sound of the piano fades into the background, as does the world and all the pain I’ve found in it so recently.
Instantly, I’m absorbed, consumed. Just like I want to be. For whatever reason, when I’m with Nash, I’m free of my life and the worry of it. I’m free of the past and the terror of it. I’m free of everything but him. He’s overwhelming and I need to be overwhelmed. He’s uncontrollable and I need to be out of control. He’s the promise of something . . . else and I need something else.
“I think there are times in life when you need something to lose yourself in, something to take away the pain, take away the feeling of everything else. Something to numb it. Just for a while.” As quietly as the beat of my heart, Nash articulates exactly what I’ve been thinking and feeling. And then he makes me an offer I can’t refuse, one that I don’t even want to refuse. He leans in closer, his lips brushing the shell of my ear as he speaks. “I can be that for you. We can be that for each other.” Chills race down my arm.
Nash’s hand moves into the hair at the nape of my neck. He cups the back of my head and angles his face until he can draw the lobe of my ear into his mouth. I feel the brush of his hot tongue and my eyes drift closed. “I could make you forget everything else. I can make sure that you feel nothing but pleasure, that you can’t think past what I’m doing to your body, what I’m making you feel. With my hands,” he says, pulling his fingers from my hair and trailing them down my arm to my hip. “With my lips,” he continues, moving his mouth across my cheek. “With my tongue,” he whispers as he spreads wet heat across my bottom lip with the tip of the very tongue of which he speaks. “And I promise, you’ll love every second of it.” As if to punctuate his statement, he bites down ever so lightly, sinking his teeth into my flesh.