Page 121 of Finding Noah

“Wait!” I gasped out, panicked, scared he was about to leave again. Caught somewhere between wanting him to go and wanting him to stay, in fear of not knowing when he'd again return … if he ever did.

I almost laughed. Almost. At the fact that I could want to be in the company of my captor because the alternative was far too horrific to comprehend.

But before I had the chance to utter another sound, my cheek was struck with something solid and hard, and my head whipped against the blow. It was the flashlight, I realized a moment later, as the throbbing pain bloomed across my cheekbone. Warmth trickled down my cheek, and I knew he’d broken the skin.

“I was gonna kill you that night—you know that?” His face was beside mine now, his breath exploding against my injured cheek in heated bursts. “I was gonna choke the fuckin' life out of your scrawny little body for pokin' your nose in places it didn't belong. But then your daddy came along and saved your fuckin' life, and you know what happened then?”

He saved my life. He saved my life.

For every shitty fucking thing Seth had done, that was the one thing I could thank him for.

He had saved my life.

Then Soldier had.

Who's going to save me now?

Benjamin Nolan wrenched my face in his hand, giving my head a shake. “I said, do you know what happened then?!”

“N-no,” I stammered. “I-I have n-no idea.”

“Your piece-of-shit father murdered my dad. He shot him point-blank, right in front of me. Right between the fuckin' eyes,” he said, enunciating every word as he ground a finger against my forehead. “Blew his fuckin' head right off and left me there, soaked in his blood and bone and fuckin' brains.”

It wasn't until I gasped with a sob that I noticed I was crying, my face sodden and my body quaking with every forced breath.

“I'm … I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m s-so, so sorry. That's … that's all I—”

“I walked,” he ground out from his clenched jaw, pressing his nose to my throbbing cheek. “I walked for hours, screaming and begging for someone to help me. Nobody listened. Nobody came. I was thirteen fuckin' years old. I was alone. Orphaned. Then, finally, a fuckin’ cop picked me up a day or somethin’ later. Put me into the system. They dumped me into home after home after home, and do you know what they did to me there?”

I shook my head in response.

“Oh boy, the shit they put me through,” he drawled into my ear, nuzzling his nose against my cheek. “They beat me. They starved me. Raped me. Over and over and over again. And nobody—nobody—saved my fuckin' life, except …” He exhaled into my ear, the sound almost wistful. “Except for me. I saved my own fuckin' life by fantasizing about doing every single fuckin' thing they did to me … to you.”

I froze, held the breath in my lungs as my eyes stared toward the darkness above, while he chuckled into my ear. The sound deep, gravelly, and wicked.

“I didn't know how I was gonna get ya, didn't know how I'd find you, but I thought about it. I thought about it a lot—a lot—and, boy, here you are. Guess my wish came true.”

“Oh God,” I uttered, squeezing my eyes shut against his shadowy face and hot, damp breath as a raw, soul-deep dread crushed against my chest. “God, please.”

“No, no, no,” he murmured, soothing in a condescending tone, smoothing a palm over my cheek. “You can beg all you want, but we don't listen to that around here. Nobody listened to me, and I sure as fuck won’t listen to you. But … how about this? I'll make a deal with you.”

“Wha-what?” I stammered, remembering I was supposed to comply.

But at what cost?

“You're gonna take it, Noah,” he growled, using my name for the first time. “You're gonna take every-fuckin'-thing they gave to me. And then, when I've given it all, I'll put you out of your misery. How does that sound?”

He stroked my cheek affectionately, and all I could do was shiver as the tears continued to slip over my cheeks and into the mattress beneath my head.

“And if you take everything like a good boy and if you can do it all like a champ, I'll give you the one thing none of them ever gave me.”

I swallowed a gag as he pressed a kiss to my cheek and managed to ask, “Wha-what’s that?”

I could feel him smile against me as he replied, “I'll give you mercy. How does that sound?”

I opened my mouth to speak, unable to open my eyes, and whispered in a trembling voice, “I-I just wanted to go h-home.”

“Ah, Noah,” he replied, nearly sympathetic. “I get it. I really do. But we don't always get what we want, do we? Hell, I didn't.”