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A hand slipped into mine, gesturing me toward the bar near the side. “Come on. I need to be drunk for this.”
“How old do you have to be to be in here? Everyone looks so old.” And they didn’t at all look like Chuck Bass. Was there fiction TV like there were fiction books? Was it a genre that could sprawl out across the board?
When I picked up the tiny glass filled with clear liquid, I didn’t think to express those questions to Dove because she held it to my lips and told me to drink it fast.
And I did.
I put them away faster than I did water, and even after the third one, I could feel the room slightly tilt. The bar on my side felt more like it was beneath my feet and the people dancing to the music began to warp together.
A catchy song came on and I pulled Dove with me, twisting her arm up in the air to move her through. The alcohol warmed my blood like adrenaline did riding Hermes, and before I could stop myself, I was grinning from ear-to-ear, flinging around the room until I crashed against a hard chest. As I was dancing, my hands found their way to the back of his neck and I tilted my head to get eyes on him. His face was a blur, but I could make out tattoos, maybe a jaw? Laughing, I thought of the boys I saw in Papa’s office last week. Leaning up on my tippy toes, I was meaning to whisper and ask him if it was him as a joke, when my lips crashed on his.
Oh…
That same warmth that alcohol was giving me had nothing on this. This was hot lava that exploded over a small village and turned them all to molten skin and bones.
This was the kind of kiss I wanted. Until arms came to my elbow and he shoved me away. Bringing his lips to the back of my hair while spinning me around so fast my bum hit his knees. His knees because he was so tall.
“Follow me, princess.” I allowed my feet to carry me to wherever he was going, because again, no one was going to touch me here. Not anywhere. We reached an emergency exit, and I turned to face him finally as his hand rested on the bar to open it behind me.
My eyes flew to the dance floor where I saw the back of Dove as she shoved through people to get out. Not to come and save me. To run away.
He pushed me backward just as the door flew open and someone caught me from below. Before I could say anything, everything went black.
I woke in a room. Small with bars caging me in, but with a single bed tucked in the corner and cold, but clean, floors. My head thrummed and my eyes stung like I had dropped acid right into my retinas, but I managed to roll to the side and push myself up from the carpet. It was cold. So cold my teeth were about to crack from crashing together every time the air frosted over the crux of my spine.
Sliding toward the cell door, my fingers squeezed around the poles as I forced myself up to my feet. “Hello!” My voice echoed through the empty walls. I shook the bars as if they’d pop open and let me out. “Let me out!” I screamed so long it burned the back of my throat.
“There’s no point,” a voice came from the cell opposite me and my head whipped forward. Shadows danced over the back wall, but just out of them I could see the outline of leather boots. “They prefer it when you scream.”
“Well, they don’t know who I am…” I said matter-of-factly.
“Darling, I’m pretty sure whoever you are, they’re worse.”
“Maybe…” I folded my arms in front of me. “But not scarier than my papa.”
“Your papa?” The voice was low but held a softness about it too. “No one here gives a fuck who your papa is, that I can promise you.”
“Stop making promises, Kenan,” another voice interrupted from the other side of the corridor just as a heavy door slammed closed and boots thudded closer. “You’re in no position—literally—” There were two of them. One was taller than the other, and leaner, but the other was still very good looking. Recognition slapped me across the face like the wind did when I was riding, and I stepped back, releasing the metal of the cell like it burned. “Awww… do you think she recognizes us now?”
“She does,” I answered, far too quickly for someone who had fear prickling over the back of my neck. Because these boys knew who Papa was. They knew. And they didn’t care. “What do you want?” I shoved my chin up stubbornly, folding my arms across my chest.
It was the third day of being held in this hellish hole they called a room. I was fed, even though it was weird takeout burgers and drinks that had fizz to them, and had clothes handed to me, but I wasn’t home. Where I wanted to be.
“You know they always get what they want,” Kenan said with a chuckle. “You can put up a fight as much as you want, but they always get what they want.”
“Are you giving in?” I whimpered, waiting for him to stop pacing back and forth in his cell. He did that often. He told me he was stuck in a mental warfare, where he didn’t know if he wanted it or if he needed it. I said the only thing that separated the two was desperation.
Finally, he fell to the bed, burying his hands in his thick mane of hair. “I am. But I need to know you will too.”
“Why?” I asked, squeezing my arms around my knees. “Why does it matter?”
“Because they’ll kill you.”
