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“You shot him! We have to go back and help him. I need to make sure he’s ok,” I yell through the tears streaming down my face.
“Callie, they kidnapped you. We’re not going to help him. I hope the bastard is dead,” he spits before grabbing onto my arm again and pulling me out the front door.
We make our way down the stairs of the house, gunshots still echoing in the distance. I try to pull free from him again, and Julian sways, smashing into the planter on the steps. I watch as it crashes off the side of the porch, dirt splashing out on the ground around it. Everything is a mess, like the broken pieces of the planter. My mind reels, trying to process what is currently happening. Julian. Kyler. Julian. Barrett. Seb. Kyler. Is he ok? Are any of them still alive? How did Julian even get into their house?
Julian drags me towards the black SUV idling in the driveway, gripping me tighter every time I try to get away from him. Grabbing the handle on the back door, he rips it open and shoves me in before crawling onto the seat next to me. I see him nod at whoever is in the front, signaling for them to drive. The mystery man slams on the gas pedal, making the tires squeal on the Range Rover. In a matter of seconds, we are down the long driveway, driving right through the open gate onto the road.
My heart is racing. I try to get a grip on everything that just happened. I look down at my hands and notice they’re shaking. Julian found me. Kyler was shot. Julian said they kidnapped me. They kept me there against my will. I wanted to be there. Am I in shock?
One second, I was sleeping with Kyler’s big muscular arm wrapped around me, and the next, I was watching a bullet gothrough him as he fell to the ground with blood pouring out of him. Kyler, Maxton, Mom. I feel my heart beating in my chest, the panic rising in my throat. Breathing starts to become harder and harder. I have to take short, quick breaths just to get some sort of oxygen in my lungs. Everything starts to blur, and I feel the corners of my vision starting to fade as Julian reaches over to grab my hand. It's not the comfort I need to pull me out of this episode. Everything around me begins to spin, and I can feel my heart racing and my body beginning to sweat.
Use your tools. I hear Barrett’s voice in my head and try my best to calm myself, trying to take longer, deeper breaths between the shorter, quick ones. I focus on happy memories. Barrett, he loves me. After a few minutes, I’m able to regulate my breathing and center my thoughts- for now. Julian notices that I've calmed down and decides to open his stupid mouth.
“Did they hurt you? Fuck, Callie, I was so worried I was never going to find you.”
“Whaa – What? Why would they hurt me?” He doesn’t understand everything that happened between the guys and me. How could he know they would never hurt me?
“Sweet girl, they took you away from me for too long. I’ll make sure nobody ever takes you from me again.”
The mystery man driving our car takes us closer to the city. All this time, I was never that far from Braxton Falls. We went in the opposite direction when we left for that job. When we come up to the exit that will take us to Julian’s house, the man keeps going straight onto the highway.
“Julian, I don’t understand. How did you even find me? Things between us ended. I didn't want to be rescued.”
“I would search to the ends of the earth for you, Callie. You’re mine, and it will stay that way, just as you were always meant to be.”
Hearing him say that only causes more confusion. Why is he talking like that? The man I knew would never treat me like I was some kind of possession. Julian is kind and gentle. He’s not the possessive, controlling type.
“How did you find me?” I ask again, but I’m met with nothing but silence. “Where are we going? You're scaring me, and I don't want to be in this car with you right now.”
He clenches his jaw, and I get the impression there’s something he doesn’t want to tell me. That doesn’t make sense, though. What would be so bad about what he had to do to find me that he couldn’t tell me? I have no idea what the hell is going on. Why he can’t just answer some simple fucking questions so that I can have some sort of resolve about this whole situation.
“Just go to sleep, sweet girl. We can’t go back to Braxton Falls. They’ll look for us there, and I need to keep you safe. We can talk about everything after you sleep. The only thing that’s important is that you are back where you belong.”
I don’t even know how to react to what he is saying right now. Back where I belong? There he goes again, talking like a completely different person. My mind tracks back to the guys. I don't need to be kept safe from them. They would never hurt me. Well, Barrett might, but only if I begged him to.
Julian seems to think I was only there because they took me, but I wanted to be there with them. I still want to be with them now. If we look at all the facts, Julian is also kidnapping me right now. He forced me into the car and refuses to tell me where we're going. I told Avery to make sure he knew I didn’t love him and I didn’t want to be with him, but he went out of his way to make sure he found me. He never stopped looking for me for months. Should I give him a chance to explain himself?
The Julian sitting next to me almost seems like a different person than the one I spent an entire year with before Sebastian, Kyler, and Barrett. Something is off, but I can’t place it. My mind continues to race, bouncing back and forth between Julian and the guys until my eyes begin to feel heavy from the massive adrenaline drop I just experienced, and I drift off into a deep sleep.
When I finally wake up, we're still driving. The sun is out now, and I have no clue how much time has passed. Judging by the clock on the car radio, it looks like it's been about eight hours. Julian sits next to me, not yet realizing I'm awake. He looks stressed, like he hasn’t slept at all. He's on his phone with his fingers rapidly typing. There’s a look of hostility to him that I've never seen.
A few moments pass before he looks over at me and smiles, wiping his face clean of his previous demeanor. It seems fake. “Good morning, my sweet girl. How did you sleep?”
“Um, fine," I reply. “I must have been exhausted from everything that happened because I haven’t slept that hard in a longtime.” I take a moment to look out the window, trees flying by all around us. The road we are on looks like some small-town back road that hardly ever sees travel.
“Julian, what’s going on? Why are we still driving?” For some reason, when he said we couldn’t go home, I assumed we would drive outside of town and grab a hotel for the night. Us still being in the car driving for eight-plus hours doesn’t seem right. I get that weird feeling again. The one where you instantly know to be anxious about a situation but can't explain why.
Julian reaches out to run his hand along my face, his thumb trailing along my bottom lip, and he looks at me with a strange sort of renewed determination in his eyes. It takes everything in me to not cringe and pull back from his touch. I don't belong to him anymore.
“We're going to stay with a friend. Are you hungry? We can stop somewhere and grab you something to eat.”
At the mention of food, my stomach growls. The last bit of food I ate was dinner last night with Kyler. He made me the most amazing chicken parm I've ever had in my entire life. Oh my god, Kyler? My heart aches again at the thought of him. Flashbacks of him lying there next to the wall, surrounded by his crimson liquid, have the tears welling up in my eyes. I force them away.
“I’m a little hungry,” I admit.
“A little? The girl I know never goes more than a few hours without at least some kind of snack. Usually, you can't even make itthrough the night without sneaking down to the pantry to sneak a granola bar or some ice cream.”
Staring down at my hands, I fiddle my thumbs together to try and keep myself grounded. I’m not the same girl he knew before. I can't stop thinking about the guys and whether or not they’re ok.
