A Captive Situation (Kings of New York)

The drive to the facility didn’t take long. For me, anyway. Jake was the one driving, and his cousin was in the front seat next to him. She talked the whole time. I kinda wondered if she’d taken another dose of something in his bathroom when we were in his place, because she wasn’t making sense with the things she was talking about. He didn’t seem to care. He didn’t engage at all.

He drove, ignored her, and every now and then, he’d look at me in his rearview mirror.

Me, though. I was enjoying this.

I liked his cousin’s chatter. I liked the drive. I liked seeing more of the city and even outside of the city. A part of me wondered if I should be worried. I didn’t know these two. They were strangers, but my body overrode any rational hesitation my mind might’ve thought up. I knew him. That’s what my body was telling me, and well, I was going with it.

This was all helping to quiet my own demons. For the first time in weeks, some of the hold my ex had on me lessened. I was able to think about it, and I didn’t feel like I was being paralyzed by the thoughts.

Just for that, I’d sign up for a couple rides with Jake and his cousin.

I’d never been the type of girl who longed to get married. Maybe that was why I stayed so long with Beck? I always thought we’d get married, we’d have kids, but I wasn’t one of those types that put it on the calendar and crossed out each day until the wedding day or the impregnating day. For me, it’d been about the connection. I liked helping. Getting a degree, then a job had been a dream. That dream switched to helping Beck.

He was the one who kept putting off the engagement. That’s how he talked about it. “The Engagement.” Like it was an event. Though, I guess it kinda was.

I’d been complacent. I was okay with taking a back seat to Beck. I was okay with—and fill in the blank here—but no. No! I hadn’t been okay with it. I made the sacrifices for him because I thought that’s what a person did for someone they loved. They did what they could to help the other person.

Beck hadn’t done that for me.

When we got to the facility, I held back. I was getting steamed up thinking about Beck. I was with an ex-cop. I was pretty sure he might still have a pair of handcuffs, and I’d just left a police station. I did not need to go back, certainly not to see his ex–lovey dovey whoever she was.

Was she like Manda? Hanging around, being the “best friend”—no!

Stop, Sawyer. Keep a lid on your shit.

I focused back on the reality show happening right in front of me.

Vivianna was dramatic. She huffed all over the place. Was weepy. Emotional. Threatening Jake in one breath, then clinging to him in the next because they’d both lost his brother. I was getting dizzy trying to keep up with her, but after a bit, I accepted it was like a roller-coaster ride. Up and down, and whee, let’s go in a circle.

She hugged me seven times before Jake hauled her inside, and once they got in there, I heaved a breath. It took them a bit. Apparently Jake had messaged ahead of time. I was guessing that was part of what he’d been doing on his phone when we were in the cab. They were ready for Vivianna.

Jake came back twenty minutes later, looking all tense.

Jesus.

I raked him up and down. He was tall, and there wasn’t one ounce of softness on his body. He was all ripped and built. He wasn’t big, but he wasn’t lean either. He was right in the middle, all perfectly in the middle and again, I was seeing how tight his shirt stuck to him. I was noting the way his biceps moved and shifted under that shirt, and the dip from under his chest to his very flat stomach.

My mouth watered, tracing down his body, wondering what other muscles he might have under the rest of his clothes.

God.

What was I doing?

I’d just let myself segue down a little Jake rabbit hole and I ended up ready to murder Beck. Now this? I was back here again? Or was it that I was going to jump the first guy that caught my eye?

But even thinking that, I was warring with myself because my body was saying one thing while my mind was saying a totally different thing. I wanted to go to him, press against him, but also I didn’t know him. He was a stranger to me.

He had stopped in his tracks, taking in how I was taking him in, and we could do that now because his cousin wasn’t acting as a buffer. Joke was on her. She’d pulled me in to be the buffer, but the buffer had actually been her.

I took a deep breath in, cooling some of my hormones down. He eyed me, his gaze heating up, but he closed his eyes, and I felt that same distance landing between us. That was him. He was doing the pull-away thing again. My chest hurt at feeling that.

But also, had I done something? I didn’t know what I’d done.

When he spoke, his voice was gruff. “I know of a diner in the city. Want to grab some food? Unless it’s too far out of the way of where you’re staying?” He nodded to his truck, pulling his keys out. He went around to his side and I got in where his cousin had been. It felt more intimate being up here, being so close.

I folded my hands in my lap and tried to breathe out some of my nerves.

“Is that okay with you? If we stop on the way to—where am I taking you?”

I nodded again, quickly. I told him the name of my hotel. I did not tell him that tonight was my last night there and tomorrow, I didn’t know where I’d be going.

“Yeah. No. That sounds good to me.” I wrung my hands together the entire way there.

I was thirty-six. I had lived almost the last two decades for someone else, and what was I now? A nervous teenager?

I was going to make everything another item on the bucket list. For that reason alone, sign me up.

Remembering what it felt like to be a teenager again? Check.

A cute neighborhood-style eatery? That could be added to the list. This place was adorable.

We sat in silence until the server brought over our coffee. She put another smaller bowl next to it, filled with creamer. “Anything else, sweetie?” That seductive tone was not intended for me.

I scowled.

“We’re good. Thank you.” Jake kept his eyes on me as he spoke to her.

“Anything for you, Jacob.” Her hand went to his shoulder and lingered. I scowled even more at that move. She had ignored me from the first moment we entered, but her eyes went my way now, narrowing a fraction before she went to another table.

“Come here often? Jacob?”

He picked up his own coffee, frowning at me. “She used to fuck my brother a long time ago. She doesn’t know shit about me. It’s Jake.” He continued to watch me and since I didn’t know what all to say, I busied myself adding some creamer to my own coffee.

My mind was going a million miles here. So much that I didn’t even taste my coffee. I put my mug down, looking back at my lap. At my hands. “Why are we here?”

He’d been heated earlier. Then we drove here and in that time frame, he got chillier and chillier toward me.

Now he was just outright like ice.

His cold appraisal lingered on my face, his own eyes narrowing, before he dismissed me and lifted his coffee back up for a drag. He sat back and shook his head. “For food? Because my cousin needed a pawn to truss up between us, and for whatever reason, you volunteered.” His eyes narrowed on me. “Maybe I should be asking you that question. Why are you here, Sawyer?”

My mouth watered, parting. That was the first time he’d said my name.

I liked it. I liked it a lot.

Then I realized he was actually asking. He was waiting for a response, so I leaned back in my seat and shrugged. There was no way I could tell him the truth of what I was doing here, but I could vague it up. “I’m being a tourist.” If he knew all of it, he wouldn’t want anything to do with me.

“A tourist?”

“Yeah. That’s what people who don’t live here come here and do. They tourist. It’s a verb. Active.”

He was looking at me like he didn’t believe me.

I raised my chin. “I have a whole list of things to do. Got a third of it marked off.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s all on your list? Your tourist list.”

“Riding the subway. Getting food stolen by a rat. You know, things very New York Cityish. Going to a Broadway show.”

“What show did you see?”

Eh . . . “I—I went to the place where you are in a zigzaggy line for the tickets, but next time, I’ll book online.” Next time.

“Sawyer,” he said again, more gently.

My heart folded over at hearing him say my name like that. He could make me preen and purr like a kitty cat. I cleared my throat, because no way could I let him know that either. I scrambled for what else to tell him. “I—uh—I came to meet my cousin.”

He frowned again, briefly. “Did you meet her?”

“Him. And, I found him.”

“You were looking for your cousin?”

Oh. That hadn’t come out how I intended. “Uh. Yeah. Kinda. It’s not like a big thing. It’s just—there’s a family rift.” I was back to my hands twisting around each other, and I glanced down, making sure I hadn’t drawn blood. I’d done that before. I lifted my chin back. “That’s where I was before, you know.”

I could feel his gaze on me. It was heavy.

This was embarrassing.

He asked, quietly, “What happened?”

“About the family?”

“About where you were before. That’s how you ended up at the station?”

I coughed, shifting on my seat, grateful I didn’t need to go into the family dynamics. Suddenly feeling flushed, I tugged at my shirt, but I knew it wasn’t the temperature. “I kinda . . . Have you had a moment in your life when you were on a path, and it made sense? Like, you made a decision. You committed to it, and you made all these really stupid decisions to stay on that path, even though after a while, there started to be red flags on the sidelines, but you were on the path and you’d come so far, so . . . It’s the path. It’s the one you put yourself on.”

He was suddenly really looking at me. “I have an idea, yeah.”

I flushed again. I didn’t enjoy the feeling so I turned my head. “Something happened to me before I came here.”

“You were on the path and you got shoved off it?”

My gaze jerked back. I leaned forward. Did he understand?

I was feeling a little breathless. “Yeah.” Wait. He might not understand. I leaned back. “Anyways, I came here to meet my cousin. He’s the one cousin I’ve not met and since I’m here, I want to meet him. I want to see if he’ll help mend this rift in the family.”

“That’s a long trip you took to find him, meet him, and then end up in a police station.” He was back to watching me all intent-like. As if he knew I was bullshitting him.

The back of my neck was getting hot. I shrugged. “I mean, I might’ve needed to not be home right now. I’ve always wanted to come here, and he’s the cousin who lived the farthest away. So . . .” I trailed off. The math was mathing to me. “You know what I mean?”

A hint of dark amusement flared in his eyes, but the side of his mouth lifted up in a wry grin. “Do you want to explain it to me?”

Another flush from me. I was hot all over. “I’d rather not. I needed to get away. Two stones. One bird. That sort of thing.”

“I don’t think that’s quite right, but okay.” The corner of his mouth curved higher up. The chill was totally gone, and his eyes were starting to warm.

They made my heart pitter-patter.

Which made me scowl. My heart didn’t need to be doing any pitter-pattering.

He remarked, “What specifically happened to make the officer bring you to the station?”

Cue more squirming from me. Because, embarrassment. “Right. Erm . . . I went to where my cousin worked, and I thought about trying to see him, but there was a receptionist there. I got in my head, got all self-conscious. Shy. She thought I was a stalker. Called the cops.”

He immediately scowled.

My heart pitter-pattered again. I liked that look on him. Liked it when it was there for me.

“What the fuck? Why didn’t she just ask you to leave?”

I glanced down to my lap. “She might’ve.”

“Sawyer.”

I lifted my gaze back up. He was just watching me so intently now. I wanted to fidget, just because I couldn’t handle all that attention solely focused on me. At least, in this situation I couldn’t. An image of me in bed, of him looming over me, watching me with that same concentration, maybe something of his inside of me—and I was squirming again.

“Is it hot in here?” I exclaimed, reaching for my coffee and gulping down a good mouthful. I swallowed it.

His eyes fell to it, his eyebrows furrowing a little. He had that dry grin tugging at his mouth again.

It took a second before I saw the steam coming from my coffee, and I was back to almost hyperventilating. I started to shove out of the booth. “I need to walk.”

He reached over, caught my wrist. He held me in place. “Stay.”

I groaned, but my ass didn’t move. “She asked me to leave. I did. I went to the other side of the street. That’s when she called the cop on me, and I was kinda losing my mind when he showed up. I felt stupid. And she was there, judging me.”

“Did she say something?”

I shrugged tightly. “You know when someone’s judging you. Like she’s never dealt with something truly horrible in her life? I bet she hasn’t.”

His phone buzzed. He ignored it, shooting me a look. “Now you’re judging her.”

Maybe. I didn’t care. “He didn’t say he was going to arrest me, but he took me to the station and I never saw him again. Your cousin was brought in an hour later. The rest is history.”

His phone began buzzing again.

He ignored it. Again.

I asked, “Are you going to get that?”

“No.” His response was immediate and he didn’t spare me a look, taking another drag of his coffee. When it quieted and started off again, he sighed, putting his mug down. He hit accept and brought it up to his mouth, and growled into it, “Stop fucking calling me. I’ll come when I’m ready.”

A voice started to speak from the other end, but he ended the call and silenced it, stuffing it back in his pocket. As he did, he stretched back, and his shirt lifted, showing a corner of his stomach underneath. It was enough. My theory was confirmed. The man was ripped underneath that shirt.

I was also being reminded that it’d been three weeks since anyone had touched me.

Damn. What was it about this guy that was making me react like this? It was frustrating.

Catching my stare, he pushed his shirt back down, moving it over the gun that was holstered on his side. “You got a thing for cops?”

I hadn’t even noticed the gun. Funny. That should’ve been the first thing I noticed.

“Don’t get a big head. You’re not a cop anymore, right? Can you even still wear that thing?”

He grinned, relaxing back in his seat. He picked up his coffee, gesturing to me. “It’s all legal, if that’s what you’re worried about. Wore a gun for too long to not wear one so soon into retirement. Feel naked.”

Swoon. I was swooning.

He said naked.

His eyes heated. “You know what I mean?”

I wrinkled my nose at him, more to hide the effect his words were having on me. “Not about that, but yeah. I guess. I used to have sex regularly.”

I tasted acid in my mouth. Sex with Beck had never been mind blowing, but it’d been sex. I was able to get off with him, or some of the time. My vibrator was all the way back in my hotel room too.

“How long’s it been?”

“Since I had sex?”

He had that hawklike expression on him again. “Since the breakup.”

“Oh.” He knew. Damn. “Three weeks.” I began picking at my mug, scratching my nail at the handle. “The day he ended things, he fucked me before he told me he wouldn’t be marrying me. He’d been cheating on me, and they are going to have a kid instead.” I whispered that last part, but my nails suddenly started trying to rip into my mug.

“Did you want to have a kid with him?”

My eyes jerked to his again, and I held there. Feeling like the way he was looking at me was giving me a lifeline. Another one. “I don’t know. I . . . he and I had been together since college. We’re supposed to have kids. That’s what society says, right? Status quo. I never questioned it, but it wasn’t on my super-urgent list.”

The corner of his mouth curved up. “Not like the tourist list you have?”

I grinned, feeling like he was giving me another oxygen bubble. More air so I could breathe. “I should’ve taken his golf clubs to his car. He has a certain group of them that are his favorite. I should’ve taken those. I bought ’em.”

That made them mine.

My golf clubs.

My car.

My house . . .

A fresh wave of anger was starting to rise up in me.

“You dodged a bullet.”

“What?”

“I don’t know the guy, but you’re better off. I’ve seen the worst of the worst. If he’s going to do that to you, you don’t want to be tied to him for the rest of your life. Whoever got him, he’s now her punishment. My guess is that’s why you weren’t pushing the kid thing with him. A part of you knew having kids with him wouldn’t be a good idea. Then again, what do I know?”

I sighed. He was saying smart things. “We had a decent sex life.”

He swung his gaze my way, a flash of heat there. “Don’t give that guy credit for anything. You never married before?”

I shook my head.

“You’re what? Midthirties?”

I frowned. Where was he going with this? “Thirty-six.”

“Unless you waited to go to college, you were probably twenty? That’s sixteen years together, give or take a year or two. Probability of him marrying you after all those years was low, statistically a zero percent chance. You should’ve seen the writing on the wall. He was never going to marry you.”

Indignation swept through me. I took back all the nice things about him.

“I supported him when he went to graduate school.”

His gaze softened. So did his voice when he said, “He let you go. That’s a gift he gave you.”noveldrama

My stomach was back to churning into a pit, deep down inside of me.

He was eyeing me, narrowing his gaze. “Don’t take him back.”

“What?” I was back to being breathless.

“When he realizes how much he messed up, don’t take him back.”

He sounded so sure. He looked so sure, his eyes falling to my mouth and holding there. His face tightened for a second.

I looked away, my insides suddenly feeling empty. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew the full story.” If he knew how pathetic I’d been in the relationship. I may as well have chased Beck off, with all the ways I’d failed myself. Who’d be attracted to that?

“You’re not a woman a guy leaves. I know that much.”

Oh. Oh!

That—yeah. Wow.

He was looking at me, but not in a way he was seeing me. It was like he was seeing inside of me, and that made him . . . I couldn’t tell, but he grew suddenly sharp, all the way alert. His gaze was only focused on me.

That breathless sensation was back.

It wasn’t there because of the idea of Beck coming back to me.