Never Have I Ever (43 page)

“He isn’t scheduled to travel this week. Nobody is.”

“Trip wasn’t exactly planned,” I said with a sigh.

“Why do you insist on making my life difficult?”

“It’s fun,” I replied dryly. “Why did you insist on faking Selene’s death?”

Ethan blanched. “What did you just say?”

“I met Selene in Sydney, Ethan. It took me a while to piece everything together, but now I figure you probably already knew that. There’s no way on God’s green Earth I could haphazardly stumble upon a dead woman on the other side of the world. It’s too easy.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“You planted her outside our hotel, didn’t you? You asked her to be there, waiting for me, as one of your twisted games to mess with my head.”

“Even if that were true, there’s no way you could know that.” He acted as if it was difficult to discern when, in reality, it was the only feasible way any of it could have fit together.

“I’m a genius, so yes I can. The only thing I can’t figure out is why.”

The color began to return to Ethan’s face in a steadily increasing red tint. I expected an argument from him. I expected denial and mind games. What I didn’t expect was the truth to come out so fast. He said, “She was not there as a game, she was there as a warning.”

I shrugged, outwardly unfazed. “How’d that work out?”

He ignored the question, instead asking, “You told Noah she was alive and he actually believed you?”

“With a little help from the internet and the webpage dedicated to her current exhibition, yes. Look, as much as it pains me to say it, Noah wants to help you. He went to Sydney last night to try and convince her to come back. He wants you to be happy with her. Can’t you just accept that from him?”

Ethan’s hand flew to the breast pocket of his suit jacket where he retrieved his cell phone and began immediately dialing a number. “Telling Noah was singularly the stupidest decision of your life, girl.”

“Why keep her there when you obviously still have contact with her; when she’ll obviously still do favors for you?”

He spun quickly on his heels and fast-tracked it back to the elevator. “You’re a genius; figure it out.”

By the time whoever was on the other end of the line answered, Ethan was too far down the hall for me to hear. With one final ice-cold stare back at me, he disappeared into the elevator and the doors slid shut. I shook my head and closed the front door as I retreated into Noah’s apartment. Nothing and no one was going to convince either Ethan or me that the other was a good person, apparently. Hell, Ethan never stuck around long enough to have much past a blood-boiling debate before
swaning
the fuck off.

I dressed in a button-down blouse and blue jeans I brought with me. I’d chosen a slightly larger bag as a purse the night before for just such an occasion. I figured being prepared was better than emerging with the same evening dress the way I did back when we first met. Thoughts of my Walk of Shame from that morning were more amusing to me these days.

After helping myself to some coffee and a bowl of cereal I decided to make plans with Declan and Anya if only to distract me from thinking about how Noah’s little quest was proceeding. By nine that morning, both of them had answered my text. Declan’s happened to be slightly more cryptic in nature as it stated there was something he and Anya wanted to discuss with me. The cryptic message could only mean one of two things: They got together, or they were no longer friends. Judging by the fact that neither of them turned down the option to see one another my money was on the former. I smiled a little at that. For once in my life a friend took my advice to heart.

There had been another text that morning, too. The timestamp said just after two a.m. from Noah. In it he told me he was boarding the plane and would call me when he landed. My estimate was he’d be in Sydney no later than six that night if there were no layovers. I just had to keep myself occupied until then, and then occupied even more while I waited to hear some news.

Dammit, maybe I should have gone with him.
Again.

I left Noah’s apartment around ten and made my way to the coffee shop Declan, Anya and I always met at. I had to park three blocks away that morning. Saturdays were always busy in that part of town. All the shops brimmed with tourists and locals alike, turning the streets into loose waves of people broken up only by cross walks and cab calls. I was lost in thought, though not in any thought in particular, while I weaved through small groups of pedestrians.

A voice called above the hustle of the street, “Excuse me, Miss Minogue?”

I looked around for the source of the voice. When I found it I was a bit shocked that it came from a woman standing beside a white town car with dark tinted windows. She looked to have just stepped out of the back seat by her stance. She was about my height, maybe a little taller given her heels, dressed in a plain black pencil skirt and metallic copper blouse. Her light brown hair was styled back into a loose bun at the top of her head.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Mr. Wellington would like to speak with you this morning.”

I blinked back further surprise. “Ethan?” It was the only logical conclusion.

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“I’m actually meeting some friends. Can it wait?”

“I’m afraid not, ma’am. We won’t take much of your time.”

“How did you even find me?”

As if she was telling me the sky was blue she said, “Mr. Wellington asked us to follow you from his brother’s apartment building.”

No, a clandestine meeting by way of stylish town car wasn’t creepy at all.

I stepped to the edge of the sidewalk to speak with her privately and without calling above the noise of the streets. “May I at least ask what this is about?”

“I’m only able to say it’s with regards to Selene and Noah, and that a conversation is all he is asking of you.”

“We’ve never been the best at conversing,” I said, more for myself than for her.

The woman moved to one side of the car door. She held out her hand as if to usher me in with an eager and insistent posture.
“If you would, please.”

I had half a mind to ask her to relay a message. That message would be for Ethan to go run into a field and explode. I knew myself, though, and decided to take any attempt there might be to reach a truce with him. At least get him to back off enough to hate me from a distance. Choice made, I relented, sliding into the back seat of the town car. A man who was most certainly not Ethan sat on the opposite end of the seat. Even from the side I could tell the man was well-built, with broad shoulders which strained slightly against his brown leather jacket. I pegged him in his early thirties with dirty blonde hair and a little scruff around his jaw. He barely acknowledged my presence at first.

The woman climbed in beside me, forcing me over into the center of the seat. She closed the door exceptionally fast, the slam of it startling me enough to jump. While my attention was turned to her, I felt the silent man beside me shift in his seat just as quickly.

I immediately regretted this decision.

All at once his strong hand was at the back of my head. His other hand swiftly came up to my mouth, damp rag within, and pressed it against my face. I screamed against him as panic flooded me. I flailed and scraped at his arms. The sickly-sweet aroma of ether filled my nose as I tried to hold my breath as long as possible.

The car took off down the road while I fought against the mass of muscle to my left. I knew enough about the substance he was trying to force me to inhale to know its effects weren’t immediate the way television depicted.
The victim—I.
I had to take multiple deep breaths over the course of at least a minute, and even then I’d only be out for a few minutes.

A lot could happen in a few minutes.

In my present state, however, it never crossed my mind that anything else would be used. The man was a distraction for me more than anything. I realized it only when the woman on my right moved in her seat and the sharp pinch of a needle, followed by the discomfort of its contents, was pressed into my neck. The world became fuzzy immediately. I shook my head to rid it of the fog, but to no avail. Panic-stricken, my body tensed and relaxed. I inhaled just as the cloth left my face and the effects of the needle’s drug dragged me into darkness.

Extraordinary, stinging agony slashing fire across my abdomen ripped me screaming into full consciousness. My body moved so fast in reflex to protect itself I damned near gave myself whiplash while curling into a fetal position on the cold floor. I closed my eyes and sucked in several breaths through clenched teeth to chase away the pain. Something sharp and fast had hit me. I vaguely heard the echo of a tiny sonic snap ricochet off the walls, though lost in a haze. I found it difficult to focus on anything beyond the immediate discomfort engulfing me. The faint memory of climbing into a town car, followed by the pinch of a needle in my neck tried to surface and scramble for more but was instantly squelched.

I brought my hand up to my line of sight where a thin smear of blood arched its way across my palm and down my wrist from the gash. The intricate cuffs Noah had given me broke the trail of red. Slightly further up my forearms, however, was another pair of what could only fall into the category of shackles locking my arms together with a thick six-inch chain.

The shifting of shiny black shoes directly in front of me caught my vision. As my sight adjusted out of the fog, it followed the contours of the straight, pleated pant legs of navy blue pants up to a suit jacket of the same hue, to the dark brown leather of a bullwhip rolled up in a tense fist. I stopped myself from looking any higher for a long moment. I shouldn’t have dared to raise my eyes any higher. I already knew exactly who was standing in front of me. He hadn’t even bothered to change suits from earlier that morning. A base, unbelieving instinct shoved aside my will to stop from looking, and I looked up at the face of Ethan. He was almost stone, lacking any expression whatsoever beyond the straight line of his lips and calm brow.

“Ethan.” I breathed the name as if he was the living embodiment of evil.

“Do I have your undivided attention now?”

I stood up only to discover my ankles chained in a similar fashion and with roughly the same amount of play in that chain, too. A third chain locked into position between my feet to tether me to a wall behind me. The basic human instinct of fight or flight kicked in. Immediately every tiny detail of the room in which I now resided soaked into deep memory.

Firstly, I took note of my fully clothed state of being; except, of course, the gaping rip near the bottom of my blouse where I could only assume the whip in his hand had struck me. The room itself was fairly small; fifteen feet in either direction. It boasted no windows and only one door which Ethan stood in the way of. Spiked, dark gray foam I expected to find in a recording studio’s sound booth covered the walls to my left and right from floor to ceiling. It was sparsely scattered against the other two walls. To Ethan’s right, far out of my reach, was a workbench with an assortment of polished metal and leather ‘tools’ I didn’t want to attempt at identifying. A varied array of flogs, whips, and fuck-all hung from a rack on the wall just beyond. Two chairs rested against that same wall. And it was bright.
So, so bright that the level of lighting barely cast any shadow from any point in the room.

When my vision finally settled back on Ethan it was with indignation and fury. “What the hell is this?
What the
FUCK
is going on?!”

“Curb the
outrage,
you know exactly what’s happening.”

“Did you just kidnap me? Are you freaking serious?”

“Is this the face of a man in a lighthearted mood?”

“Get me out of these right now!” I tugged my wrists apart to pull the chain taut. “You had no right bringing me here. This is not okay!”

“Now that Noah has you, he thinks everything is so easily resolved?
You
think things are so easily resolved? They aren’t. You were given every chance to back off, and you failed to.”

Shock refused to release me from its grasp. “This is insane, Ethan. Just let me out of here. I’ll pretend this is a terrible dream and we can carry on hating each other like rational adults.”

The coil of braided leather fell from his hand to kiss the floor. “I told you, one way or another, things would end between you two. This is the other way. You don’t get to choose my fate. I sent Selene away because I couldn’t stand to look at her after what she did. Now you think you can just waltz into the picture and meddle in my life, assuming you have an inkling of an idea about what is best for me!
How fucking narcissistic are you?!”

“We were trying to help you, Ethan. He was trying to make you happy so that you’d just let me be happy with him.”

He took one deep stride toward me, a few inches out of reach. “Noah doesn’t get the luxury of happiness,
or
haven’t I made that clear enough until now? You stole my revenge, and I don’t take kindly to people taking from me what doesn’t belong to them. Noah deserves to suffer the way I did. He deserves an eternity of suffering for everything he’s taken from me. And you deserve to suffer the way she did if only to punish him.”