What He Promises (8 page)

He undid his pants and slid his cock into me in
one smooth motion.
 
He began fucking
me as I wrapped my legs around him.
 
He stared into my eyes, the two of us coming quickly and at the same
time.

“Please, Charlotte,” he whispered.
 
“Please say yes.”

“Yes,” I said, grinning.
 
“Yes, yes, yes.”

***

This is what it feels like to be happy
, I thought as we drove back to Noah’s
apartment.
 

Nothing mattered anymore except for the two of
us.

It wasn’t until we were getting ready for bed
that that the niggling feeling began tugging at the back of my mind.

You haven’t told him about the letter.

So?
 
I argued with myself.
 
Who cares about the letter?
 
It’s not important.

You should have told him.
 
And he didn’t even ask you to marry him.

So?
I shot
back.
 
He asked me to go into
business with him, to be his partner.

That’s not marriage.

I told myself to shut up, but the thoughts
swirling my head wouldn’t go away.

They got stronger and darker when Noah returned
from his shower.
 
He crossed the
room to get a shirt from his dresser, and I got the first look at his wound
without a bandage over it.

I gasped.

The stitches slid in a jagged, angry line down
the side of his body, black spikes sticking out at random intervals, the skin
around the wound red and puckered.

“Oh, Noah,” I breathed.

“What?” he
asked,
then
followed my gaze to his stitches.
 
“It’s not as bad as it looks, Charlotte.”

I watched as he pulled a t-shirt from his
drawer and slid it over his head.
 
“Aren’t you supposed to keep the bandage on it?”

“Only when I’m showering.”

I frowned.
 
“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Charlotte.”

He slid into bed beside me and pulled me
close.
 
I snuggled against him,
grateful for his closeness, for the smell of his soap and aftershave, the
warmth of his arms.
 
But something
was still off.

We’d had this beautiful, magical night, and
yet…

Stop it,
I told myself.
 
You’re
being crazy.
 
Noah wants to move on,
and you should too.
 
Nothing bad is
happening.
 
The bad stuff is
over.
 
And so what if he didn’t ask
you to marry him?
 
You haven’t known
him that long.
 
It would be insane
to expect something like that.
 
Besides,
he asked you to a partner in his business.
 
That is a huge deal.

I tried to comfort myself with that fact, but I
couldn’t fall asleep.

The room felt too dark and the outside noise of
the city, usually comforting in its ability to lull me to sleep, suddenly
seemed like an intrusion.

When I finally did fall asleep, I dreamt of
Mikayla.

We were in an elevator together, trying to
escape from Force.

We were trying to get to the top floor of the
building.
 
Somehow we knew that if
we could get there, we would be safe, we would be saved.
 
Both of us were dressed in our auction
outfits, but we weren’t scared or anxious – we were excited because we
were about to be free.

But when we pushed the button for the top
floor, the display started acting crazy, flashing random numbers and
letters.
 
And yet the car kept
soaring higher and higher, faster and faster, until the elevator got stuck
between floors 364 and 365.

I started to scream, and when I turned around, Mikayla
was screaming, too, her jaw hanging from its hinge, blood pooling in her
mouth.
 
“You left me,” she
screamed.
 
“You left me there to
die, Charlotte!
 
You left me!”

“No,” I told her, shaking my head.
 
“No, I told the police about you.”

“I’m dead!” she yelled.
 
“I’m dead, I’m dead,
I’m
dead!”
 
Blood specks flew from her
lips as she came toward me, her arms outstretched.
 
She wrapped her hands around my neck,
and her eyes turned shiny and black as she began to strangle me.

I gasped for air and reached up, grabbing her
arms.
 
But they wouldn’t budge.
 
I felt myself starting to black out, to
suffocate, and I woke up gasping and covered in sweat.

“Charlotte,” Noah said, reaching over and
turning on the light next to him.

The room glowed brightly as I tried to catch my
breath.

“It’s okay,” he said.
 
“It was just a bad dream.” He put his
hand on my forehead, pushed my hair away from my face.
 
“You’re safe, Charlotte.”

“I was back in Force,” I said.
 
“Or somewhere like Force.
 
There was that girl, the waitress,
Mikayla.”

“
Shhh
,” Noah
said.
 
“Shh, it’s okay.
 
It wasn’t real.”

He got up and moved to the bathroom, returned
with a glass of water and set it down on the table next to me.
 
I took a sip, my heart slowly returning
to its normal cadence.

“I don’t know what happened to her,” I said.

“In the dream?”

“No.
 
In real life.
 
Do you think she got out of there?”
 
I’d told the police about Mikayla, had
told them about how she’d claimed she was being held against her will.
 
I’d given them her description and her
name, but they hadn’t seemed too interested in that part of my story.
 
They’d been more interested in the
details about Professor Worthington, about what he’d tried to do to
me and Noah
.
 

“Charlotte, Force was shut down,” Noah said
gently.

“I know Force was shut down.”
 
The club had been evacuated that night,
shuttered closed until the police could finish their investigation.
 
But what would they be investigating,
exactly?
 
Was it just the attempted
murder?
 
Or would they look into
other things, too?
 
The things I’d
told them about the auction and the girls who’d been drugged and seemingly imprisoned?

“Was… do you think they’re going to try to
investigate everything?
 
Like how
Mikayla said she was being held against her will?”

Noah frowned and shook his head.
 
“Charlotte,” he said.
 
“That is not your concern.”

I stared at him, then sat up in bed and set my
water down on the nightstand carefully.
 
“Of course it’s my concern.
 
We were there together, Noah.
 
She needed my help.”

“Charlotte, there’s nothing you can do.”
 
He reached for the blankets, lifted them
like he was going to tuck me back into bed.
 
“Come,” he said.
 
“Try to get back to sleep.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Yes, you are.
 
It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“I’m not.”
 
I crossed my arms over my chest.
 
I was acting like a petulant child, but I didn’t care.
 
“A girl is in danger, Noah.
 
I have to help her.”

“You don’t even know that girl, Charlotte.
 
You have no idea if she was really in
danger, or if it was some kind of fantasy she was playing out.”

“She was in real danger, Noah.
 
I saw what they did to her.
 
They beat her into
submission
,
they used her
.
 
She fell and she split her lip wide
open, and they whisked her off into some back room to do God knows what to
her.”

“Charlotte, I hate to tell you this, but the
things that go on at Force… you cannot possibly begin to know what they’re
really about.
 
Including what was
going on with that girl.”

“So, what?
 
I’m just supposed to forget about her because there was a chance she was
playing out a fantasy?”
 
I shook my
head.
 
“That seems insane.”

“Charlotte.”
 
He sighed and dropped his head into his
hands and rubbed his eyes.
 
“You
told the police what you saw.
 
There
is nothing else you can do.”

“I can go down the police station.
 
I can make them listen.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” he said simply. “I will not allow that.”

“You won’t allow that?
 
What am I, a kept woman?”

“Charlotte, if you pursue this, you could be
putting yourself in grave danger.
 
And for what?
 
A
girl you know nothing about, a girl who could have been in a situation she
wanted to be in?”

“She wanted her lip to be split, blood pouring
down her face?”

Noah sighed again.
 
I saw his eyes soften for a beat, and
for a moment, I thought he was going to agree to help me.
 
But then his jaw tightened.
 
“There are millions of people all over
the world who are in trouble, Charlotte.
 
You cannot help them all.”

“But I might be able to help
her.”

“Do you have any information that might aid the
police in their investigation?
 
Did
you see or hear something that might lead them to the people responsible for
this?”

I thought of the Dungeon Masters, the ones
backstage who’d been in charge of the auction.
 
They’d all been covered in masks.
 

I shook my head.
 
“No.”

“Then what do you hope to get out of this?” he
asked.
 
“All you will accomplish is
to put yourself in danger.”

“You already said that.
 
How am I going to put myself in danger?”

“Those men will come after anyone they think is
threatening what they’re doing.”

“But if that’s true, doesn’t it prove that what
they’re doing is wrong?”

Noah shook his head.
 
“I will not discuss this anymore,
Charlotte.
 
You need to move
on.
 
We are beginning to build our
life together.
 
And I will not allow
you to put yourself in danger.
 
Not
now.
 
Not ever.”

He returned to his side of the bed, shut off
the light and plunged the room back into darkness.

I felt tears of frustration welling in my eyes.
 
Why didn’t he want to talk about
this?
 
Why did he always shut down
on me?
 

I never fell back asleep.

I tried, but I couldn’t.

At six am, I heard Noah get up and leave for
work.

He kissed my forehead, but I pretended to be
sleeping.

***

As soon as I heard the front door of the
apartment shut behind him, I grabbed my bag from where it was sitting on the
chair in the corner of the bedroom and carried it into the master bathroom.

I sat down on the edge of the tub and pulled
out Professor Worthington’s letter.
 
I felt like a thief, opening it here in the bathroom, like I was hiding
something.

You are hiding something.

I knew Noah had left for work, and yet I was so
afraid of him finding me with the letter that I was skulking around in the
bathroom like some kind of thief.

I ran my finger under the seal.

Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded
carefully into thirds.

My Dearest Charlotte,

I am writing you this letter to tell you that I
have gravely underestimated you.
 
I
don’t regret the things I had to do to you at Force, but I will say that you
surprised me in the end.