A Single Glance (Irresistible Attraction #1)(10)

His next words come with a warm breath and another tug at the base of my skull as he whispers, “You’re going to listen to me, Bethany. You’re going to do what I tell you… everything I tell you.” The way he says the word everything dulls the heat, replacing it with fear, and for the first time, I truly feel it down to my bones. Standing up a little straighter, but still keeping his grip on me, he asks with a low tone devoid of any emotion, “We’re going to have a conversation, isn’t that right?” He loosens his grip on the back of my neck as he waits for my response.

I wish his gorgeous face was still close to mine, so I could slam my head into his nose.

With a tremor of fear running through me and that image of him rattling in my head, I nod.

As a small smile drifts along his lips and he nods his head in return, I welcome the cold gust that travels into the trunk.

He may think he can use me, but I swear to everyone, living and dead, I’ll be the one using him.





Bethany





Hope is a long way of saying goodbye.

I told that to Jenny a few weeks ago. No, it was longer than that. It doesn’t matter when, because by then, I’d lost my faith in her. Disappearing for days on end and talking about a man who had what she needed … my sister was never going to get help. I begged her to come back home, and she just shook her head no, and told me to hold on to hope.

I wanted her to stay with me. To get better.

I could have helped her, but you can’t help those who don’t want to be helped.

I can still feel her fingers, her nails just barely scratching the skin down my wrist as I ripped my hand away.

The memory haunts me as I think in this moment – this terrifying moment of waiting for his next move - I think, I need to have hope that it’s not over. I need to have hope that I can get the fuck away from this man. That I can make him pay if he had any part in her death. Jase Cross will fucking pay.

The last thought strengthens my resolve.

“You’ll be quiet,” he tells me as if he’s certain of it, a hint of a threat underlying each syllable, and I nod.

I nod like a fucking rag doll and try not to show how much it hurts when he rips the duct tape off my face in one quick tug. The stinging pain makes me reflexively reach for my mouth, but I can’t; that act only exacerbates the cuts in my wrists, still cuffed behind my back. I try not to heave when he pulls the wet cloth from my mouth, finally giving me the chance to speak, to scream, to fucking breathe.

My body trembles; it’s not from a cold breeze or the temperature though, and not from the fear I know is somewhere inside of me. Instead it’s from the anger.

His eyes stay fixed on mine as he reaches down and lifts me into his chest before heaving me over his shoulder.

My teeth grit as he slams the trunk shut, turning to the side and giving me a view of a forest. All I see is a gravel drive and trees. So many trees. My heart gallops, both with that tinge of fear and with hope. I could run.

Fuck that.

I’m not running. I’m not giving up this chance to find out more about the family name I’ve heard so much about lately.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I see my sister, and I hear her too. The Cross brothers, she whispers. She mentioned them so many times on the phone. He knew her. Or one of his brothers did.

As time stands still while I wait for the verdict I’m about to receive and what this man has in store for me, I remember the week my sister first went missing. I started with Miranda to try to figure out where my sister had gone. It made the most sense because Jenny told me she’d crash at a friend’s place whenever we got into a fight. Miranda and she were close. But Miranda didn’t have any idea what happened to her, only that she went out for drinks at The Red Room before she disappeared, a place I’d heard Jenny mention before. A place I knew I was headed to next.

All I had were two names and a single location. One name, Marcus, proved elusive—no one had any information on him at all. Not a single person inside The Red Room had any idea who he was. They wanted a last name, and I didn’t have one. He was a dead end.

I’d spent hours at that bar, waiting for something. Waiting for anything. Any sign of her, or for anyone who knew them. Everyone knew of Jase, but no one knew him. They couldn’t tell me anything about him. Nothing more than the dirt I dug up online.

They said he was one of the Cross brothers. The owner of The Red Room.

They said you don’t cross a Cross; they laughed when they said it, like it was funny. Nothing was funny to me then.

And when two men appeared from the back of the club, heading toward a side entrance, the woman next to me pinched my arm and pointed as the side door was opened for them.

“Those are the Cross brothers,” she said and then bit down on her bottom lip as she sucked it into her mouth. She was skinny like a model, with the straightest black hair I’d ever seen. Her icy blue eyes never left the two of them and I stared at her for far too long, missing my chance to catch the Cross brothers. The thick throng of people kept me from making it to them, and by the time I got outside, they were nowhere in sight.

I stalked that place for four days straight, waiting for Jenny to show up. An aching hollowness in my heart reminds me how it felt, sitting there alone at the bar, praying she’d walk up to me or someone would message me that they found her.