I attempted to wriggle away, but he pulled me closer.
His eyes drilled me with his intense emotions. “I know this is hard. But you’re alive. And I’ll be damned if I fail to keep you that way because you can’t handle a few ambiguities.”
Was that what he thought this was about? Ambiguities?
How could he think that when he’d just said he was keeping me alive? So who wanted to hurt me and why? But, of course, he wasn’t going to tell me anything. That much I knew.
I studied his face, trying to put the pieces together. Nothing fit. Nothing. Especially the fact that when I was near him, I felt safe. And now, pressed firmly against his strong body, I couldn’t stop my body from reacting.
“I’m going home,” I said.
“You’re upset. I’ll take you.”
“Leave me alone, Santiago.” I tried to shake him off me, but it only made him madder.
He raised his voice, “I can’t do that, Dakota.”
“Your fucking problem! Let me go!” I jerked away and ran to my car, heading straight for the dorms the moment I started the engine.
Damn it!
Santiago was behind me on his motorcycle.
Son of a bitch
.
A few minutes later, I arrived at the parking lot. It was crowded with fire trucks and police cars everywhere. I pulled into a spot and got out of the car. Smoke poured from one of the windows on the top floor.
I scrambled over to a group of girls standing near the mob of spectators, half of them wearing pajamas. “What happened?” I asked.
“Someone started a fire,” one of them responded. I recognized her as being from my floor. “That girl over there said she saw a guy running down the hall right when the flames burst out.” She pointed to a brunet talking to the police. I looked up again and noticed the stream of water from the hoses pointed at the room next to mine.
“They’re saying that poor girl Christy was inside.”
What?
“Christy? You mean glasses-wearing, bio-major Christy?”
The girl nodded and my heart skipped a beat. “Are you sure?” There had to be a mistake.
“The firefighters already carried her away in an ambulance. They had her face covered, but it had to be her. Her roommate is gone for the weekend.”
Oh my God.
“Christy’s dead?” I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.
“Dakota?” I heard Santiago’s deep voice behind me.
“Get away from me.” I marched back to my car, determined to find somewhere else to have my breakdown.
Santiago caught up before I managed to open the door. “Damn it, Dakota. Stop. Just…stop.”
“What?” I stomped. “What do you want from me? To see me crumble? To see me fall into the world’s tiniest pieces, so small that no one can ever find me? Because that’s where I’m heading!” I pounded his hard chest. “I’m not like you! I’m a person. I’m real, Godfuckingdamn it!”
It’s not that I knew Christy well, but I’d already reached my limit. This was the final mental straw.
That poor girl. Her poor family.
He pulled me into him, cupping my head to his chest. “I know,” he whispered, stroking the back of my head. The tears broke free. “I know,” he repeated, but his words didn’t make me feel any better. His strength and warmth did, however. They made me feel safe enough to let go. So that’s what I did, knowing how wrong it was to find comfort in him.
Several minutes passed, but then Santiago’s body became rigid. “You can’t stay here.” Santiago’s firm grip led me toward the passenger side of my car.
“Where are you taking me?” I said between tiny sobs as I slid into the car. The shock had my brain all twisted in knots.
Santiago came around and got into the driver’s seat. “You can stay with me tonight.”
What? Christ.
“No way.”
“Where else are you going to go?” His phone rang, and he dug it out of his pocket. “Yeah?” He listened for several moments. “That’s good, I guess. But we need to talk.” Pause. “Fine. But I’m not doing this anymore.” Another pause. “You made a promise. So either keep it, or I’m done.” He scratched his forehead. “All right. You know where to find me.”
“Who was that?” I asked.
Santiago cranked the engine. “The man who’s going to give you answers.”
I wiped the tears from my eyes.
The man? What man?
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“Why can’t you tell me?” Because, if he hadn’t noticed, I was snapping.
“’Cause it’ll be my ass.” He paused, his jaw flexing. “But if he doesn’t tell you the truth, then I will.”
“When?” I asked. “Tonight?” He couldn’t drop a bomb like that at a time like this and expect me to just remain calm. There was someone behind all this crap.
He released a slow breath. “No. But soon. And trust me, you don’t want to know tonight. You’ve been through enough already.”
The word “soon” jogged my memory. Santiago had asked me about my father coming “soon” and then had said to get ready. “Wait. Does this have something to do with my dad?”
Santiago ran his hand over the steering wheel and then gave me a sharp look. “Do you trust me?”
I did and I didn’t. I trusted he would do anything to keep me out of harm’s way, including hurt me if need be. It was seriously complicated.
I shrugged.
“Fair enough. All I’m asking is for a few more days. I promise you’ll get every answer coming to you. Even the ones I know you’ll wish you hadn’t heard.”
PART THREE
One Hundred Percent
Chance
of Rabbit Holes
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
By the time we arrived at his small beach house, I could barely breathe or move; the shock was taking its toll. Not only because of all that was happening to me, but because that sweet girl had died. I couldn’t stop thinking about how insanely precious life was.
But I already knew that. I’d known it from the moment I was five and my mother came home from work, blood covering the front of her scrubs. She hadn’t known I was there watching and listening from the hallway, but what she told my Aunt Rhonda would probably stay with me until the day I died: “He was just a baby,” she’d sobbed. “Just a baby no older than Dakota. What’s the point of being born if some asshole can just take it away in the blink of an eye?”
I never found out what happened to that little boy, but many weeks later, I remember asking my mother what she thought “the point” was. Why
were
we here? I recalled her warm blue eyes as she smiled and brushed her hand over the top of my head. “To live. And if we’re lucky, to love.”
From then on, “living” felt like a sacred mission, an unattainable state of perfection, some obscure mountain I would someday climb if I were good enough. It became a mild obsession. I constantly thought about what my future would be like when I started “to live.”
I
wanted to be one of those perfect people in the TV commercials who laughed and ran on the beach, holding hands with someone she loved, who was equally perfect. Silently sitting with Santiago in the car, I realized that was my hang-up. The source of all my dysfunction. That picture-perfect life and picture-perfect person I’d dreamt of being didn’t exist, nor would she ever. Yet I chastised myself for every flaw, every mistake. I called myself a loser. Queen Loser. The older I got, and the more I grew to know myself, the more I realized how imperfect I was. And the more imperfect I was, and the farther I got from my goal of “living” that perfect life, the more I hated myself.
What an idiot
.
I’d spent so much time thinking about the future and about becoming someone I could never be that I’d simply missed the point: I was alive. Now. This very moment. And that’s all there was. It could be messy and horrible and consist of the most improbable circumstances, but that was all any of us truly had. One blink, and it could all be gone. Just like Christy.
So what should I do?
Brace yourself.
Whatever answers were coming, and whoever would be giving the answers, I knew they were going to bulldoze over a lifetime of sandcastles. And I had to decide right then and there whether I’d let it ruin me.
Santiago turned off the engine. “We’re here.”
He led me inside and flipped on a lonely lamp in the entryway. “I’m renting this place,” he said quietly. “But you’re safe here.”
I nodded.
Safe. Safe. Safe...
What did that mean? Did I want safe anymore? Wasn’t it just another illusion?
He walked me down a long, dark hall into a bedroom. I was too fried to notice anything other than Santiago and the bed.
“Sit,” he said.
I did, and he left for a moment and returned with a tall glass of water.
“Drink,” he instructed.
I once again obeyed.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded, staring at the floor.
“Why don’t you lie down? Try to get some sleep.”
I looked up at his beautifully masculine face. “Don’t leave. Okay?”
The corner of his mouth twisted a bit, as if he was uncomfortable with my request. Then he smiled. “Okay. But keep your hands off my ass.”
I flopped back into the bed, exploding with laughter until my cheeks hurt. When my chuckle died, I glanced at Santiago, standing to my side, arms crossed, smiling. “I like your laugh. You should do it more often.”
I sighed. “Thanks.”
We stared at each other for a moment before he jarred himself from my gaze. “I’ll go make you a sandwich. I hope you like grilled cheese.”
“Love grilled cheese.”
“Be back in a few. Stay put.” He disappeared down the hall, and I sat staring at the ceiling, thinking about all of the pieces I’d been trying to force-fit into my perfect little puzzle.
It was time to let it all go. Whatever was coming, it sure as hell wouldn’t be perfect, and now it was up to me to find a way to live. Come what may.
~ ~ ~
I didn’t know the time, but it was still dark out when I woke up to Santiago’s mumbling, his arms wrapped around my waist, his face nuzzled in my hair. An uneaten sandwich sat on the nightstand by my head, and the lamp had been left on.
“You’re safe. I promise,” he whispered. “Just don’t give up.”
Was he dreaming?
“Why did you say that?” I asked.
“I’ll probably die for you, and it has to mean something.”
What?
I turned my head and looked at him. He was sound asleep.
Who knows what he was dreaming about, but I couldn’t help noticing how lying in his arms made me feel safe. Tormented. Safe. Insane. Alive.
I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Ummm…Santiago,” I groaned.
He’d removed his shirt, jeans, and hovered over my body. His feral, dark eyes drilled into me. “Are you sure, Dakota?”
I nodded, biting my lips.
He gripped my panties and tugged them down, gazing hungrily at the valley between my legs. “Have you…?”
Did he mean been with someone? As in was I a virgin?
I slowly shook my head. “No. I’ve never…”
He tilted his head, and his dark hair fell to one side. “Then I’ll take it slow.”
He slid down his boxers and allowed me to take in the impressive view. The thickness was not what I’d expected. Neither was its length. He was much larger.
He flashed that charming, arrogant smile and lay over me.
“Don’t move an inch,” he said. He rubbed the silky soft head of his penis against my throbbing bud.
“Dakota?”
“Umm…Yeah?”
“Open your eyes. Look at me.”
I did as he asked.
“You were dreaming, weren’t you?”
I took a moment to digest.
Santiago and I were facing each other, fully clothed, my legs woven between his, his between mine.
My eyes scanned the room. It was furnished with simple, sleek modern furniture, white walls, a large walk-in closet.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
“My place. And if you don’t take your hand off me, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
Hmmm…
Yes. In fact, my hand was gripping a very large, hard, and warm object.
Horrified, I quickly let go. “I am so, so sorry—”
“Not as sorry as I am.” He grinned.
“Get the fuck away from my daughter.”
I looked up. “Daddy?”
~ ~ ~
Yeah. If I could pick the top three situations a girl could live without, having your father catch you in bed with a guy while gripping his raging hard-on would be number one. Not sure what number two or three would be, but who cared? They were distant runners-up.
“I said, get the fuck off her.” My dad’s steel-gray eyes glowed with fury.
Santiago, calmly and slowly, slid from the blankets holding up his palms as if he were a 7-Eleven clerk being held up at 3:00 a.m., with no hope of survival.
“Dakota, go back to your dorm,” my father said. With his cropped silver hair slightly disheveled and his dark gray designer suit excessively wrinkled, I knew he’d just gotten off a plane. From where? Who knew.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
My father gave me a look that could send a person straight to hell. “Dorm!” he barked.
“But my room is—”
“Fine!” His face turned bright red. “Your room is fine. The fire damage is next door.”
“But why are you he—”
“Go,” Santiago growled. “Your father and I need to talk in private.”
I knew better than to argue with my father, but what the hell was Santiago thinking? My father was a large man, almost as tall as Santiago, and certainly as intimidating.
I got up from the bed, thankful to see my nudity had only been a dream, but unthankful to leave my ghost behind with a man who looked like he might make him a ghost for real.
I glanced back at Santiago, who gave me a nod. “It’s fine.”
Yeah. But he didn’t know my father. Dad hadn’t built his thriving company on kindness or warm fuzzies.
“Wait.” The fog of sleep lifted from my head, and my thoughts skidded to a stop. “You two know each other?”
My father glared at me. “Yes. And I’ll explain everything later.”