Nowhere But Here

The baby is old enough to rip through the mess of presents in front of her. She has long brown hair and she wears the same pink dress that my mother drags out on my birthdays to show how I’ve grown over the years. I hate that the baby sports a huge smile as she beams reverently at the person who’s holding her—Olivia.

My lower lip quivers and tears burn my eyes. I’m too tired for this. I’m too tired and there’s no way this is true. It’s not. My mother would never lie to me. Never. “My mom left Snowflake when she found out she was pregnant with me.”

“Your mother walked out of this house, your home, with you in the dead of night right after your second birthday.”

This house? No way. “Your son turned us away. He left us. Both of us. Mom said not one of you wanted me.”

“Your entire life is a lie and I’m the only person willing to give you the truth,” she says. “And if you want the truth, you’re going to have to stay here in Kentucky, because God knows that your parents won’t tell you. Even if it’ll cost you your life.”

Olivia snatches my hand and shoves the picture into my palm, curling my fingers over it. I twist away from her grasp. “This picture doesn’t mean anything. Maybe we came back for a visit but we obviously didn’t stay.”

“It was no visit. You lived here once and your mother stole you from us.”

“Olivia?” Cyrus calls again.

She walks past me and this consuming anger causes me to lash out before she leaves me alone. “My mother told me that all of you are crazy. This photo is a fake and you’re a liar.”

Olivia smirks. “We both know that’s wrong, don’t we, Emily Star?”

The breath rushes from my body as if I’ve been socked in the stomach. “That’s not my name.”

“Yes,” she says simply. “It is.”

It is...rather it was.

Emily Star is the name on my birth certificate, but when my father adopted me, we changed it to Emily Catherine so that I shared my grandmother’s, Dad’s mom’s, name. “So you know what used to be my middle name. It doesn’t prove anything.”

“It does, and so does that picture.”

“Mom said that the people in Snowflake are the worst kind of evil.” Cruel, I know, and there’s a pang of hurt and guilt, but what she’s doing to me right now is nothing short of agony.

Olivia pauses. Grandmothers are supposed to be maternal. They’re supposed to bake cakes and pies and cookies and pat my hand and tell me not to worry. They aren’t supposed to use curse words or speak in code or try to break me on one of the worst days of my life.

As she studies me, I one hundred percent understand that she’s not the warm fuzzy type. But the way sadness weighs on her face, I discover she’s not immune to caustic words.

“I’m not evil,” she states.

My skin prickles. Well, she sure as hell isn’t nice.

“I’m not,” she repeats. Then she sighs. “Either guest bedroom is yours to use. The one on the left belonged to you. You used to lie in your crib and watch the sunrise with a smile on your face.”

I shut my eyes. She’s lying. Has to be. There’s no other explanation for this. The picture is fake. Her words are lies. This entire scenario is me having a psychotic break after she popped out of the casket.

Without saying a word, I stalk past her into the bathroom and lock her out.

Oz

I ENTER THE living room and there’s one major player missing: Emily. “Should I be concerned?”

Olivia rests her head against the couch and closes her eyes. “She’s in the bathroom. The child has had enough to deal with and needs some time alone.”

Because when I want time alone, I think toilets. “She’s not a child.”

Emily’s far from it. That body she has—those curves, the way her hips move when she walks, the way I fantasized about worshipping that flat stomach if we had privacy and she wasn’t Eli’s daughter—that’s no child.

Olivia cracks open an eye, but before she can respond, Cyrus jumps in. “Oz is right. She’s not the two-year-old that used to follow you around in your tomato garden.”

“If I wanted your opinion, I’d ask for it,” Olivia answers. “Both of you.”

Mom offers Olivia a hand. “You need to rest. I’ll wake you when we hear from Eli.”

The strain of the past few hours weighs Olivia down as she accepts. Together, they leave the room. Emily can’t get out of here fast enough, in my opinion. Olivia will use the strength she needs to defeat the cancer in order to maintain appearances for Emily.

When the door to Olivia’s bedroom shuts, I appraise Cyrus as I shift the chess pieces in my head. The board in front of me is complicated and I don’t have many pieces to begin with. “What do you need me to do?”

“Entertain Emily.” Cyrus reaches behind the recliner and brings out his double-gauge shotgun. “Didn’t think I should keep it in sight with her ready to jump out of her skin.”

I chuckle. “Good call. How long has she been in the bathroom?”

“Long enough that someone she trusts should check to see if she slit her wrists.”

My head falls back. Screw me for asking. Cyrus focuses on the television, and keeps his gun in his lap. Suddenly the knife hanging on my hip develops an inferiority complex.

“Remember that she’s scared,” he says.

I flip Cyrus off as I head to check on Emily. Cyrus flips it back. The moment I have a cut on my back, I’m going to have to watch myself with the board members, especially being a prospect. But for now, Cyrus isn’t the president of the club to me—he’s the man who took care of me for the first few years of my life.

My mother’s voice is muffled on the other side of Olivia’s door. Not a good sign. Olivia has to be weaker than I thought to let my mother help her into bed. My neck tightens. Emily’s going to kill Olivia if she stays much longer.

I tap on the bathroom door and when there’s no response, I knock again. Still nothing. Damn, she probably has slit her wrists.

The voices from the other side of Olivia’s door go quiet. The last thing I want is Olivia barging out of her bedroom and taking over again. She needs sleep, not to be babysitting Emily. I brought this trouble into her home and I can handle it for a few more hours.

I try the knob and it doesn’t budge. Grabbing the skeleton key we store on top of the door frame in case Olivia passes out in the bathroom, I wiggle it around in the small hole until I hear the click of the lock giving. I’m slow opening the door, in case Emily is lost in her thoughts on the toilet.

Each push of the door is methodic and gradual. Empty floor. Closed toilet. Curtains blowing in the breeze and a wide-open window. My fingers curl until they form a fist. I’m going to wring Emily’s tiny, delicate, hot little neck.

Emily

WITH MY KNEES pulled to my chest, I sit on a wooden bench that rests below a darkened window of the house. According to Olivia, the room belonged to me, which doesn’t make sense on multiple levels. The impulse is to peer into the room to see if the answers I’m searching for are in there, but I don’t. I keep my back to the house and my eyes locked on the approaching sunrise.

I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours and my brain has disconnected from my emotions. I feel stretched and numb. Cold and hot. Wired and exhausted. I sort of welcome it. I’m officially too tired for fear.

Oz was right earlier. I definitely was sucked into a storm and I’m desperately trying to grab on to anything solid to prevent myself from plummeting into the vortex of the tornado.

There’s a moan in the wooden window frame a few feet down and out pops a jean-clad leg. It’s the same black boot that monopolized my space at the funeral home. Oz slides out of the house with more elegance than me. I ended up on my butt. He lands on both feet. Even with all that muscle, he’s graceful like a cat. Goody for him.

His eyes dart around and he does a double take when he spots me on the bench. He scans the yard and thick surrounding woods, then he strides over as if climbing out a bathroom window is normal. “And they say people from Kentucky are backward. We have a front door and one in the kitchen, or do you think you’re too good for either one?”

“Would they have let me out?”

“Onto the porch.”

“Sure they would have—with an armed guard.”

“Not armed guard—escort,” he corrects as he stands in front of me. “And if you had made a break for it, I would have had to tackle you and then we’d be in all sorts of trouble. Could you imagine me putting my hands on your body?”

He winks.

Winks.

Heat rushes up my neck and my earlobes burn.

“I...” Clear my throat so I can at least pretend that comment didn’t slip under my skin. “I have no idea what you’re suggesting.”

“Yeah, you do. Since you arrived at the funeral home, I’ve been looking at you and you’ve been looking at me. Too bad you didn’t go out the front door. Would have been fun, don’t you think? Me tackling you. Us rolling around. Tell me, Emily, are you the type of girl that doesn’t mind a good time?”

His strong body over mine. My hands messing through his hair. His hands touching my face. Holy hell, my nerve endings tingle.

The right side of his mouth tips up as if he can read my thoughts and his eyes wash over me like a lingering waterfall. That’s when it hits me, he’s playing a game with me. “You’re full of yourself.”

“Might be, but I’m not wrong, plus for thirty seconds you weren’t having a pity party. So what happened with your escape plans? Did your momma tell you that you can’t cross the street without holding her hand?”

I throw him a mock smirk, but oh how I wish there was a road to cross and that was my problem. Instead, there’s woods. Lots of woods plus lots of darkness. Woods and darkness terrify me. Bad things live in the woods. Evil things exist in the dark. The inside of that cabin didn’t feel any safer so I opted for the bench with the glow of the lights from the utility pole near the house.

For some, hell might be being buried alive in a coffin. For others, hell would be being covered to their heads in a tank full of spiders. For me, it’s this. Encircled and enshrouded by claustrophobic darkness and foreboding woods. Dead things lie in wait in that black void.

In that house, a woman is battling death and also promising to tear apart the foundation on which I stand. Inside isn’t an option. Neither is out. I’m here on this bench because I didn’t know where else to go.

Oz assesses me. The same way my parents used to for weeks after they found me in that hole at eight. “You suck at running away. I found you in less than ten seconds.”

“Are you going to continue to rub it in that I failed?”

“I was going to, but that question stole my thunder.” Oz eases beside me and I curl into a ball toward the corner. Even with that move, the heat from his thighs wiggles past my jean shorts and caresses my skin. I rub my hand along my cold arms. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I crave to crawl up next to him and live in that heat for rest of my life.

He sprawls the massive wingspan of his arms along the back of the bench then extends his long legs, kicking one booted foot on top of the other. His fingers “accidently” swipe across my bare shoulder and it causes a tickle in my bloodstream.

Oz commands awareness like no one I have ever met before. There’s no denying his presence. No denying that his body is close to perfect. No denying that since I laid eyes on him I’ve wondered what he looks like with his shirt off.

Completely impervious to how his nearness affects me, he stares straight ahead and watches the sunrise. “Ever seen one of these before?”

According to Olivia, yes, but I shake my head no. I’ve been up before dawn, but I’ve never sat and admired how the stars are chased away by the sun rising on the horizon.

“Me neither,” he says. “Mind if I watch it with you?”

“If I say no, will you leave?”

“No.” At least he’s honest. “But I’m trying to at least make you feel like you have a choice.”

“But I don’t.”

“But you don’t,” he repeats. “Just a few more hours, Emily, and you can go back to your life and I can go back to mine. We can both pretend we never met.”

That’s all I want. “You don’t like me, do you?”

“You make the people in my life sad and in the brief few hours I’ve known you, you keep racking up points in the heartache category. So, no, I’m not your biggest fan.”

I bite the inside of my lip and focus on my knees. It shouldn’t bother me what a punked-out moron thinks of me, but it does.

“Don’t look like that,” he pushes. “You could have killed me with some of the glares you’ve sent my way. Are you going to say you like me?”

He has been an ass, but he’s also saved me so instead of answering immediately, I look at him. Oz wears a black T-shirt with the word Conflict scrawled in some fancy script. His jeans are loose and he sports the same black studded belt from yesterday. His arms are chiseled like he works out often and he keeps a hand near the knife at his side. Oz shifts as if he’s uncomfortable.

“I don’t know you,” I finally answer.

Oz blinks like I said something profound, then returns his gaze to the east and appears to choose to ignore the past few exchanges. “You can go to sleep if you want. The window to that spare bedroom behind you is open. You can crawl in since you have an issue with doors.”

“Why were those guys at my motel?”

“The bed, Emily. Do you want it or not?”

Like Cyrus earlier, he’s not going to answer. The bed is tempting, but... “No, thank you. I’m going to wait for my parents and then I’ll go to sleep.”

“They’re safe,” Oz says, and I choose to believe him because the hollowness that happens inside me at the thought of any other option is too harsh to bear.

“You could be kidnapping me and trying to do that thing where I grow to love my captors. I’ve seen it on TV before.”

“You caught us. We knew you were going to walk out of the motel at three in the morning and we created this situation to freak you out into loving us. That’s how fucked up we are.”

“Why were you there?”

“Maybe I was using a room.”

I flat-out frown at the thought and I don’t understand why. My fingers tap my thigh and the picture in my hand moves. I seriously hate Oz and Olivia, and I shouldn’t hate Olivia, because she’s dying. “How far along is Olivia’s cancer?”

“Too far.” His voice is why-the-hell-did-you-bring-that-up clipped and I try to pretend I don’t exist.

The chatter of bullfrogs, crickets and the wind. It’s what’s between us. That and the fact I asked about Olivia’s health.

“I promise if you go to sleep, nothing bad will happen to you,” Oz offers.

That’s where he’s wrong. If I go to sleep, I can’t stop the worst from occurring. Staying awake is the only way I can chase the nightmares away. I am, like I was for twelve hours when I was eight, left to fend for myself. I shiver with the memory.

A light breeze dances across the yard and the picture Olivia gave me drops to the wooden porch. Oz leans forward faster than me, swipes it up, then pauses. After a second, he hands me the photo and I shove it into my pocket.

“Where’d you get that?” he asks.

“Olivia.”

He’s silent and he’s watching me and I despise the expression that tells me he sees things and knows things he shouldn’t. “Don’t tell Eli Olivia gave you that.”

“Why?”

“How far down this rabbit hole do you want to go?”

I don’t want to even be in the same state as the hole. “Can we just watch the sunrise?”

“I mean it,” he says. “You’ve already caused this family a world of hurt. If you tell Eli she gave you this, it’ll end badly for Olivia.”

Anger wells up inside me to the point I feel like a volcano. Olivia, Olivia, Olivia. I am so sick of him mentioning Olivia. “Well, I guess your precious Olivia is safe because besides having this picture I don’t know anything!”

“Good,” he snaps.

“Good,” I shout back.

“Great!”

“Can we watch the freaking sunrise?” I seethe.

“That we can do.”

A rumble of engines from the road and my heart kicks into high gear. Thank God, this is over. I jump to my feet and race to the front steps. Six motorcycles growl into the clearing. All the riders appear the same: big men wearing black leather Reign of Terror vests.

Four of them break from the pack and head to an overly large garage on the other side of the yard. The other two park along the edge of the driveway. With their backs to the light, their faces are blacked out by shadow.

My fingers twist and untwist together as I strain to hear another engine—a more familiar one, one belonging to a car, but as each bike shuts down, I experience a loneliness in the silence.

There’s movement near me and sound...but not the sound I long to hear. The clink of men swinging off their bikes. Oz’s boots thumping on the wood to be closer to me. The squeak of the door opening behind me. Even the coolness of the morning tries to steal my attention from the road, but I won’t look away. They’re coming for me. My parents are coming for me.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” Eli says at the bottom of the stairs.

“I’m not.” A cloud moves and a ray of dull early-morning light strikes the road. No car. No hum of a smooth engine. No crackle of rocks under a tire. “How far behind are my mom and dad?”

Eli walks up the stairs and puts a firm hand on my arm. “They’re not coming, Emily.”

My words haunt me: You could be kidnapping me... Eli’s still talking. At least I believe he is, but all I hear is a low-pitched roar. They’re not coming. They’re not coming...

I spin, because if I do, then I’ll see something else. Hear something else. But I only see Oz. He lowers his head so that his hair hides his eyes. The roar is replaced by a high-pitched ringing and it grows louder and louder, drowning everything out. Almost everything. I can clearly hear the scream inside my head.

I spin again, but then think oddly how my feet didn’t move and how they are perfectly cemented to the ground and yet the world is twirling.

Twirling.

The last stars in the sky are twirling.

Heat creeps along my hairline while a cold clamminess claims my neck.

“Emily?” Eli’s voice breaks through the chaos. “Emily, are you okay?”

For a second, I’m weightless. Like if I was to stand on my tiptoes I could lift into the air and fly, but then a sharp tilt causes the wooden floor to rush toward my face.

The world goes dark.

Oz

WIND BLOWS IN from the north and a few pieces of Emily’s dark hair sweep across her face. One minute Emily’s a bright flame, then a gust snuffs out her light. Her body sways like a top at the tail end of a spin and I lunge forward.

Emily’s knees give out and her eyes roll back into her head. I catch her inches before she crashes onto the porch. She’s light as I swing her into my arms and her head circles onto my shoulder, reminding me of one of those rag dolls Violet used to play with when we were kids.

“Emily!” Eli’s on top of me, attempting to yank her out of my arms. “Open your eyes.”

Her eyelids flutter, but remain closed as her hand limply clutches my shirt. Eli rams his arms underneath mine and he makes Emily a rope in a tug-of-war. I should let her go. I should want to let her go, but then Emily goes and screws it up for me. “Oz.”

It was a damn whisper, but I heard my name on her lips and so did Eli. His eyes flash to mine and Cyrus’s words repeat in my mind. That girl trusts you. And screw us both for that.

“She’s exhausted,” I say. “Hasn’t slept at all tonight.”

Eli’s expression hardens as he glares at me. I’ve seen Eli throw a coma-inducing punch for less defiance and I readjust the sleeping girl in my arms. A reminder if he decks me now, he’ll be putting his daughter at risk.

Temporarily surrendering, Eli cups Emily’s face in his hands and angles her toward him. “Emily, please open your eyes.”

She does. It’s barely a crack and they’re completely glazed.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Eli affirms.

“I want my mom and dad,” she mumbles.

“You’ll see them tomorrow.” Eli pushes a strand of hair from her cheek. “You’re safe here. I promise.”

She rejects Eli by curling into me. Her head fits perfectly in the crook of my neck and I loathe the wave of protectiveness that rumbles through my body. Emily’s fingers tighten their grip near my shoulders and the impulse is to shield her from the guys gawking at this intimate scene. Yeah, this is club business, but Emily never asked for any of this.

Cyrus opens the door and I move past Eli. He’s hot on my heels. So close, his breath hits the back of my neck. Mom steps out of the kitchen and is down the hallway before me. She waves for me to enter the spare bedroom.

It’s the bedroom no one ever uses. First it belonged to Eli’s brother and then he died. Most can get over that, but people will crash on the couch and hardwood floor before sleeping in the bedroom that Emily and her mother once claimed. The purple room with white bedding is cursed. No one wants anything to do with a traitor.

I lay Emily on the bed. Her arms fall over her head and her dark hair fans out on the pillow. Her eyes are shut and her breaths come out in a deep rhythmic pattern. I ease back as Eli spreads a blanket over Emily and removes the shoes from her feet, dropping each one to the floor.

Emily’s hand drifts to the edge of the bed and her fingers splay open. The picture Olivia gave her floats to the floor like a feather in the breeze. My heart pounds hard once. I go to retrieve it, but Mom snatches it with death written over her face. Her eyes meet mine and we stare at each other as if we’re looking down the business end of a rifle.

If Eli found that picture in Emily’s possession, he would have spiraled into dangerous quick.

“Where’d she get this?” Mom mouths.

I tilt my head toward Olivia’s bedroom and her eyes slam shut. As Eli straightens, Mom shoves the picture in her jeans pocket then spins on her heel and touches Eli’s arm to gain his attention. “Would you like me to stay with Emily?”

Eli draws a hand over his face and walks over to the window seat. He sags onto it and appears to age ten years.

Since Eli entered my life at eleven, he’s always been badass. All the stories I had been told before he returned to Snowflake made him larger than life. In reality, Eli is larger than life. Over six feet tall. Broad-shouldered. The Reign of Terror’s black leather cut strong on his back. I’ve seen him easily kick the shit out of any man stupid enough to stand in his way.

“Tell Cyrus I’ll update him soon, but I need to be in here,” Eli says. “Emily will need some things. Clothes, personal stuff. A burner phone. Can you handle that for me?”

“Of course,” Mom answers, and I don’t miss how she keeps a hand pressed over the pocket containing the picture. “Let’s go, Oz.”

I go to leave, but Eli stops me. “Tell me you didn’t fall asleep on lookout.”

I shove my hands in my pockets and point-blank meet his glare. Eli shakes his head in disgust. “We’ll deal with this in Church later. Cyrus says that Emily trusts you.”

If Eli believes it to be true and it works me back into his good graces then I’ll take it. “She hasn’t run away from me yet.” At least not far enough that I couldn’t catch her.

“We’ll be leaving here around three. Get some sleep. If she trusts you then I want you riding with us when we meet with her parents. You better wow me if you want to make prospect.”

I nod to him then glance at Emily as I leave. Amazing how someone so innocent and beautiful can wreak so much havoc.

Mom shuts the door behind us and leans into me like a rabid animal. “Did you know Emily had the picture? Did she bring it with her? Tell me that nod of your head did not mean that Olivia gave it to her.”