Page 12 of Serendipity
“Then why the fuck is it so bright?”
He was fighting a smile, I could see it, and it did nothing to appease the gremlin waking up inside of me. God, my neighbors and all my friends knew what a cranky asshole I was in the morning—especially if I had to wake up with a blinding light pointed at me.
“Because it’s morning?” Was he asking me? His cheerful tone was not helping—at all.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“I would never.” Of course, he would never, only thing was, that last sentence sounded as choked as he looked. He was trying so hard not to laugh.
“You are so laughing at me.” I moved away an inch, but he had different ideas. I managed to move away less than an inch, when his hands landed on my hips, pulling me back—right into his lap.
My hands landed on his shoulders, my face aligned with his. His breath mingled with mine, our lips mere inches apart.
I should’ve feared him, right? I should’ve tried to run away by now, but here I was, short of breath, my heart pounding and my lips tingling from the need to kiss him. He wrapped his hand in my hair, the second one still resting on my hip, and pulled me closer. His eyes blazed with the unhinged fire.
I wanted to burn from it. I wanted a taste of insanity because that’s what this was—pure insanity.
Stockholm Syndrome, here I come.
I’ve often joked with my friends that if I ever got kidnapped and the kidnapper ended up looking, well, like this, I would stay. Never in a million years would I have thought that all those jokes I told would one day turn out to be true.
“What am I doing here, Nico?” I asked, breathless, terrified, but not of him. Somehow, he didn’t scare me. He didn’t make me feel unsafe.
“I don’t know,” he answered in a gruff voice, as if he, too, was fighting against this pull between us. “I just know that it feels right, having you here with me. Nothing has ever felt this right.”
“Yet you drugged me.” It wasn’t a question anymore. I knew that from the moment I woke up—the memory of the choking incident, me in his arms as vivid as his eyes in front of mine.
“I did drug you. Seeing you there in that basement cell, hearing you talk, seeing how brave, and maybe a little crazy, you are, I just had to have you.”
“Does this mean I’m your prisoner?”
“No,Tesoro. This means I am your prisoner, and if you decide to leave, then I won’t stop you.” He moved the loose strand of hair that fell over my face. “But I hope you’ll decide to stay.”
As crazy as it sounded, a part of me wanted to stay. It was madness, what he was suggesting, but deep down in my bones, it felt right. He felt right.
This stranger with eyes that could see too much, and hands that were caring more than hurting, felt like home. Something I hadn’t had in a very long time.
I wasn’t unhappy, but I also wasn’t happy. I was somewhere in between, stuck in limbo, going through motions. Deep down, I knew I wasn’t complete. I always felt as if something was missing—something or someone. I’d spent years chasing fake happiness, success, only to be left feeling empty when I reached everything I thought I wanted to have.
Nothing was ever enough.
Not a shining career, or an apartment in an amazing building, and most definitely not the amount of money I started earning. What was the point when I felt hollow from the inside?
Feeling empty was such a strange emotion. One minute, you were smiling, laughing, feeling good, and in the next one, it all tended to disappear, shattering down like a house of cards. You were left feeling worse than before, because you knew that the happiness you thought you were feeling was nothing more than you mirroring other people’s reactions and actions, and not what you were truly feeling.
I didn’t want to feel that way. I didn’t want to cry myself to sleep because there was something wrong with me, when in reality, in all these years, nothing has ever felt more right than being here with him.
“What about my life? My family? I don’t want them to think I was kidnapped and killed. I don’t want them to live through life with the trauma of never talking to me ever again. I know you’re some gang or some shit, but I wanna have my brother in my life. I want to be able to visit them and for them to visit me.”
“Tesoro—”
“No, no, that is my ultimatum. If I’m going to stay with you—and I can’t believe I’m actually considering it—these are the things I need. Also, I need to work. I don’t know what, definitely not in the hotel, because God knows I’m going to kill somebody if I have to deal with another asshole that didn’t get his complimentary upgrade, but something… Are you laughing again?”
“Who? Me? Never.”
“Your poker face sucks.”
“Si, but only with you.” He wrapped his hands around me, holding me tight. “These ultimatums of yours, they don’t sound like ultimatums at all. Truth to be told, I don’t want you to lose contact with your family, and I don’t want you to feel like you don’t have control.” I arched an eyebrow at him, both hating and loving the grin spreading over his face. “That’s what this is about, right? Control?”
