Page 63 of Roped

His clenches his hands at his sides. When that doesn’t help, he uncurls them and clenches them again. When even that isn’t enough, he rakes his fingers through his hair and pulls at the strands before finally continuing, “I said yes. I agreed. She said she had a place in mind, said Mars helped her set it all up. A school up in the mountains. They had a program for the blind. She dressed it up as her being given the opportunity to learn, to live again. But I knew. She did it for me, to give me space. In return, she asked me to make a promise. Asked me to not go after Hank Turner; made me vow to never ever go after the man who took everythin’ from us. And that pissed me off so much that…”

He shakes his head again, and I know it means he hasn’t seen her since.

“Every time I thought about goin’ to see her or bring her home, I’d get so mad that she moved on so quickly. That she could just… forget what happened. I’d get so mad that she’d tied my hands, roped ’em with her bullshit promise, that I… I left her there. Left her to her new life.”

Before I can absorb the fact that he hasn’t seen his sister for more than sixteen years, his focus comes back to me again, and the look in his green eyes is one I’ve never seen before. His green eyes seem haunted as he says, “Only a monster could do somethin’ like that. Leave his own flesh and blood when they need him the most. Be so fuckin’ angry and violent that he can’t even stand to look at the only family he’s got left. Only a monster would abandon his little sister.”

I’m pulling at the sheets so hard, it’s a wonder I haven’t torn them into shreds yet. There’s so much pain in my chest, a weight so heavy, it’s a wonder I haven’t started screaming yet. It’s a wonder I’m not flying across the room and shaking him. And making him listen to me. He’s not a monster; he’s grieving. His sister is grieving, too, and they’re doing it far apart instead of together because grief is strange. Grief is cruel. Grief does that to people. Grief can make people seem so far apart that they can’t stand to be together. If anything, though, this makes him more of a man, not a monster. Because grief is probably the most human thing there is.

And love. Which is what he feels for his sister, but it’s all lost under a mountain of tragedy and pain.

Instead of doing all that, I swallow down the emotions choking me and ask, “Where is she now?”

My question, although simple, puts him on guard. It changes the aura around him, and I’m once again terrified of what he’s going to tell me. In fact, I think I already know as he replies, “It’s a convent, the place she went to and then decided to stay. She’s a nun, teaches kids like her. But I don’t know…”

“Don’t know what?”

“Where she is.”

“You—”

“Haven’t seen my little sister in over sixteen years,” he says, his shoulders straight and bursting out of his bloody shirt. “Not outside of an occasional picture she sends over with her letters. But four weeks ago, I got a text from an unknown number. It was a video. Of my sister, of Lynnie, tied up and scared, held in a dark room. It came with a message: If I wanted my Lynnie back, safe and unharmed, I’d have to get somethin’ for them. They called it cargo. Said I had to secure it and bring it to them at their time and place of choosin’.”

“Me,” I whisper.

He dips his face. “You.”

“You didn’t… you didn’t take me for the land, did you? For your cousin’s r-revenge plan.”

I already know the answer to that. So maybe I should’ve saved my words, which are already hard to come by, for something more important. But I want him to admit it. I want him to say it, say that he stole me for his own agenda. All this time, he kept warning me. He kept saying he was a bigger threat to me than any of the Graysons and I believed him, yes. But I didn’t fully comprehend what that meant. I couldn’t possibly have fathomed something like this. Where my heart would be breaking for the man who stole me not once but twice. Where my heart would be bleeding for him.

Still staring into my eyes, he shakes his head. “No. I took you for them. For the people who have my sister and said they’d give her back to me if I gave them you. So I drugged you last night, put you in my truck, and brought you to that warehouse ’cause they told me to. I tied you up and served you on a silver platter because I wanted them to think I’d play their game.”

“G-game?”

He dips his chin, his eyes piercing. “They changed plans at the last second. Said I needed to make the drop first, leave you there. And then go to a different location, where Lynnie would be waitin’ for me.”

“But you… you didn’t leave me there. You didn’t go get your sister.”

His jaw clenches. “’Cause I knew I wouldn’t find her there.”

“I don’t…” I shake my head. “I don’t understand. Why not? You took me for them. You did what they asked you to do. So I don’t—”

“They had no intention of givin’ my sister back,” he says, cutting me off. “’Cause they had no intention of playin’ fair. And I knew it.”

My heart’s pounding in my chest, banging against my rib cage. “How?”

His eyes flash again and I get a glimpse of that cold-blooded killer from the warehouse. “’Cause I wouldn’t.” Then, “A good hunter never gives up his best play. He holds on to it, right until the end so he gets the real prize, the one he’s been playin’ this game for all along.”

I study him for a few seconds until I finally realize what he’s saying. “So you… you never planned on giving me to them?”

A savage expression washes through his face, savage and so possessive it makes my breaths stop. “Fuck no. Just wanted them to think I would. So I could draw ’em out, turn this game on its head.”

Draw them out. So the warehouse was a trap, and he used me as bait. Something that I did only a few weeks ago, even though it feels like a lifetime now. I wanted to draw him out, so I hooked the bait and set the trap. Only I had no idea what I was doing. Unlike him.

“Is that why…” I breathe out and, at last, glance over to his shoulder, and there it is. A bandage peeking through his shirt. “Is that why you dove in front of me when they tried to ki—”

He growls.