“I’m sorry, Mia, but I just don’t have the energy to talk right now.” She turns away from me, and my nostrils flare with irritation. I should have sympathy for her—and I do—but goddamn it, the Mia thing is getting old.
“I was doing some Google research and I came across a name … do you know a Justin Prior?”
And there it is.
Tess’ head snaps up and she whips around to face me, staring at me like I’ve grown a second head.
“Justin Prior?” she repeats back, choking on the words. “I don’t have time for this today.” Tess shoves up from the table violently and starts off down the hall. Since my fucking stepbrother turned lover turned … whatever-he-is, is currently being held captive, I don’t have much choice but to follow.
“I just want to know who Justin Prior is, that’s it. Tell me and I’ll go away, I promise.”
Tess whirls on me then, a purple rage in her face that I’ve never seen before and hope like hell I’ll never have to see again.
“Your brother—my son—is missing, Dakota. Do you understand that? He’s missing.” She nearly shrieks the last part of this, and fuck … but I can’t blame her. Of course I can’t blame her. I went missing for fourteen years. Fourteen fucking years without a clue. And look what it’s done to us, look at it. Parrish, her real son, her true son in a way I’ll never be, he’s gone now, too.
I don’t want to do this; don’t make me do this. Please, please, please. Why is this happening to me?
“Please tell me who Justin Prior is,” I choke out, the words burning my mouth as I say them. I’m sore from the other night, and all I want to do is lie on my side and study Parrish’s face, trace his lips with my finger. We started something new and fun together, and now he’s gone, and we have so much we need to talk about … “Please.”
“Justin Prior is your father!” Tess screams back at me. I almost think for a moment that she might slap me, but she manages to control herself. Closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths seems to help, but only a little.
Personally, I’m having trouble keeping my own feet in that moment.
Did she … wait, what?
“Father?” I repeat, my stomach twisting into an impossible knot. Why would Parrish’s kidnapper want me to ask about my father? I stare at her.
“Are you happy now? Your father was a manipulator, a cheater, a liar. He abused me, Dakota. He abused you. I know you don’t remember—and that’s a good thing—but this was something you should’ve left alone.” Tess yanks a hair tie off her wrist and angrily puts her espresso waves into a high pony. “Is this what you wanted, to break me while your brother could be lying in a ditch somewhere?”
She turns around and storms off while I stand there, shaking and holding back tears. I turn my head to the side and find myself looking at the framed birth certificate, the one with Mia Patterson’s name on it. The field that says father is blank. But it should say Justin Prior.
Justin Prior … My hands start to shake as several, oddly shaped puzzle pieces shift around in my brain, forming a picture that I’d really rather not see at all.
If it weren’t for Chasm, I wouldn’t have survived that moment intact.
“Hey,” he says, padding quickly down the steps and putting warm hands on my shoulders. His amber eyes bore into mine, demanding the truth. “What happened?”
“I think …” I start, blinking and falling and spiraling into a morose mental state. I make myself look at Chasm, force my eyes to trace his perfect mouth and the studs on either side of it, stare directly into his determined gaze. “I think the kidnapper is my dad.”
Chasm spends the night again, curling up on my bed with me. We don’t touch, not like Parrish and I did when we first slept in the same bed. It’s still nice, a warm body and a comforting presence to chase away the nightmares.
And oh, there are many.
I keep thinking about that night in the woods. If Parrish’s captor—the captor who could very well be daddy dearest—was able to get to him, then he was certainly able to get to me. Are the incidents related? Is what happened to me even real?
I spend the rest of the night awake, staring at the wall across from me and clutching my phone in my hands. Tess is too distracted to care whether Chasm is in bed with me or not, too distracted to spy on me and catch me with the phone. Maxx is still out there, looking for Parrish, but I don’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
