Lost (Captive Heart #1) Page 4

  She hasn’t kissed anyone? No guy has tried to stick his tongue in her mouth? Jeez, I’ve made out with tons of girls already, and even gotten a couple of rough, tugging hand jobs.

  “So … you just never, um, kissed anyone?”

  “No … I mean, you barely even look at me in school. Do you think anyone would really want to kiss me?”

  Yes. I do.

  “I mean, every guy in our grade is horny as hell. They’d probably pucker up if you asked them.”

  Char scoffs and I can see the last of the sun’s rays dancing on her outstretched, tan legs. “I wouldn’t ask a boy to kiss me. It has to be … romantic.”

  Romance. All these girls wanted some fairytale. They didn’t get that we just wanted to get in their pants.

  “So you want your first kiss before you start high school?”

  I hear her give a soft laugh. “That’s probably so stupid, right? You’ve probably kissed all of the girls in our grade.”

  She wasn’t far off. “I guess …”

  A beat or two go by, and I don’t know what else to say.

  “I could kiss you.”

  Char turns her head, finally meeting my eyes for the first time since we sat down.

  “You … you want to?”

  Hell yes I want to. And not just because I was a horny teenager. I really want to kiss her. It’s all I have been thinking about for the last week and a half.

  I don’t answer her question. I reach out a hand and cup her jaw, a romantic move I’ve seen old dudes do in movies. It must work, because Char sucks in a breath, her eyes wide and full of … some expression I can’t put a word to.

  I run my fingers across her jaw, the feeling of her soft, delicate skin under my rough fingers making my heart beat so hard that I feel like I might pass out. I’ve never felt like this before, not even when I made out with Molly McCray in the closet a month ago at her birthday party.

  Char hasn’t taken a breath since I put my hand on her cheek, so I decide to move my head in towards hers. The forest is dark now, the only thing lighting the moment are the fireflies buzzing around the moonlight striking the trees. Off in the distance campers laugh and shout, but out here, we’re completely alone.

  I angle her head, making the movements for her, as I line my lips up to hers. I run my tongue around my suddenly dry mouth and then aim for my target. The moment our lips meet, Charlotte expels the breath she’s been holding, right into my mouth.

  I push my lips into hers, moving them and caressing her soft, velvety mouth. It takes her a minute or two to catch on, but when she starts kissing me back, I feel it in my blood. I move my hands over her cheeks, loving the feel of her soft skin under them. We keep kissing, just lips to lips, exploring the feeling.

  I feel a tentative hand go to my stomach, and her other one grips my shoulder. The hand on my abs is dangerously close to the waistband of my khaki shorts, but I try to ignore the pulsing, rock-hard part of me beneath my boxers. This is Char’s first kiss, and I’m not enough of a jerk to push her into trying anything more than this.

  But I can’t help it when my tongue slips into her mouth, moving us from regular kissing to frenching. Char expels a soft sigh as our tongues tangle, and I feel like my head is spinning like a top.

  I pull away, my head fuzzy and in need of oxygen.

  “Wow …” Char breathes, her eyes still closed with a look of such wonder and peace gracing her pretty face.

  “How was your first kiss?” I stare at her closed eyes with what might be something close to insanity. Who knew Char would obliterate every sexual experience I’d already had?

  And then she surprises me more than she already has. “I don’t know, I think I need to try it again.”

  She moves her head toward me this time, locking her mouth on mine. I jump just a little, surprised at her bold move.

  It must be hours that we sit there in the dark making out. It doesn’t go any further than that, my hands always staying on her face and neck.

  After, I walk her back to her cabin, neither of us saying a word. Char slips inside and I slowly make my way back to my bunk, the entire time touching my lips.

  How come even though I was the one giving her her first kiss, it feels like mine? How come it feels like I’ll never be able to feel that with anyone but Charlotte Morsey?

  9

  Tucker

  Char’s fourteen-year-old lips on my fourteen-year-old lips. That is the memory I wake to, the feeling so real that I wonder if for a minute I’ve been transported back in time.

  And then I move my finger, and pain explodes through my body. I stop moving, just that tiny movement sending white-hot torture surging through my veins. I open my eyes carefully, and realize that half my face is obscured, pressed against fabric of some kind. I take stock of the rest of my body, which feels like it’s been hit by the heavyweight champion of the world and then an eighteen-wheeler.

  With the eye I can see out of, I notice the fresh dew on the grass and the early morning rays of light painting the grounds. Camp Marsh … right. That’s where I am.

  Fuck. Charlotte Morsey. That’s whose lap I must be laying in. For a couple of seconds, I forgot what I did. But flashes and images of yesterday slowly creep back, the scene ending in Char dumping my drugs.

  Double fuck. I must be going through withdrawal. I’ve only felt this bad one other time. Well two. But only one that related to drugs.

  Two years ago, when my mother had tried to intervene and I reluctantly went to rehab for the first time. I went three days cold turkey and couldn’t fucking do it. I hightailed it out of there so fast to find a fix that it was like my ass was on fire.

  Except this time I don’t have that luxury. Because we’re on the run. I fucking kidnapped someone.

  Wait … if I blacked out last night … why didn’t she just leave me here?

  I feel a hand come down in front of my mouth, her palm hovering inches away from my mouth. Jesus, she’s checking to see if I’m breathing.

  “I’m not dead, Char.” I push off her even though every bone and muscle in my body is protesting.

  “Oh thank God!” She lets out a puff of relief and I stare at her quizzically.

  “Isn’t that what you want? Wouldn’t this be a million times easier for you? What the fuck are you even still doing here?”

  Her mouth falls open and I can’t help but stare at the sexy way her lips part. “Um, you’re welcome? I thought you were dying, Tucker. In front of my eyes I thought I was going to see you die! I may hate you right now, and you may have taken me out of that bank against my will, but I never want you dead.”

  She’s the only person then.

  I walk off, my feet taking me to the spot where I’d started to come down from my high last night. Next to the porch steps is my gun, which I grab up like it’s a crying baby. I hold it close to me, flicking the chamber out to check that all of the bullets are safely in their slots. Good.

  Char starts to walk back towards me, but passes the place I’m standing.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

  She doesn’t look back at me. “We both need to eat.” And with that she swings open the mess hall door.

  The Marsh’s are such nice people. They leave this place unlocked and open year round. Granted, no one would come out here, there is no point. Unless you’re on the run with a hostage in tow.

  Food right now sounds both necessary and nauseating. I need to choke something down, even I know how the steps of withdrawal and recovery go. Even if I’ve never been successful at them.

  I follow her into the mess hall where she’s already rummaging around the supply closet in the back. I move toward the noise in the back, past the assembly line where you’d put you tray as a camper. I’ve never been back here, it was always for counselors or cooks, and it feels a little bit wrong.

  But what isn’t wrong about this situation?

  Char is cracking open a can of baked beans as I enter, on the metal k
itchen cart in the middle of the room she’s placed another can of beans and a box of macaroni and cheese. She fills a pot with water and puts it on the stove, all of the appliances and water still working. Figures the Marsh’s didn’t suspend any of this for the winter. No one in rural Pennsylvania is worrying about break-ins or robberies. Not all the way out here in the mountains.

  “Shouldn’t you be like … breaking down? Crying? Trying to escape?”

  She quietly sets the can down before pouring the pasta into the semi-boiling water. “How long have you been using heroin?”

  “None of your damn business.” The gun clangs as I slam it on the metal countertop.

  “Is it … do you still have pain?”

  She points to my left knee. Well, guess she knows about the injury.

  “Again, none of your fucking business.”

  Char’s brown eyes flare, the yellow ring around her pupils expanding with anger. “You know what is my fucking business? Why you came into my place of work and fucking kidnapped me! Do you have an explanation for that one?”

  I don’t think I’ve ever heard Char say the word “fuck.” It does treacherous things to the anatomy below my waistline.

  “Sure, I needed money. There was a bank. Voila!”

  She grunts and rolls her eyes before turning to walk into another room. A bit more shuffling and a couple minutes later, she comes back out in sweatpants and a Camp Marsh T-shirt. The sweatpants are a size too big, swamping her petite frame. But the T-shirt is just right, the letters in Camp stretching tight over her perky, more-than-a-handful tits.

  It has to be obvious that I’m staring at her, because she shifts uncomfortably before shouting at me again. “For God’s sake, put the gun down, Tucker!”

  Annoyance and the need to be the dominant one in this situation has me holding it up again, aiming it at her. “You’ve got a lot of balls right now, Charlotte Ann.” I speak her full name like it’s a curse.

  She’s about to come back at me, but my traitorous body decides at that moment to act up. My stomach turns sour in a flash, and before I realize what’s happening, I’m puking up water and dry-heaving until my lungs almost give out.

  Her soft tone sounds right next to my ear where I’m bent over holding my torso. “If you were going to shoot me, kill me, you would have done it already. So put the gun down and do us both a favor.”

  10

  Charlotte

  Against my better judgment and all the sanity in the world, I’ve always had a sweet spot for Tucker Lynch.

  I’ve been in love with him since I was six years old. I’ve let him hold me, use me, build me up and then break me so badly my heart has never properly recovered.

  That’s why I don’t sneak out of cabin three in the middle of the night and try to steal the keys to the car. That’s why I’m staying with someone who, in all cases, is my captor. It’s why I’m not running through the woods, Blair Witch style, in search of rescue or a telephone.

  I’d cooked us lunch, a five-star meal of refried beans and mac-n-cheese. I’d never been so homesick for camp in my life. Tucker kept it down for a whole ten minutes before lurching it all back up in the massive mess hall sink. Then I’d staggered with him draped over my shoulders back to cabin four where I laid him down, his shivering, lanky form looking so frail even in the tiny bunk.

  I made my way back to another cabin; into the bunk I’d slept in all those summers ago. He could have taken us anywhere else. Was I a fool to believe he’d thought of this place for the same reason I still dreamt about it sometimes? Because of that first kiss we shared under the obstacle course.

  My heart thumps in my chest as everything below my waist tingles. It figures that Tucker can be practically a drug-addled corpse and still turn me on.

  I was a fool. He probably doesn’t even remember that kiss. The way he held my face and neck the whole time. The way I felt like he was stealing the breath right out of my lungs. Like he was branding his name into my lips and my heart.

  He probably didn’t remember it because he barely even remembered it three days later. We went home, back to Conestoga, and started high school a week later. And he didn’t speak one word to me until almost two years later.

  I turned over, the pain in my chest calling for a shift in position. It was crazy how even a decade and so many other experiences later, Tucker Lynch still had the ability to make it feel like my heart was being ripped in half. I remember lying in bed for months, crying into my pillow. Because I had believed that kiss would change something.

  It was one of the first times I learned that Tucker Lynch was no good for me. That he could break my heart like a cheap plastic toy and keep walking without a backward glance.

  “OOOWW!” A guttural moan slices through the silent night air. At first I think maybe it’s an animal; being this deep in the Pocono Mountains, there is bound to be some wildlife scampering around the empty campgrounds. But then the noise comes again, and I realize it’s too close.

  Tucker.

  I’m a glutton for punishment as I spring up out of bed and make my way to cabin four, because Christ, how did the situation turn on its head? How did I become the victim taking care of my captor? Figures Tucker would have Stockholm Syndrome down to a science. He always did get everything he wanted.

  I run the short distance between the cabins, the late September night air chilly on my skin. Besides the T-shirt and sweatpants I found in the back room of the mess hall, I also found a slew of old sneakers, a raincoat, several sweatshirts and other clothing. All of it in varying sizes, all of it not quite fitting me. But, it was better than running around in a skirt and heels for the foreseeable future.

  Because as much as I wanted to be rescued, to go back to my life … I also didn’t. It had been almost two days since Tucker had stolen me from my ordinary, everyday … and I hadn’t missed it once.

  Did I want to be in the middle of this cold, desolate camp?

  Not really.

  Did I still hate Tucker Lynch and everything he represented about my past?

  Absolutely.

  But did being on the run kind of excite me? Take me away from the bland, normal life I’d been stuck in?

  Yes.

  And maybe you’d call that foolish and stupid, but like I said … I was a fool when it came to Tucker.

  When I push the door open, the first thing I see is Tucker, curled into a ball on the hard ground. And he’s openly weeping.

  “Tucker … jeez, what is it?” He’s scaring me.

  “Everything hurts. And I’m so cold.” He’s scratching at himself, and when I flick on the lights I can see he’s ripped at the skin on his arms so violently that three or more gashes are bleeding.

  “Stop! Stop!” Running to him, I pull at his arms long enough to make him stop mauling at his flesh.

  The bad thing about hiding out in a deserted camp on the brink of winter? There are no blankets. Kids bring their sleeping bags to camp. The Marsh’s never had to supply bedding.

  I dart through the cabin, hoping beyond hope that maybe someone left something behind. But no luck.

  When I come back to Tucker, who is cringing and crying on the floor, I know I have to do something.

  “Tuck, I am going to be right back. Okay? Right back. Please try to hang on.”

  I don’t bother waiting for him to answer. My heart is in my throat as I spring from one cabin to the next, trying to find anything that could pass as a blanket. Nothing in cabin three or two, but I do find two thin blankets, more like sheets but they’ll do, in cabin one. I also find an old ratty sleeping bag over in cabin eight and haul that with me too.

  Tucker is still writhing in pain when I get back to the cabin, and I quickly pull two mattresses off the bottom bunks he’s laying between. I spread them out in the open front hallway, if you can even call it that, of the structure and throw one of the thin blankets on top.

  “Tuck … can you move over here?” I try to approach him gently, laying my hand on his
shoulder.

  “Fuck!” He flinches away from my hand like I’ve burned him.

  “Sorry! Can you crawl over there?” I point to my makeshift bed.

  He lurches his body forward, doing what looks like a sort of army crawl. He looks handicapped, uncoordinated and just … sick.

  An image of a nineteen-year-old Tucker on my TV screen flashes through my brain. The way his big, muscular body would fly across the University of Connecticut football field. How he would look graceful but dynamic as he leapt into the air to retrieve the ball. I’d watched every one of his college games on TV … well, until …

  Tucker slams his body down with another cry of agony, and I snap out of memory lane. I throw the other thin blanket on top of him and then the sleeping bag follows. He’s a big, shivering pile of blankets in the middle of the dingy cabin.

  “How is that?” I kneel next to him, trying to get him to look me in the eye.

  “I’m cold. But on fire.” Tucker reaches for my hand. “Please …”

  I don’t know what more he wants me to do. I have no idea how long it will take him to detox, but I pray to God that it’s swift.

  The only other option is to stay with him, to lie under those ratty blankets and give him my body heat.

  I falter. Laying this close to him, even with the state he’s in, is bound to lead nowhere good for me.

  Tucker gives another twitch and makes that dying animal sound again.

  There isn’t a choice. He’s in pain, and for some reason I have a conscience. So here we go.

  I slip under and pull him as close as I can to my body. He crosses his arms over his chest and tucks his head, curling himself into the nook between my chin and chest. I wrap my short legs in his long ones, willing the warmth from my skin to seep into his.

  Tucker shakes and weeps uncontrollably until the first lights of the sun stream into the cabin. And then finally, finally, he drifts off. I watch him, at peace at last, until I can’t hold my eyes open anymore and give myself over to blissful sleep.