Lost (Captive Heart #1) Read online

  I’m reminded of this a month into our little “vacation” when I wake up to full force period cramps like I’ve never felt before.

  “Shit.” I know what I’m going to see when I drag myself to the tiny cabin bathroom.

  I’ve been on birth control since I was seventeen, thanks to a paranoid mother who wasn’t going to have the birds and the bees talk with her daughter. Instead, she just dragged me to the gynecologist, let a strange woman poke, prod and talk to me about vaginal intercourse. And then I walked out with a cylinder of tiny blue pills and a prescription for more.

  So for close to nine years, I’ve had my period constantly regulated for me, the pill dulling the effects of a full-on menstrual cycle. Sure, I still got cramps, but they were just achy, and they went away after less than half a day.

  But now, since I haven’t taken my pill in more than three weeks, my body has decided to give me the middle finger and bring the entire wrath of my period down over my head. As if I wasn’t experiencing enough pain being here with Tucker.

  A couple days ago I finally found another option for underwear, considering the one thong I’d been wearing and constantly washing for the last two and a half weeks was threadbare. Along with the supply of clothing in the mess hall, I trekked to the counselor cabin a ways up the hill and found a dresser full of random clothing that must have been left by counselors past. After thoroughly washing and disinfecting it all, I’ve taken to wearing a couple of the sets of boxers in there.

  And now, there is a pool of blood in said boxers that is more than I’ve probably ever had in four days of my period.

  “Great.” I sigh to myself. I’ve gotten lucky with the clothing so far, but there are probably no tampons or pads to be found in this camp.

  After disposing of the ruined boxers, and checking to make sure my makeshift bed isn’t covered in my Red Sea, I wad up several balls of toilet paper and coat the bottom of a new pair of boxers with them. It’ll have to do for now.

  Thank the Lord Tucker isn’t anywhere to be found when I finally make it out of the cabin to search for period supplies. While I knew this day would come, I didn’t think about it. But of course, being a girl was always harder than being a boy.

  I check the mess hall first, scrounging in the cabinets and the cleaning supply cabinet. I check the counselor cabin, the bathrooms of the rest of the camper cabins, the recreation building, and even the canteen.

  Nada. Nothing.

  “Shit.” I don’t normally curse, but I’m all out of options and I know this will be unlike any period I’ve experienced in the past eight years.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Double shit. This is embarrassing enough without Tucker knowing all of my female problems. “Nothing.”

  “You don’t look good. Are you okay?”

  Right then another cramp kicks in, this one stronger than the ones that woke me up, and I swear I’m not a wuss but it hurts like hell. I clutch my stomach and groan.

  Tucker is on me in two seconds flat. “Whoa, what the hell is going on?”

  I’m going to be down for four days at least, he’s going to notice anyway. “I uh … it’s my time.”

  My effort to save face is lost on the idiot male over here. “What?”

  “I have my period!”

  Tucker immediately takes his hand off the bottom of my back. “Ohhh.”

  Men and periods. I roll my eyes silently.

  “Um … what do you need?” At least he’s trying to help despite looking at me like he might catch a menstrual cycle.

  “Well, I need tampons. Or pads. But I can’t find any, anywhere. So I guess I’m going to have to make do with whatever kind of fabric or towels we can find.”

  “Towels, fabric? What are you going to … OH.” The light bulb goes on in Tucker’s head when he realizes I’m going to bleed all over those. “I’m gonna just go search …”

  He’s running across the quad in seconds.

  “And a hot pack if you can find it!” I yell out to him. My back is killing me.

  I hobble back to my cabin like some medieval woman in the throes of labor. Goddamn birth control, who knew it had been hiding the real pain of periods all along. I mean … I knew, I just never thought about what I was ingesting.

  Fifteen minutes of me lying on the mattress, clutching my back and my stomach, and Tucker finally walks in.

  “Okay, I got you a bunch of towels and I found some instant heat packs in a first aid kit in the mess hall.”

  He kneels down next to me and presents me with everything. My very own period attendant.

  I’m far past the point of modesty, and grab one of the towels and shove it down my pants.

  Already the bunched up pressure on my aching pelvic bones feels better. Tucker looks away, cracking a heat pack so that it warms for me.

  “Here.” He hunches over my body and tucks it securely in the waistband of my sweatpants so that it’s pressing against my skin. The touch is intimate, but not sexual, and my heart melts just a little at his caring, soothing voice.

  “Thank you.” While I still ache all over, I do feel marginally better and cleaner.

  “I’ll come check on you a little later, okay?” Tucker gives me a look of concern, but stands.

  I pass out maybe twenty minutes later, dazing in and out of an achy, restless sleep. But I do remember two big strong hands caressing my forehead and changing the heat pack on my back.

  23

  Tucker

  I used to freaking love Halloween.

  Well … correction. I used to freaking love Mischief Night. What can I say, I was … and apparently still am, an arrogant shithead.

  I’d plan my pranks for weeks, staking out the perfect houses and the perfect tricks to play. Smashed pumpkins, fiery dogshit, toilet-papered trees … I’d done it all.

  As I got older of course, the pranks between my friends and I got raunchier and seedier. Stealing chicks’ underwear and hanging them on the satellite dishes on their houses. Replacing people’s water bottles with vodka. Taping sanitary pads to my friends’ windshields.

  Like I said, I’m an asshole.

  But I can’t help but perk up when the radio host on the program I’ve been listening to for a week and a half, ever since I found this old piece of junk, says that its Halloween. That’s the thing about being in hiding. After a couple of weeks, I’ve stopped keeping track.

  Of course I’m always on guard, any little sound during the night and I’m shooting up off the cabin floor, keys and getaway items at the ready.

  But so far, and from everything I’ve gotten from the radio, the police are nowhere close to tracking us down. They could be, and just aren’t telling the radio the entire story—which is very likely. Or they just really have no idea where we are.

  It’s likely. We left no trail; I doubt they could make out my face on the security cameras.

  I’m surprised Charlotte hasn’t cracked yet, and that she hasn’t tried to escape. For some odd reason, she seems at peace here. She’s only made it through a third of the books in the “library” and seems happy to sit in her cabin or in the recreation building all day and just read.

  Looks like I’m a fucking genius when it comes to kidnapping and hiding, because without one bit of planning I took us to the one place we will never run out of food. We don’t have to leave to get any kind of supplies thanks to the Marsh’s and their well-stocked mess hall and canteen.

  But it’s starting to get cold. And the weather is only going to get chillier. I’m not sure what we will do when December and the snow hits. We can’t turn on the heat, the Marsh’s will notice when they pay a higher than normal energy bill.

  But I can’t worry about that. Whenever I start to worry, I start to psych myself out. My hands shake and my brain feels like someone’s cracked it open into a pan and has decided to scramble it for breakfast. And in those moments, I want a fix so bad that I would claw out my own eyes if someone would shoot me up with drugs.

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nbsp; So I don’t worry. I run until I can’t feel my feet or my lungs, and then do push-ups until I can’t feel my arms. I look for things to fix around the camp, because if I’m squatting here illegally I might as well try to do something nice for the people who were so nice to me all of those years ago.

  And at night, when I’m straining so hard to hear any noise or sound in the forest, I think about Charlotte.

  About her lips, how warm and supple they felt while I feasted on them. About her luscious, petite, body, her lithe frame with just the right amount of curves. About the way my fingers felt while I dragged her hair through them.

  I’m so hard now, laying on the floor of this dingy, cold cabin, and I can’t help but reach down and stroke myself. I start at my balls, cupping them and pulling gently on the skin. Then I grip my shaft, squeezing the base gently and pulling up until my palm hits the sensitive underside of my swollen head and I groan.

  Because she should be doing this. I should be stroking myself inside her body. I feel the pull between our two cabins, a magnetic force that if we don’t acknowledge soon, will act of its own accord.

  I want to pull her into my arms and show her that she’s always been too good, even when I wasn’t thinking about it. Even when it wasn’t at the forefront of my brain. How fucking stupid am I? Char has been right in front of my face for so long, practically my entire life. I was too cocky, too full of myself and all of the fake people around me to see her. Why didn’t I see her?

  I can’t take it anymore, all of this silence, all of this waiting for the other shoe to drop. It feels like I’m in limbo, walking a tight wire in between the world’s largest skyscrapers. Something has to give.

  Getting up and slipping into the warmest layers I could find, I let myself out of the cabin and begin on the gravel path toward the lake. Maybe the cold mountain air will help clear my head.

  I don’t get more than twenty steps before Char’s door swings open, her eyes frantic and guarded in the moonlight.

  “Oh Jesus, you scared the crap out of me.”

  I chuckle. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Char use the Lord’s name in vein. And with the way she was staring at me, she definitely thought someone else had stumbled into Camp Marsh. I don’t know what to think about that.

  “I can’t sleep. Wanted to take a walk.” I regard her for a second. “Did you want to come with me?”

  She peeks around outside. “It’s freezing.”

  “Put some layers on.” I wanted to be alone only a moment ago. But now, if she doesn’t come with me, I know my heart will sink into my stomach.

  “Okay … fine. Hold on.” The door shuts for a minute and then opens, revealing a bundled-up Char.

  She trots down onto the gravel and we start off, a foot of space and an ocean of unspoken words separating us. The moon lights everything around us, striking the earth in black and white tones. The air fills my lungs, cold and clear as it goes down and everything is just peaceful and beautiful.

  “It’s Halloween.”

  Char smiles. “You always loved Halloween.”

  “You remember that?”

  She shrugs, the moonlight highlighting every perfect feature of her face. “I remember all of those pranks you used to play. I thought you were so cool.”

  “I was kind of an idiot, huh?”

  “Nah, you were carefree. I envied that.”

  We reach the edge of the forest and its unspoken that we will keep going, press on.

  A memory pops out at me. “Remember the Halloween that you were Hermione?

  Char turns to me, a small grin ghosting her full lips. “You remember that?”

  I nod, a curl or two falling in my eyes. “Of course I do. You were hot. That whole schoolgirl skirt, cape thing. Yeah I probably sported a semi the whole day at school.”

  I swear she blushes.

  I don’t realize she stops walking until I only hear my own feet crunching on the dead leaves and underbrush. Turning my head, I see her staring up at something in front of me. I turn my head back and my gaze collides with the obstacle course, standing tall about ten feet from me.

  The obstacle course. Where we had our first kiss. Where she knocked my heart over the fence and out of the park.

  “Well, this is awkward.” I try for charming, addressing it head on.

  Char isn’t quite as goofy. “That was my first kiss.”

  “I know.” I remember how she shook, how sweet and perfect she was. “That kiss …”

  I trail off, shaking my head, unable to keep the smile off my face.

  “You probably forgot all about it a day after we got home.” She turns away, looking back at the path we’ve already walked down.

  I go to her, touching her shoulder but trying to be respectful of her space. “I didn’t. I thought about it for weeks. Months. That kiss wiped everything off the map, Charlotte.”

  I can’t see her face, but by the tension in her shoulders, I know she probably doesn’t believe me. I’ve pushed her enough today.

  “Hey, let’s do something fun for Halloween.”

  Finally, she faces me. “Yeah like what?”

  “Want to raid the canteen?”

  I wrap my tongue around the sweet, creamy treat and take another big lick.

  “Why haven’t we done this before?”

  Char sits on the ground surrounded by split open Amazon boxes of candy. The Marsh’s must have this stuff shipped in bulk for the campers to buy from the canteen during the summers, and lucky for us, they left Snicker’s, Kit Kat’s, Milky Way’s and lots of other delicious treats. I fired up the soft serve machine and am currently on my third cone.

  We’re going to make ourselves absolutely sick, but it is so worth it.

  “You’ve been sulking in your cabin, completely ignoring me. That’s why.”

  She’s on a sugar high, hysterically laughing at one a.m. on what isn’t even technically Halloween anymore. But we’ve got nowhere to be.

  “That’s because you’re a complete asshole!”

  “There she is, I knew the good girl had a little cursing streak inside after all! And you’re right about that. But I’m a charming asshole, right?”

  It feels good to laugh with her. It feels good to laugh period.

  “You’ve always been charming. Especially when you’re not in a drug-induced haze! You really do look like your old self.”

  She’s almost drunk on the sugar. We haven’t had much to eat besides boring pastas or canned foods. The candy paired with the late hour has her goofy, and I don’t miss the way she sweeps those big brown eyes up and down my body. I can feel them catalogue me, each hair standing up as they pass by it. My cock feels it too, and I thank God I put jeans on for this little midnight adventure because I’d be tenting something big if sweatpants were involved.

  “And you look gorgeous. Like you always have.” That comes out with more heat than I intended.

  “Stop it, Tuck.” She gives me the stink-eye. “I’m having fun with you. Don’t ruin it by trying to hit on me.”

  I pop the melty, delicious last bite of my ice cream cone into my mouth and slide down next to her where she sits among the rubble of candy wrappers.

  “Okay. So why banking? Is that what you went to college for?”

  “Really? We’re going to talk about my bank? The one you kidnapped me from?”

  I shrug. “It’s a neutral topic.”

  She huffs, blowing on a piece of hair that has landed in front of her eye. “Fine. Yes, that is what I went to college for. I’m a credit analyst. I’m basically the person who decides if and how much credit the bank should give you when you apply for a card or loan.”

  I pick up half a Snicker’s bar she didn’t finish and bite off a hunk. “Sounds exhilarating.”

  “Yeah well, it passes the days. Besides, I don’t see you doing much of anything.”

  Sadness creeps its way into the pit of my stomach. “Yeah well, when the one thing you’re good at is no longer a possibility,
it’s not easy to find or do anything else.”

  “Come on, football was not the only thing you were good at.” Char’s hand accidentally lands on mine and she pulls it away. But not before leaving it there a split-second too long.

  “It pretty much was.”

  She’s almost yelling now, the sugar has seeped into her brain. “Well what about coaching? I think you could be great at that!”

  I guffaw. “Oh how fucking predictable. The athlete with an injury that ruined his career goes into coaching. As if we haven’t heard that story a million and one times! No. In all honesty it would be too painful to go back out onto a field if I wasn’t playing in the game.”

  “So you think, but you’ve never tried it.”

  Char lands on an unopened tube of Rolo’s, hesitates, and then puts it back down.

  I don’t want to talk about football anymore. The handful of times I have in the last three years, it feels like someone is slicing open my heart with a letter opener.

  “So really, what do you do for fun? Days at the bank can’t be that entertaining.”

  She rolls her eyes and I can’t help staring at her lips when they split into a grin. “Oh, come on. Numbers can be sexy too. But really, Tuck. Even if you don’t remember any of our history, you have got to remember me. Fun to me is a good book. And now that I legally can, a glass of wine.”

  I picture her snuggled up on the couch with a paperback and a glass of something red, and my cock strains to be freed. She’s probably so warm and soft underneath that blanket she’s snuggled on and—

  “It’s getting late. We should hit the hay.”

  Char pushes up and I scramble to help, my hand guiding her elbow and holding her steady. Her skin is velvet under my fingers, and I’m not a good enough man to banish the thought that I should push her up against the wall right now. But the tiny strength I have left holds me back.

  We walk back down the path in silence, the air even colder than when we originally ventured out. Our footsteps are the only sounds, left then right, left then right. I want to say something, there is a thought or an apology or a plea on the tip of my tongue. But before I know it, we’re in front of cabin three and she’s turning to say goodnight.