CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Last Time I saw Rogan

Back in Edmonton, I told Rogan about meeting Charles at the funeral. We stood on my balcony facing west, enjoying the late summer heat that would soon be nothing more than a memory. We leaned on the railing and I felt the secrets simmering as our eyes met. The lines around his contact lenses were very clear and I wondered for the thousandth time what color his eyes were under them. Who was he? Not Christian, not Rogan, but someone else. I tried to remember that whoever he seemed to be now, that was not who he really was.

“Gutsy little creep,” Rogan rasped when he thought I had finished detailing my experience from the funeral.

“Do you know what the last thing he said to me was?”

“How could I know that?”

“He said my father was still alive,” I whispered.

Rogan paused and cleared something out of his throat. “How long ago did your father die?” he asked, always striving to make our conversations sound normal for two people who didn’t know each other well.

For my own part, it meant we had more conversation, so I answered him like he didn’t already know. “Seven years. It was just weird for Charles to say that. A couple of minutes before he showed up, I was cleaning my parents’ tombstone and I noticed that my mother had a death date on her side of the stone, but my father didn’t have one. That’s peculiar, isn’t it?”

Rogan nodded.

“I was told Christian was supposed to be taking care of the engraving and all that, but I find it hard to believe he would have allowed such an important detail to slip through the cracks. Something seems fishy.”

“Do you think that dirtball was telling the truth and your old man is hanging out somewhere?”

I brushed my hair out of my face. “No. It was a head-on collision. My mom wrapped their car around the support beam of a bridge in the face of on-coming traffic. It was his side of the car that was hit. If either one of my parents survived it would have been my mother because she was in the driver's seat. If anything, I think that punk would have said anything to get me to stay and talk to him. He saw the tombstone and it was an easy thing to say to get my attention. He was grasping at straws—really disrespectful straws.”

“Hmm…” Rogan paused and studied me carefully. Then suddenly, his fingers started tracing the bones in the back of my hand. “Let’s play pretend,” he said. Those were magic words coming out of his mouth. I had to steady myself. What he said next would never be as thrilling as his tantalizing suggestion. Finally, he said, “What if your father was alive? How would you feel about that?”

My lips curved into a snarl. “I would be furious. If he were alive, then why did he leave me with a stranger? If he were alive, I wouldn’t want to see him. If he ditched me to grow up alone in that crappity-crap-crap-crap boarding school, then he already betrayed me beyond understanding. The only thing I’d believe is that he treated me worse than Trinity's parents treated her, and that is very low.”

“You’d feel abandoned all over again?” Rogan prompted as he removed his fingers from my hand.

“I feel abandoned all the time anyway.” I glanced at Rogan’s glove still present on his left hand. It looked really stupid. It was August, smoking hot outside, and he was wearing a single racing glove?

He noticed my eyes and put his left arm around my shoulder and completely abandoned the idea of composing a conversation in case someone was listening. “I’m sorry, Beth. It’s been hard for you. For what it’s worth, I think I was wrong.”

I did a double-take. “What?”

“When I sent you away.”

I gasped. I never expected him to say those words. Him saying he was sorry was not the same as him saying he was wrong. I took a breath and asked, “Why are you telling me this now?”

He rubbed his chin with his bare hand. “I have to tell you sometime.”

“Are you asking me to forgive you?”

“I can’t ask for that because of how much you’ve suffered, everything that I am, and everything that I’m not.”

I looked him over. “I am pretty sure you are everything.”

“But I can’t give you everything. I’ve said it enough times.”

I flicked my hair out of my face, so I could see him better. “Yes, you are very tiresome; always saying how love is out of the question when everything you do says you love me and everything you say means you don’t.”

“I just can’t let anyone get too close to me,” he admitted.

I looked at him sideways. “Are you afraid of getting hurt?”

He shook his head, a snarl on his lips. “No, darling. I’m afraid of you getting hurt.”

Looking in his eyes, I had never wanted to be hurt so badly.

Then, suddenly, he held me at arm’s length. “I need to go.”

“Naturally,” I drawled, not at all surprised.

“Yes,” he said, rubbing his nose bridge with two fingers. “I have something I said I’d do. I’ll see you later,” he promised as he went back into the apartment. Then he popped back onto the balcony and said, “Remember, I’ll come back.”

I groaned. “I’m sure you will.”

With that, he scooted straight out of the apartment. It was weird. Usually, Rogan didn’t leave. Usually, he hung around for hours. He watched TV in the living room while I showered. He answered the phone like it was his place. He read while I did my nails and if I asked him to, he would carry my laundry back and forth. Since I didn’t have a dishwasher, he dried dishes for me and always put them back in their right spots. He folded towels, killed spiders, paid the pizza guy, and sometimes did slushie runs to the convenience store a block away when Felicity-Ann and I didn’t want to go ourselves. Having him leave was a bit of a downer.

I sat down on the couch and bit my thumb. His friendship did stop me from being alone, even if he didn’t want me for a girlfriend. I had never gone to his apartment because I had to pretend like I didn’t need him, but that afternoon, after my grandfather’s funeral, when Felicity-Ann was shopping with her mother and getting the ‘mommy discount’, I didn’t want to be alone.

I opened the door to the corridor and to my utter astonishment, I came face to face with Christian. He looked surprised to see me. On closer inspection, it looked like he had been walking the carpet outside my door debating whether or not he should knock.

“Christian!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here? I thought you were never coming back.”

He curled his lips into a smile and shrugged his shoulders. In his hands, he was carrying a single purple rose. He slipped it between my fingers at the same time he slipped his arm around mine. Then he placed a perfect kiss on my temple. I had taken just one breath of his familiar scent when he stepped behind me into the apartment.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I followed him. Had our little conversation made him feel like doing something impulsive as the old him?

He put a finger to his lips to indicate quiet and went about his business. Then, without a word, he found my suitcase and packed my bag.

I opened my mouth again to question him, but he rested a gloved finger against my open lips as he passed me, heading for the bathroom. I stood in the doorway while he loaded my toiletries into my cosmetics bag. It was weird that he knew which shampoo bottle was mine and which was Felicity-Ann’s. It wasn’t like they were labeled.

I was very confused. Had my conversation with Rogan triggered something? After we talked, did he immediately change into his Christian costume? He was fast. He hadn’t been that fast when he transformed into Charles in the hotel room. I guessed he was better at it because he played Christian more often.

I went into the front hallway, put on my shoes and grabbed my purse. Whatever was going on, I was going with him.

When he was finished packing me up, he put his hand to his face in a gesture to ask for a phone. I assumed he meant my smartphone, so I forked it over to him. Watching over his shoulder, I saw him send Felicity-Ann a message about how I was going out of town for a few days.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Five minutes later, I was in a taxi cab that was waiting outside the front door of my apartment complex. Once inside, I tried to talk to Christian again, but once again, he wasn’t talking. He covered his eyes with a pair of very black sunglasses. I couldn’t even see a glimmer of light in his eyes, or which way he was looking, or even the tiniest hint of his expression.

The cab driver already knew where we were going and took us to Southgate Mall. For the briefest of seconds, I was overjoyed at the idea that he was going to take me shopping. I hadn’t been shopping in ages and that was one of the things Christian did best. My mouth was practically salivating, when surprise, he led me directly to the parking lot and into the front seat of a black sedan. He gently placed my bag in the backseat, got behind the wheel, and without a word, sped out of the parking lot.

I half expected him to take off toward the airport, thinking he was going to take me on another grand vacation, but instead, he put us on roads heading west. Once we were out of the city, it didn’t take me very long to realize where we were going. I’d been there before. The old house in the woods.

***

Once inside the cottage, I thought it was safe to talk, so I started. “What are we doing back here?”

Christian didn’t answer. Instead, he took my hand gently and started leading me down the hall.

Every girl thinks she’s brave until she goes down that hallway. We were getting closer and closer to the room he kept locked while I was there. At the threshold, I whispered, “Is Brandon okay? Does he want to see me? Is that why I’m here?”

Christian nodded, opened the door and without even the faintest sound from his lips, he pushed me inside.

The next couple of minutes were a shock to me. I had never been attacked by a man before, and even though I had played wrestling games with Christian, this was nothing like what I'd experienced before. Either he had always been playing with me, or the man reefing on my wrists was not Christian. The problem had been his gloves. I couldn't see his hands because of the gloves and he had a perfect excuse for wearing them. The man I loved was missing a finger, so I didn't suspect anything. It was only when his wrists were fully exposed did the intense black hair on his arms show he was someone else.

“Who are you?” I hissed breathlessly as he pinned me against the wall and maneuvered both my wrists into one of his hands.

He didn't answer.

I tried to kick him, but he stopped that by crushing my thighs with his against the wall. I couldn't resist him, even when I tried with every muscle I had. I even tried to bite him, but he pushed my forehead against the wall with his free hand.

“What do you want?”

He nodded toward the hospital bed Brandon had been tied to. All the ropes were still there.

“You don't mean?” I gasped, losing all the air inside me.

I tried to fight. I tried to do everything and anything a girl could do to protect herself, but it didn't help. The man who handled me seemed like he was used to wrestling bears and winning. I cried and screamed, but it didn't matter.

After the struggle, I was very neatly tied to the bed. Once I was completely powerless, I yelled. I swore, screamed and carried on something fierce. The screaming helped me refrain from wetting myself, I was so scared.

The stranger stood on the other side of the room and slowly removed his gloves. I stopped screaming because I was interested. Was he going to show me who he was? He took off his sunglasses, which had not fallen off in the tussle. Looking at him now, I didn't see how I could have thought he was Christian. He was shorter and his chest was broad in a way my Christian’s wasn’t. This man was built for cage fighting. Then he took off his wig and black wavy hair fell loose. His eyes were still hazel, but he took a couple of steps closer and let me look at his face. Within three blinks of my eyes, his face changed. His eyes went from a teardrop shape to almond. His nose lost that beautiful curve in the middle and became round. His jaw went from square to round, and his lips became pale and flat. He undid the top two buttons of his shirt, and I could see part of the scar around his neck. Even with the hazel contact lenses in, I recognized who I was looking at.

Watching the transformation meant so much. It meant that Christian had not been wearing fake rubber on his nose to make himself look different. It meant that along with not dying, he could change his face the way Brandon had just done. Though it looked like he couldn't change much else. Christian had said as much when he recruited me to steal their body parts back from the compound. He said they would know him because of his height.

“Brandon, is it really you?”

He opened his mouth, showing me his severed tongue, and all ten of his fingers.

“I'm so sorry about that. I... I… uh… you don’t need to tie me up like this. What do you need? Maybe we can talk about it.”

Brandon arched his eyebrow doubtfully and showed me a notepad. He held it up so I could read it since my arms and legs were strapped down. The blue ink read:

Dear Beth,

Please bear with the restraints. I’m sorry to do this, but you see, my under-gardener Charles has been working with your father to hunt down Christian and me. The only thing that is valuable to your father is you, so I have arranged to exchange you for my tongue. I know it doesn’t seem fair, but you were willing to make a similar exchange earlier for us, so I hoped you would be a willing participant.

Thank you very much for coming with me,

Brandon

I reread the page, gaping. I wanted to argue with him, but I knew immediately it wouldn’t work. I knew Henry Brandon. We had spent that summer together in the garden, but what did I know about him? Hadn’t I just talked about myself? I suddenly realized he was a stranger. Dealing with a complete unknown scared me.

“When is the exchange going to be?” I asked.

He picked up the pad and wrote hastily, “In two days.”

“Does Christian know you’ve done this?”

He shook his head.

“And you think he won't notice or come looking for me for two days?” I growled.

Brandon breathed in an amused way through his nose. Then he scratched on the pad the words, “He’s very busy. I sent him on an errand.”

“And I’m just supposed to sit here quietly for two days?”

He flipped the notepad to a fresh page and scribbled, “You can handle it. I’ve endured much worse.”

I nodded. Since he undid his shirt collar, I could see the unbelievable scar that went all the way around his neck. “And you’ll really turn me over to Charles and my father in two days?”

“As long as I get what I want,” he responded on paper. He pulled up a chair and wrote, “They have decided to recruit you and they didn't want to kidnap you from your place in Edmonton. Charles says you have people watching out for you everywhere, so I have kidnapped you for them. They ASKED for you. I didn't OFFER you.”

I read his page angrily. “Tell me more."

“Do you know that all my trouble might have been avoided if you had befriended Charles? He was recruited to spy on us in Scotland. If you had distracted him, he would have left knowing nothing, with nothing to report. When he saw you kissing Christian he went crazy and decided to help them, because we were BAD people. A grown man was kissing a child.”

I read the paper twice before I responded. “The only way I would have distracted Charles is if I had been told to do that,” I panted. At that moment, I couldn't remember if I had been or not. I tapped my forehead with my bound hands clenched together. I might have been. I just hadn't understood what those indirect words had meant. “I would have done it, if I had understood that I needed to,” I muttered.

“Doesn’t matter anymore,” he wrote. “I speak thirteen languages. Having my tongue cut out is worse than losing a finger. If you want anything to eat, shout. My ears still work.”

***

“On top of spaghetti! All covered in cheese! I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed! It rolled off the table and onto the floor! And then my poor meatball rolled straight out the door!” I had started singing because Brandon wouldn’t untie me. He wrote that he had his reasons for wanting me tied up, and excused himself by adding that he had tried to make it as comfortable as possible. Except, I wasn’t comfortable, so I was determined he shouldn’t be comfortable either, and I made as much noise as I could.

I was singing at maximum volume, but he didn’t plug his ears. He didn’t tape my mouth. He didn’t write me nasty letters telling me to shut up. I sang the entire score for The Little Mermaid and all of the Queen songs I could think of (there were three). Even with the ear-piercing racket, he didn’t leave me alone very often. He sat in an armchair in the corner and read. Sometimes he slept when I was quiet, but I didn't like being quiet. I liked being noisy as it stopped me from crying pitifully.

After the spaghetti song, he set up a tablet on the table and turned on a movie. Oddly enough, even though there were a lot of movies to choose from, he didn’t let me pick. Instead, he put on Blade Runner and refilled my water bottle.

I watched it, completely helpless to turn it off or leave and wondered why he wanted me to watch a movie about living in fear. Okay, I didn’t wonder that long. Brandon and Christian didn’t live knowing that their lives were set to expire once they reached a particular age. They lived knowing that death would never come for them, no matter how much they suffered.

When it was over, Brandon took me to the bathroom. On the first bathroom break, he gave me a note before we got started. “I’m going to untie you and escort you to the bathroom. As you probably know, there is no escape route in that room. You can have a shower or whatever you want whenever I take you. I will wait outside. If you try to run or attack me, you’ll find out how nice I have been treating you. But if your pride insists that you make the attempt, do as you must.”

I looked at him. With the hazel contacts out, his blue eyes were totally clear. His conscience didn’t bother him.

I nodded and the ordeal was exactly as he described. I didn't fight.

When Brandon brought me food, he untied one of my hands, but he guarded me like a bulldog. Logan’s Run was the next movie he played, and I stopped wondering what his taste in movies was.

When it was over, I whispered to him, “If I do what you say, will you make sure I’m safe?”

He languidly approached me with his pad in hand. Slowly, wrote something I was sure he regretted and then flipped it over for me to see. “You are not mine to protect.”

“Why not?” I bellowed. “Why does everyone want to be rid of the responsibility of me?”

On the paper, he wrote, “Not everyone does.”

“Really?” I gawked sarcastically, fighting back the tears.

Brandon did not hand me a tissue. Instead, he looked like he was going to strangle me. He took a couple of calming breaths, smirked and then wrote, “I’ve decided to give you a gift. I’ll let you look at Christian. He’s almost always dressed up as someone else, but I’ll let you see him in the two minutes when he won’t be.”

“Why would you do that for me?” I sputtered.

He closed the notebook and turned on another film. This time it was a space movie about ice being the most valuable thing in the galaxy. I didn’t understand. Weren’t there comets and plenty of planets that were mostly made of ice? Old science fiction was weird. But then, what people knew about the universe was a lot different thirty years ago compared to what they understood now. I glanced at Brandon. What did he know about the way nature worked that the rest of humanity hadn’t figured out yet?